Exploring new experiences
Summarize
Summary of Exploring new experiences
Onboarding modals in ServiceNow® Adoption Services provide interactive, wizard-like overlays that introduce users to new experiences and applications within the Next Experience platform. These modals deliver contextual help using multiple content types—including text, images, video links, and interactive questions—and adapt visually to your instance’s theme (dark, light, or coral) to ensure a consistent user interface.
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They can be triggered automatically on first login, upon accessing specific applications, or programmatically via custom business logic, allowing administrators full control over timing and audience targeting.
Key Features
- Step-by-step guided workflows: Help users quickly understand new features, reducing onboarding time.
- Theme-aware interface: Modals automatically match your instance’s visual style for a seamless experience.
- Flexible deployment: Multiple triggering options including automatic, application-based, or scripted triggers enable tailored user guidance.
- Rich content support: Incorporate text, images, videos (YouTube and Vimeo), and interactive questions for engaging learning.
- Interactive user input: Collect responses via radio buttons or checkboxes to customize the onboarding flow or gather analytics.
Implementation Guidance
- Review default modals: Start by examining pre-configured onboarding modals available under All > Adoption Services > All Guidance to understand baseline functionality.
- Plan your content: Map user journeys, determine key concepts, information sequence, and decision points requiring input.
- Create guidance structure: Use All > Adoption Services > Create Guidance to configure modals with appropriate names, types, roles, and application scope.
- Build guidance steps: Add steps with varied layouts (text, video, images, questions), defining presentation order and interactivity.
- Configure launch mechanisms: Employ programmatic triggers via UI client scripts and events or use automatic triggers based on user behavior or application access.
User Experience
Users experience onboarding modals as overlays triggered at key moments, such as first login or new application access. They navigate through sequential steps featuring content and interactive elements, with the system tracking progress to prevent repeated displays unless explicitly reset. Completion confirmation helps users know when onboarding is finished, ensuring effective adoption of new features.
Onboarding modals introduce you to new ServiceNow® experiences through wizard-like interfaces in Next Experience. Learn about capabilities, benefits, and implementation approaches for effective user onboarding.
Overview to Onboarding modals
Onboarding modals are part of ServiceNow® Adoption Services suite, designed to introduce users to new experiences and applications through interactive, guided workflows. These modals appear as overlay windows that walk users through features, providing contextual help at critical moments.
Onboarding modals support multiple content types including text descriptions, images, video links (YouTube and Vimeo), and interactive questions. The modal interface adapts to your instance's theme (dark, light, or coral), ensuring visual consistency across the user experience.
Modals can be triggered automatically on first login, when accessing specific applications, or programmatically through custom business logic, giving you complete control over when and how users receive guidance.
Benefits
Onboarding modals provide benefits across different user populations:
| Benefit | Feature | Users |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce onboarding time | Step-by-step guided modals | All users |
| Consistent user experience | Theme-aware interfaces | All users |
| Flexible deployment | Programmatic triggers | Administrators |
| Customizable content | Multiple content types | Administrators |
Get Started
Begin using onboarding modals by following this implementation sequence:
- Review default modals: Navigate to to examine the pre-configured onboarding modal included with Next Experience. Test the user experience to understand baseline functionality.
- Plan your content: Map out the user journey for your application or feature. Identify key concepts users need to learn, optimal sequence for information delivery, and decision points requiring user input.
- Create guidance structure: Navigate to . Configure the guidance form with appropriate name, type (Modal), roles, and application scope.
- Build guidance steps: Add individual steps using the Help Guidance Steps related list. Choose layouts (Text, Video, Image and Text, Image and Question, or Question) and define the presentation order.
- Configure launch mechanism: Implement the programmatic trigger using UIB client scripts and event dispatching, or leverage automatic triggers based on application access patterns.
User Journey
The typical user journey with onboarding modals follows this pattern:
Initial trigger: User logs in for the first time, accesses a new application, or triggers a custom business rule. The system evaluates whether to display an onboarding modal based on user profile, role assignments, and previous interaction history.
Modal presentation: The onboarding modal appears as an overlay, presenting the first guidance step. Users see the title, content (text, image, or video), and navigation controls (Next, Previous, or custom action buttons).
Progressive disclosure: Users navigate through subsequent steps at their own pace.
Interactive elements: Question-based steps collect user input through radio buttons (single answer) or checkboxes (multiple answers). Responses can inform subsequent content or be recorded for analytics purposes.
Completion: Upon reaching the final step, users receive a completion confirmation and return to the application. The system records the interaction, preventing duplicate displays unless the modal is explicitly reset.