Andrew Barnes

4 minute read

New York features for Agent Workspace

It is ServiceNow new release season! Time to dive in and check out enhancements to Agent Workspace. Agent Workspace introduced in Madrid. In the New York release, more configurations and options are developers for administrators and developers to enhance the experience for their users. You can check out the Docs release notes for items not covered in this article.

Landing page

Introduced in New York is the idea of a landing page for the workspace. You might be familiar with homepages and dashboards. Similar to those interfaces and available to workspace interfaces is the landing page. The purpose is to provide a quick overview of the agent’s work and their team at a glance. Presented are reports and grouped data relevant to the users of that workspace. Note: a give user of a workspace can have one and only one landing page. Which landing page they receive is determined by their groups&roles and order. Users cannot switch between landing pages.

To create and configure the landing pages, one must have the role: uxframework_designer. When visiting the landing page table sys_ux_custom_content_root_elem there will be several OOB records that can be used as examples. For your first creations, it is advised to start by using the Clone Page UI Action. The action must be performed inside a scope, not in global. Cloning will allow for trying out configuring a page with some things populated.

landing

One of the first decisions to make is the layout of the page. Three options are available: Single-column, Two columns 75 split, Two columns even split*. Currently, only these layouts are available for use. Next, you can add page elements in the related list. These elements can either be containers or visualizations. The elements are instances of components sys_ux_lib_component which are not available for customer developers to create as of New York. Containers hold and control layouts for visualizations. When choosing the container, you will have a choice to pick a layout for the container as well as a title, slot, and order. Slot is the position inside the page the element resides.

Visualizations are the most visible component. When picking a new visualization, the choices available are report and PA Widget. Note: the refresh interval option might be misleading in that it only refreshes when the landing page is in the background for that duration. The refresh does not happen while the user is on the landing page screen. Each widget has a refresh icon for updating that data if needed. As with the containers, slot and order are available and can be important at render time as the items in the same slot get ordered lowest order to highest.

Other Workspace Enhancements

Now that landing pages are covered it is time to turn our eye on a few of the other enhancements to highlight. One mention is rich text is available in journal fields but only in workspace. The activity stream in a workspace and traditional UI will render the rich text. Along with the ability to configure workspaces is the concept of multiple workspaces. Agent workspace was the first, but will not be the last. Currently, several suites are shipping a suite specific workspace, and developers can create them in New York, but only with the Guided Application Creator. Other options should be available in the future to create workspaces. Single page workspaces with breadcrumbs are available as an option over the tabbed interface option that is typical for agents to handle multitasking. The change to multiple workspaces also warrants a replacement of URL - which will now be: /now/workspace/nameofspace.

Form and List

The form and list components both received improvements. Forms added the configuration of the form header to include highlighting, icons, and clickable reference fields. Tags are editable and useable in form and lists. Related items have been added to enhance what is available on a form in addition to related lists. View rules can now direct the interface to render conditionally to provide more tailored experiences.

Lists are enhanced with declarative actions which will warrant a separate blog entry to go in-depth. Quick edit to a record is available from the list view without leaving the list. Multiple row edit, filtering, exporting, and grouping are also now accessible and familiar from the traditional list interactions. The new actions are available from the kabob menu next to the column header or field. Images below of the original list features! The multi-row edit might not be as familiar as you must select the rows and then choose Edit.

group_by

filter

export

multiedit

Over so soon

The overview here is but a taste of the improvements in Workspace. If you wish to see more information about a particular component or cover more of the areas enhanced in Workspace, please leave a comment on the blog. Your feedback to let the Developer Program know what information is relevant to you is highly valued. Enjoy the New York Early Access!


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