Personalize Timeline Visualizations

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Personalize Timeline Visualizations

    ServiceNow's timeline visualizations can be personalized to enhance data representation by configuring lane and panel filters, colors, labels, and sorting. This customization enables users to tailor timeline views, such as the CIO Roadmap, to focus on relevant data and improve visual clarity.

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    Personalization Features

    • Lane Conditions: Define filters and sorting for timeline lanes to exclude or reorder specific data categories (e.g., removing “IT” lanes or sorting portfolio names alphabetically).
    • Panel Conditions: Apply filters and sorting to panels, limiting displayed items based on criteria like project states (e.g., show only Pending, Open, or Work in Progress projects).
    • Panel Color Key: Select a field from the Panel table to determine color coding categories (commonly fields like State, Priority, Risk, or Approval).
    • Labels and Colors: Assign up to four label values from the selected color key field and specify distinct colors for each. Items outside these labels use a default color.

    Settings Pane Elements

    • Key: Displays color-coded categories and their assigned colors.
    • Configure: Opens the personalization form to adjust filters, sorting, and colors for your timeline visualization without affecting other users.
    • View: Toggle between 2D and 3D timeline views.
    • View <table> List: Opens a detailed record list for the timeline’s underlying table.
    • Portfolio: Manage lane visibility by adding or removing lanes and overriding lane filters in 2D view.

    Important Notes for ServiceNow Customers

    • Activating timeline visualizations alone does not activate predefined CIO Roadmap views; the PPM plugin (com.snc.financialplanningpmo) is required to use the CIO Roadmap.
    • Setting the “Max items per lane” above 1000 may cause delays in Internet Explorer when rendering timeline data.

    Practical Benefits

    By personalizing timeline visualizations, ServiceNow users can create focused, visually distinct timelines that highlight critical project or portfolio data, improve navigation and comprehension, and tailor views for specific roles or needs—all within their own user session without impacting others.

    You can configure settings for timeline visualizations like lane and panel conditions, colors, and labels.

    Personalization

    Open the Settings pane and click Configure. Complete the form as appropriate (see table).

    Figure 1. Visualization personalization
    Visualization personalization
    Table 1. Timeline visualization personalization form
    Field Description
    Lane conditions

    Condition builder used to create filters and apply sorting to values that are used as lanes in 3D view visualizations. For example, if you set [Name] [is not] [IT] as a lane condition for the CIO Roadmap, then IT no longer appears as a lane in the roadmap, nor does it appear as a lane option in the Settings pane. Removing the filter restores the IT lane to the visualization and to lane options in the Settings pane.

    To order the results, specify sorting based on relevant field names. For example, to order the portfolio names so that they appear in reverse alphabetical order on the CIO Roadmap, set the sort fields to [Name] [z to a].
    Panel conditions Condition builder used to create filters and apply sorting to values that are used as panels in the visualization. For example, if you set [State] [is one of] [Pending, Open, Work in Progress] as the panel condition for the CIO Roadmap, only projects that are in one of those states appear on the roadmap.
    Panel color key

    Field from the Panel table that contains values used for color coding the information displayed. The field selected here determines the values that are available in the Label fields on the form.

    The CIO Roadmap uses State, which is a field in the Project table. Panels on the CIO Roadmap are color coded according to the project state, which can be Pending, Open, Work in Progress, Closed Complete, Closed Incomplete, and Skipped.

    Examples of other fields that are suitable for this selection include Priority, Risk, and Approval.

    Label 1

    Label 2

    Label 3

    Label 4

    Values to be color coded. The values available are determined by the Panel color key field. For example, the CIO Roadmap is based on the Project table and has the Panel color key' set to the State field, which contains the values Pending, Open, Work in Progress, Closed Complete, Closed Incomplete, and Closed Skipped.

    You can set specific colors for up to four values from the selected field. Other values are shown in the Default color.
    Default color Color applied to values that are not selected for labels. For example, the CIO Roadmap color codes and creates labels for the values Pending, Open, Work in Progress, and Closed Complete. The additional values, Closed Incomplete and Closed Skipped, use the default color.

    Color 1

    Color 2

    Color 3

    Color 4

    		 Colors that correspond to each of the Label field values. For example, if Label 1 is the Pending state, and Color 1 is red, then panels for projects in the pending state are red.
    Note:
    • Activating timeline visualizations doesn't activate predefined CIO roadmap. You require PPM (com.snc.financial_planning_pmo) plugin to use CIO roadmap.
    • If the Max items per lane field is set to more than 1000, you may observe a delay when displaying the timeline data using Internet Explorer (IE) as the browser.

    The Settings pane

    Element names in the Settings pane vary based on the table and fields used to create the visualization.

    CIO roadmap settings pane

    The Settings pane contains the following elements:

    Table 2. Settings pane elements
    Element Description
    Key Identifies the type of information that is color coded on the timeline, such as state or priority. It also lists the color assigned to each possible value, such as pending state and open state.
    Configure Allows you to personalize a visualization by creating filters on lane information and panel information, specifying sort order for results, and reassigning panel colors. These changes affect your view of the visualization only.
    View Allows you to switch between 2D and 3D view.
    View <table> List Opens a separate browser tab showing the complete record list for the associated table.
    Portfolio Allows you to click lane names to add or remove them from the visualization. While the visualization is in 2D view, the Settings pane displays a Show all <records> button that allows you to override lane filters applied to the initial setup.