Frames

ServiceNow is a cloud platform that runs inside your browser window. Within your browser, the ServiceNow interface is broken up into frames. Frames, in web parlance, are just separately divided sections of a page. This section will show you what the different frames are, what they generally contain, and the major UI elements within them.

In ServiceNow, there are two main frames: the ServiceNow frame, and the content frame. Both have different controls and display different information.

The ServiceNow frame consists of many UI elements spanning across both the top, and left side of the ServiceNow window in your browser:

Technically, the ServiceNow frame can be further broken up into two frames: The banner frame along the top edge of the interface, and the Application Navigator along the left side.

Banner frame

The banner frame runs along the top of every page in ServiceNow, save for a few exceptions. It's got room for some branding and a logo, but the more functional components for administrators and developers is on the right. There, you'll find:

• System settings cog
• Help and documentation button
• Conversations panel button
• Instance search button
• Profile/session dropdown

System Settings

In your developer instance, on the far-top-right, you will see a sort of cog or sprocket. This is generally recognized as a universal Settings menu icon. Clicking on that icon reveals the System Settings menu:

This menu is broken down into several sections:

• General
• Theme
• Lists
• Forms
• Notifications
• Developer (Admins only)

The settings in this menu generally apply only to the current user who's signed in, so you can freely toggle and modify these settings without worrying about breaking anything.

In the General tab (as seen in the preceding figure) of the System Settings UI, you'll find toggles to control accessibility options, compact the user interface, select how date/time fields are shown, select your time-zone, and even an option to display a printer-friendly version of the page you're on. In Geneva (the prior version of ServiceNow, with Helsinki being the version primarily used for the examples in this book), you'll also see an option to Wrap Longer Text in List Columns and Compact list date/time:

On the Theme tab in the preceding figure, you'll find several pre-made ServiceNow themes with names like System and Blues. One of the first things that a company often does when deploying ServiceNow, is to create a custom-branded theme. We'll go over how to do that in a later section, and you'll be able to see your custom themes there:

The Lists tab (not available in Geneva) contains the option to wrap longer text in list columns (which was under the General tab in Geneva), as well as options to enable striped table rows (which alternates rows in a table between contrasting shades of gray, making it easier to follow with the eye from left to right) and modern cell styles. All options in the Lists tab except Wrap longer text in list columns require the List V3 plugin to be enabled before they'll show up, as they only apply to List V3.

If you've installed a fresh ServiceNow instance using Helsinki or a later version, the List V3 plugin will be enabled by default. However, if you've upgraded from Geneva or an earlier version, to Helsinki, you'll be on List V2 by default, and List V3 will need to be enabled. This, and any other plugins, can be enabled from System Definition | Plugins in the Application Navigator.

The Forms tab contains settings to enable tabbed forms, as well as to control how and when related lists load.

Related lists are lists (like tables in a spreadsheet) of related records that appear at the bottom of forms. Forms are where key data about an individual record are displayed:

The Notifications tab (not available in Geneva) allows you to choose whether to get notifications on your mobile device, desktop toast notifications, e-mail notifications, or audio notifications:

Finally, the Developer tab (only available to users with the admin role) is where you can find settings relating to application and update set based development. By default, your selected update set should say Default [Global], which means that any configuration changes you make in the instance will not be captured in a portable update set that you can move between instances. We'll go into detail about what these things mean later on. For now, follow along with the following steps in your developer instance using your Administrator account, as we create a new update set to contain any configuration changes we'll be making in this chapter:

1. If you don't already have the System Settings menu open, click on the System Settings gear in the top-right of the ServiceNow interface.
2. If you haven't already done so, click on the Developer tab on the bottom-left.
3. Next, navigate to the Local Update Sets table:
   
   • In the main section of the System Settings dialog, you should see the third row down labeled Update Sets. To the right of that should be a drop-down with Default [Global] selected, followed by three buttons.

The first button () is called a Reference icon. Clicking it will take you to the currently selected update set (in this case, Default). The second button () will take you to the list view, showing you all of the Local Update Sets. The third button will refresh the currently selected update set, in case you've changed update sets in another window or tab.

• • Click on the second button, to navigate to the Local Update Sets list view.

4. Click on the blue New button at the top-left of the page to go to the new update set form.
5. Give this update set a name. Let's enter Chapter 1 into the Name field.
6. Fill out the Description by writing in something like Learning about the ServiceNow interface!
7. Leave State and Release date to their default values.
8. Click Submit and Make Current.

Alternately, you could click Submit or right-click the header and click Save, then return to the record and click the Make This My Current Set related link.

Now that we've created an update set, any configuration changes we make will be captured and stored in a nice little package that we can back out or move into another instance to deploy the same changes. Now let's just confirm that we've got the right update set selected:

1. Once again, click on the System Settings gear at the top-right of the ServiceNow window, and open the Developer tab.
2. If the selected update set still shows as Default, click the Refresh button (the third icon to the right of the selected update set).
3. If the update set still shows as Default, just select your new Chapter 1 update set from the Update Set drop-down list.

Help

Next on the right side of the banner frame, is the Help icon. Clicking on this icon opens up the Help panel on the right side of the page:

The Help menu has three sections: What's New, User Guide, and Search Documentation. Or, if you're in Geneva, it shows only What's New and Search Product Documentation.

Clicking What's New just brings up the introduction to your instance version, with a couple of examples of the more prominent new features over the previous version.

The User Guide will redirect you to an internal mini-guide with some useful pocket-reference type of info in Helsinki. It's very slim on the details though, so you might be better off searching the developer site (http://developer.servicenow.com) or documentation (http://docs.servicenow.com) if you have any specific questions.

Speaking of the documentation site, Search Documentation is essentially a link directly there! Clicking this link from a form or list will automatically populate a query relating to the type of record(s) you were viewing.

Connect chat conversations

Moving further left in the banner frame, you'll find the Conversations button. This opens the connect side-bar, showing an (initially blank) list of the conversations you've recently been a part of. You can enter text in the filter box to filter the conversation list by participant name. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow you to filter/search by message contents at this point. You can also click the plus icon to initiate a new conversation with a user of your choice.

Global Text Search

The next link to the right in the banner frame is probably the most useful one of all - the Global Text Search. The Global Text Search box allows you to enter a term, ticket number, or keyword and search a configurable multitude of tables.

As an example of this functionality, let's search for a user that should be present in the demo data that came with your developer instance:

1. Click on the Search icon (the one that looks like a magnifying glass). It should expand to the left, displaying a search keyword input box.
2. In that input box, type in abel tuter. This is the name of one of the demo users that comes with your developer instance:

3. Press Enter, and you should see the relevant search results divided into sections.

Entering an exact ticket number for a given task (such as an incident, request, or problem ticket) will take you directly to that ticket rather than showing the search results. This is a great way to quickly navigate to a ticket you've received an e-mail notification about, or for a service desk agent to look up a ticket number provided by a customer.

The search results from the Global Text Search are divided into search groups. The default groups are Tasks, Live Feed, Policy, and People & Places. To the right of each search group is a list of the tables that the search is run against for that group.

The Policy search group, for example, contains several script types, including BusinessRules, UIActions, Client Scripts, and UI Policies.

Profile

The last item on our list of banner-frame elements, is the Profile link. This will show your photo/icon (if you've uploaded one), and your name. As indicated by the small down-facing arrow to the right of your name (or System Administrator), clicking on this will show a little drop-down menu. This menu consists of up to four main components:

• Profile
• Impersonate User
• Elevate Roles
• Logout

The Profile link in the drop-down will take you directly to the Self Service view of your profile. This is generally not what Administrators want, but it's a quick way for users to view their profile information.

Impersonate User is a highly useful tool for administrators and developers, allowing them to view the instance as though they were another user, including that user's security permissions, and viewing the behavior of UI policies and scripts when that user is logged in.

Elevate Roles is an option only available when the High Security plugin is enabled (which may or may not be turned on by default in your organization). Clicking this option opens a dialog that allows you to check a box, and re-initialize your session with a special security role called security_admin (assuming you have this role in your instance). With high security settings enabled, the security_admin role allows you to perform certain actions, such as modifying ACLs (Access Control Lists - security rules), and running background scripts (scripts you can write and execute directly on the server).

Finally, the Logout link does just what you'd expect: logs you out.

If you have difficulty with a session that you can't log out, you can always log out by visiting /logout.do on your instance. For example: http://your-instance.service-now.com/logout.do/.

The Application Navigator

The Application Navigator is one of the UI components with which you will become most familiar, as you work in ServiceNow. Nearly everything you do will begin either by searching in the Global Text Search box, or by filtering the Application Navigator.

The contents of the Application Navigator consist of Modules nested underneath Application Menus. The first application menu in the Application Navigator is Self-Service. This application menu is generally what's available to a user who doesn't have any special roles or permissions. Underneath this application menu, you'll see various modules such as Homepage, Service Catalog, Knowledge, and so on:

When you hear the term Application as it relates to ServiceNow, you might think of an application on your smartphone. Applications in ServiceNow and applications on your smartphone both generally consist of packaged functionality, presented in a coherent way. However in ServiceNow, there are some differences. For example, an Application Header might consist only of links to other areas in ServiceNow, and contain no new functionality of its own. An application might not even necessarily have an application header.

Generally, we refer to the major ITIL processes in ServiceNow as Applications (Incident, Change, Problem, Knowledge, and so on) -- but these can often consist of various components linked up with one another; so the functionality within an application need not necessarily be packaged in a way that it's closed off from the rest of the system.

You'll often be given instructions to navigate to a particular module in a way similar to this: Self-Service | My Requests. In this example (as we'll use in this book), the left portion (Self-Service) is the application menu header, and the right portion (My Requests) is the module.