Service Portal properties

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated June 16, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Service Portal properties

    Service Portal properties in ServiceNow allow administrators to control various aspects of the portal experience for both admins and end users. These properties influence behavior such as error handling, notifications, sorting, debugging, and user entitlements. Most common properties are configurable via the Service Portal properties page, while additional settings are available through the System Properties table.

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    Key Properties and Their Practical Uses

    • Default 404 Page: Defines the fallback page users see when a portal page fails to load, ensuring a consistent user experience during errors.
    • Show Console Error Messages: Enables displaying browser error messages to admin users for troubleshooting within the portal.
    • Stream Entry Limit: Controls how many recent entries (e.g., in conversation widgets) users can view, managing performance and usability.
    • Notification Timeout: Sets how long informational and error messages remain visible before auto-dismissal, with an option to disable auto-dismiss for critical alerts or accessibility compliance.
    • Announcement Sort Order: Configures the default ordering of banner announcements by start or end date, ascending or descending, helping prioritize displayed information.
    • Debug Runtime Information: Toggles Angular.js debug info for developers, which is disabled by default to optimize portal performance.
    • User Criteria Settings: Allow defining widget and page access using user criteria instead of roles, offering more granular entitlement control. Roles can be specified to bypass these criteria for broader access.

    System Properties for Advanced Configuration

    • Enforce ACLs on Filter Queries: Ensures that read Access Control Lists (ACLs) apply to filter conditions in list widgets, enhancing security by default.
    • Human Readable URLs: Enables configuring descriptive keywords in portal page URLs, improving usability and SEO.
    • Notification Threshold: Determines how many notifications appear before users get an option to clear all, managing notification overload.
    • Language Selector: Allows users to select their preferred language in the portal header for specified portals, supporting multilingual user bases.
    • SCSS Parsing Mode: Controls whether compiled SCSS stylesheets are loaded as separate linked files or inline, affecting page load performance.

    What This Enables You to Do

    By configuring these properties, ServiceNow customers can tailor the Service Portal experience for their users, improve portal performance, enhance security, facilitate multilingual support, and streamline troubleshooting. Adjusting notification behaviors and access controls helps maintain usability and governance aligned with organizational needs.

    Expectations

    Proper use of Service Portal properties results in a more reliable, user-friendly portal with controlled access and customized user experience features. Administrators gain flexibility in managing portal behavior without custom coding, contributing to smoother operations and better end-user satisfaction.

    Service Portal properties control aspects of the portal experience for admin and end users.

    The most commonly used Service Portal properties are set on the Service Portal properties page. Some less commonly used properties are available only from the System Properties [sys_properties] table.

    You can access the properties listed in the following table by navigating to All > Service Portal > Properties.

    Table 1. Service Portal page properties
    Property Description

    Default 404 page (page ID or sp_page sys_id) for Service Portal

    glide.service_portal.default_404_page

    Set the default page that your users see whenever a page cannot load properly.The string must match the name of the page exactly.

    Show a message to admin users in Service Portal pages if a browser error is encountered

    glide.sp.show_console_error

    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true

    Maximum number of stream entries displayed in Service Portal (activity widget, conversation widget, and so on)

    glide.service_portal.stream_entry_limit

    Limit the number of entries users can see in the ticket conversation widget. Users only see the most recent entries and cannot go further back in the history than the max allowed amount.
    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 100

    Duration (in seconds) info and error messages persist in the Service Portal before auto-dismissal

    glide.service-portal.notification_timeout.seconds

    Set the duration in seconds that non-critical notifications remain on the screen before they are auto-dismissed. If set to 0, messages do not auto-dismiss and require that a user close them.

    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 5

    Critical notifications should be tagged with the sn-sticky-notification HTML class attribute to prevent them from being automatically dismissed.

    If the glide.ui.accessibility preference is enabled, messages do not auto-dismiss, regardless of the system property value. To set this preference, see Enabling accessibility features.

    Default sort order for announcements

    glide.service_portal.announcement.default_sort_order

    Define the sort order for banner announcements.
    • Type: choice list
    • Default value: Start Date Descending
    Options include:
    • Start Date Ascending: The oldest start date appears first.
    • Start Date Descending: The most recent start date appears first.
    • End Date Ascending: The oldest end date appears first.
    • End Date Descending: The most recent end date appears first.
    Enable debug runtime information

    glide.sp.debug

    Controls whether the Angular.js flag $compileProvider.debugInfoEnabled is set to true or false. This option allows debug runtime information in the compiler, such as adding binding information and a reference to the current scope on to DOM elements. This property is turned off by default to improve performance on the instance.
    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: false
    If user criteria [com.glide.service-portal.user-criteria] is enabled, the following properties also appear in the Service Portal properties page:

    You can access the properties listed in the following table in the System Properties [sys_properties] table.

    Table 3. Service Portal system properties
    Property Description
    glide.service_portal.enable_acls_for_encoded_query_in_list

    Option to always enforce read ACLs for filter conditions specified in Simple List widget instances. If false, the Enforce field-level Read ACLs on Filter query terms option in Simple List widget instances determines whether to enforce the ACLs.

    glide.service_portal.enable_human_readable_urls

    Option to allow configuring human readable keywords in portal page URLs for the instance.

    glide.service-portal.notification.threshold

    Specify how many notifications should appear before users have the option to clear all notifications at once.

    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 5
    glide.sp.portals.language_selector_enabled Allows any user to choose and view content in their preferred language.

    This property contains a list of portal sys IDs separated by commas. By default, the sys IDs for the Knowledge (/kb), Customer Support (/csm), and Customer Service (/csp) portals are included. For any portal specified, the language selector appears in the portal header if any languages are installed and active on the instance in addition to English.

    glide.sp.theme.parse_scss

    Option to allow compiled SCSS files to be loaded as links to improve repeat page view performance. If set to false, SCSS files are included inline in the page HTML instead.

    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true