Configuring Service Portal

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Configuring Service Portal

    This guide outlines the key steps to plan and set up a self-service portal in ServiceNow, enabling your employees or customers to access resources, knowledge bases, and services efficiently. The configuration process is flexible, allowing you to adapt the workflow based on specific use cases.

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    Key Features

    • Portal Creation and Upgrade: You can create new portals or update existing base system portals to define site URLs, knowledge bases, catalogs, homepages, header menus, and branding. After upgrading ServiceNow, additional tasks may be necessary to leverage new Service Portal functionalities.
    • Branding Configuration: The Branding Editor offers real-time style and theme customization with immediate visual feedback. For advanced customization, CSS stylesheets can be created, but these do not provide real-time updates. Branding Editor changes override theme customizations.
    • Page and Widget Management: Pages structure the user experience and ensure mobile responsiveness. You can create new pages or modify existing ones, placing widgets that define page content. Base system widgets can be used, cloned, or customized to meet specific needs.
    • Search Configuration: Search functionality is delivered via widgets that display results on search pages. You can configure search sources to pull data from one or multiple ServiceNow tables or external sites. AI Search can be enabled to enhance query intelligence.
    • Access Management: Control portal access through public pages, user logins, single sign-on, role-based restrictions, and multi-factor authentication. Advanced user criteria can be applied to pages, widgets, and other components.
    • Approval Configuration: Configure the Service Portal Approval Configuration record to optimize the Approval assistance AI agent and the Approval Info Record widget for your use case.

    Key Outcomes

    • Establish a tailored, branded self-service portal that aligns with your organization’s requirements.
    • Deliver an intuitive and responsive user experience through customizable pages and widgets.
    • Enable efficient and intelligent search capabilities to help users quickly find relevant information.
    • Maintain secure and appropriate access controls to ensure users see only authorized content.
    • Leverage AI-driven approval assistance to streamline workflows within the portal.

    Plan and set up a self-service portal for your employees or customers.

    Configuration overview

    The following list is a high-level overview of the workflow to get started configuring a portal. However, there may be use cases where performing these steps in a different order is preferred.

    1. Upgrade Service Portal

      If you upgraded from a previous release, you might need to perform additional tasks to take advantage of new or updated functionality in Service Portal.

    2. Create a new portal or update a base system portal

      A portal is the engine that houses all the references to content for your site. The portal record defines the URL extension for a site, as well as things like the knowledge base, catalog, and homepage. You can also use the portal record to define the header menu and the portal branding. You can create a new portal or update an existing base system portal to suit your needs.

    3. Configure portal branding

      With the Branding Editor, you can configure the styles and theme of your portal in a view with real-time updates. You can see how your portal appears to users with the click of a button. More advanced users still have the option of creating CSS style sheets for the portal theme. However, they won't take advantage of the real-time update that the Branding Editor provides. Changes made in the Branding Editor or to specific components of the portal (such as a widget or a page container) override any customizations made to the theme. If you need more customization than what the Branding Editor can provide, see Create a portal theme.

    4. Create new pages or update base system pages and configure widgets

      Pages are the centerpiece of the end-user experience. Page definitions not only control the layout of the content, they craft the experience for the user. Pages also help define mobile responsiveness, which is a key component in the user experience. Use any existing base system pages as an example for your own creation or create new pages from scratch.

      Widgets are what define the content of your pages. You can use the base system widgets provided with Service Portal to get started configuring pages.

    5. Configure search in a portal

      Search data displays within a widget on the search page. To make data searchable from a portal, create a search source that fetches data from a single table within your instance, from multiple tables, or from an external site. Enable AI Search to take advantage of intelligent query features and quickly find the answers they need.

    6. Manage access to a portal

      Manage who can access your portal by making pages public, configuring user logins and single sign-on, limiting page access by role, or enabling multi-factor authentication. You can also use advanced user criteria for access to pages, widgets, and more.

    Common portal configurations

    Refer to this video for examples of common configurations for portals.