My active items widget configuration

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated February 26, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of My Active Items Widget Configuration

    The My Active Items widget in ServiceNow displays user activities that require input or review, including tasks, surveys, and requests. Admins can customize this widget to show additional activities, such as reservations, by activating the relevant plugins. The default layout is designed for optimal usability with a column size of 3 or greater.

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    Key Features

    • Activity Organization: Items can be organized by priority or urgency and viewed in different layouts.
    • Action Framework: Enables employees to perform actions directly from the widget, such as approve or reject tasks.
    • Summary View: Displays counts of activities, with primary activities shown at the top and non-primary activities following.
    • List View: Shows a list of to-dos specific to the primary activity, with options for advanced or basic configurations.

    Key Outcomes

    By configuring the My Active Items widget effectively, ServiceNow customers can enhance their workflow efficiency, allowing users to quickly access and act on critical tasks. The use of the OOTB Approvals action group facilitates streamlined actions, improving overall task management and user experience within the Employee Center.

    The My active items widget displays all user activity that requires your input or review.

    In the My active items widget, tasks, surveys, and request activities are available by default in the Employee Center. The Tasks activity is set to primary by default. Task activities are displayed using the existing to-do configuration and the Requests activities are displayed using the existing request filters.
    Note:
    You can add additional configurations to display your activities. For example, to display activities for reservations, you must install and activate the plugin for the ServiceNow® Workplace Reservation Management application.
    From My Active Items widget, admins can perform the following actions.
    • Organize items based on priority or urgency.
    • View the items in vertical or horizontal layouts.
    • Perform actions on the assigned tasks from My Active Items.

    My active items actions

    You can now configure action framework to allow employees to perform actions from the My active items.
    ​Configure Action group for the primary activity to complete suitable actions. For tasks, the approve and reject actions are available out-of-the-box. For more information, see Enable task configuration for approvals
    Note:
    When you do not associate an action group with the tasks, the View details option appears to navigate to the activity details page.

    My Active Items Widget Layout Guidance

    The My Active Items widget is designed for optimal display and usability when configured using a column size of 3 or greater. This layout ensures that information presented within the widget remains readable and visually consistent across Employee Center topics.

    Note:
    The My Active Items widget does not support column sizes less than 3. If you use a column size below 3, the widget is not guaranteed to display correctly for all screen widths. Currently, there are no plans to improve support for smaller column sizes. We suggest you use a column size of 3 or higher moving forward.
    Figure 1. My active items widget items
    My active items widget showing the summary view at the top and the list view at the bottom of the widget.

    To change the display options, see Perform an advanced activity configuration.

    Summary view

    The summary view displays a count of all the activities. The count for the primary activity is shown at the top of the widget. The count for the non-primary activities is shown after that. For example, tasks (9 Tasks) is the primary activity and requests (9+ Requests) is the non-primary activity. If the number of activities is zero, the summary view displays 0 next to the activity name. For example, if there are zero tasks, then the summary view displays 0 Tasks. If the count of tasks exceeds 9 in number, the summary view displays 9+ next to the activity name. For example, If there are 10 tasks, then the summary view displays 9+ Tasks.

    Clicking an activity in the widget opens the page that you specified in the Internal Link field of the Activity Configuration form.

    List view

    The list view displays a list of to-dos only for the primary activity. If you set the Tasks activity as primary, the list view displays to-dos only for the Tasks activity. The View All option opens the page you have configured for the primary activity.
    You can do an advanced configuration or a basic configuration for an activity. Use the out-of-the-box Approvals action group to display the actions such as Approve and Reject.
    Note:
    When you do not associate an action group with the tasks, the View details option appears to navigate to the activity details page.
    For more information, see Action framework.
    Note:
    For actions to appear in my items widget, you can add the OOTB Approvals action group from All > Employee Center > Administration > To-dos Configurations, click an existing to-dos configuration, navigate to the To-do Configuration Details record, and use the OOTB action group under Fields Mapping.