Understanding Service Portal
Summarize
Summary of Understanding Service Portal
Service Portal offers a modular user interface framework within the ServiceNow platform, enabling quick and easy creation of application portals and dashboards. It is designed to help both developers and non-technical administrators build attractive, engaging user experiences that enhance employee adoption of critical enterprise applications.
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How to Use Service Portal
Service Portal is accessed as an application within the platform UI, featuring a visual configuration layer. You can navigate to Service Portal > Service Portal Configuration to access a configuration page that provides a real-time preview and an intuitive way to assemble portal components via tiles. All components created in the Service Portal configuration page are also visible and manageable through the platform UI tables, ensuring seamless integration between the two methods.
Who Can Use Service Portal
- Users with Limited Coding Skills: Can configure portals using the visual configuration tools without deep coding knowledge.
- ServiceNow Experts: Can create portals, manage URL redirects, and configure components through both the configuration page and platform UI.
- Developers: Responsible for advanced customizations and creating new widgets, requiring knowledge of AngularJS and Twitter Bootstrap.
All users must have the admin or spadmin role to configure portals.
Basic Concepts
Understanding the following components is essential for building portals:
- Themes: Define the overall look and feel of the portal but can be overridden by other style settings.
- Pages: Manage where and how portal content is stored and displayed without a direct link to portal records.
- Widgets: Modular components built with HTML templates, CSS, client and server scripts, and JavaScript dependencies, functioning as AngularJS directives.
Data displayed in Service Portal often resides in related platform applications (e.g., knowledge articles are managed in the Knowledge application). It’s important to understand the data tables controlling your content to effectively configure your portal.
Before You Begin
Consider the following to ensure your portal meets user needs and platform capabilities:
- Identify your target audience and the purpose of the portal.
- Determine what information and platform content (e.g., knowledge articles, catalog items) will be included.
- Plan the mobile user experience.
- Assess how customized your service catalog is, since catalog client scripts and UI policies must use the mobile GlideForm API within Service Portal, possibly requiring adjustments.
- Familiarize yourself with the underlying table structures for content management.
Additional Resources and Technologies
Service Portal leverages well-known web technologies, including Twitter Bootstrap CSS, Flexbox, and AngularJS. These resources are useful for deeper understanding and customization.
Service Portal Architecture
Service Portal consists of two main parts:
- Framework: Includes APIs, Angular services, directives, and tools for building portals.
- Portal: A collection of pages linked by page IDs that form the user-facing interface.
Navigation and Content Management
You can navigate directly to portals or pages in Service Portal via URLs. Service Portal serves as a modern alternative to the legacy Content Management System (CMS), offering a refined user experience without duplicating CMS or platform UI functions. Transitioning from CMS to Service Portal may require effort, especially for complex, customized Service Catalog forms.
Service Portal provides a modular user interface framework for quick and easy building of application portals and dashboards for the platform. It helps developers and non‑technical administrators create attractive and engaging user experiences that drive employee adoption of critical enterprise applications.
How to use Service Portal
Service Portal is an application included in the platform UI, however it includes a visual layer for you to do most of your configuration. In the application navigator, navigate to to view the configuration page.
The Service Portal configuration page provides a unique, intuitive way of viewing all the pieces of your portal and how they interact with one another. The configuration page allows you to take advantage of a real-time preview, while configuring portal settings. Use each of the tiles on the configuration homepage to assemble the different components of your portal.
If you prefer the platform layout for configuring Service Portal, you still have the option of creating your portal components within the platform UI. The two options are not separate. Everything you create in the Service Portal configuration page also appears in a table in the platform UI.
Who can use Service Portal
- Limited coding: Service Portal was designed so that even users with limited coding ability or knowledge of the platform UI could set up a portal.
- ServiceNow Experts: Users with an understanding of the ServiceNow platform can create portals, set up URL redirects, and view all the components of the portal in a table. Most portal configuration takes place in the Service Portal configuration page, but in specific circumstances, Service Portal administrators may need to do additional configuration directly within the platform.
- Developers: Advanced customizations and new widget creation are tasks for a developer or someone who understands AngularJS and Twitter bootstrap.
Basic concepts
- Themes: Themes define the look and feel of the whole portal, but can be overridden by other style configurations.
- Pages: Pages control where and how you store portal content. Pages do not have a defined relationship to portal records, they simply exist.
- Widgets: Components in Service Portal are called widgets. You can use HTML templates, CSS, client scripts, server scripts, and any JavaScript dependencies to define what a widget does. From an AngularJS standpoint, widgets are essentially a superset of an Angular directive.
- Most of the data in Service Portal is managed in different locations throughout the
system.
For example, if you are building a knowledge portal, the data exists in Service Portal, but the knowledge articles are authored and managed in the Knowledge application. The same is true for any other type of content you plan to leverage. Take time to understand which tables contain and control the data you are working with in Service Portal.
Before you begin
- Who are you building your site for and why?
- What information do you want to include in your site?
- What do you want the mobile experience to be for users?
- Which platform applications do you plan to use in your portal?
You can use parts of the platform, such as knowledge articles and catalog items, as the content for your portal.
For example, if you are building a knowledge portal, the content displays in Service Portal, but the knowledge articles are authored and managed in the Knowledge application. The same is true for any other type of content you plan to leverage. It is important to take time to understand the table structure of data to become acquainted with content.
- How customized is your service catalog? Catalog client scripts and UI policies only work in Service Portal if they use the mobile GlideForm API, so you may need to make some changes.