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Relay
Our thinking on ServiceNow, ITSM, and enterprise platform strategy. Written by the people who do the work.
An interactive ServiceNow Capability Map
Why we built an interactive ServiceNow Capability Map If you've spent as many years as we have in the ServiceNow ecosystem, you know "the football." It's the picture every customer has seen, and it has never sat still. Every implementation or sales call starts with it, and every platform release reshapes a corner of it, and the version a customer is holding in their head is almost never the version on the slide in front of them. Eventually the football got too crowded. The picture that took
AIEX/Employee Slate: Everything Knowledge26 Didn't Tell You
Ten years ago, ServiceNow announced Service Portal at Knowledge, and the conference actually told you how it worked. There were sessions on writing widgets, deep dives on the server script API, lab seats you could walk into. The API surface — sp_widget, sp_portal, $sp — wasn't massively complex, but you left a session, opened a tab, and wrote code that ran. I flew home from Vegas with the docs cached and spent the flight on my first widgets. By the time I landed I had a passable clone of the hom
What's the best ServiceNow certification to get?
Simplifying ServiceNow's certification hierarchy The Problem Every Partner Knows If you're a ServiceNow partner, you've probably had this experience: you're trying to figure out what certifications your team needs to earn a specific Product Line Achievement, or what's actually in a Suite Certification, and you end up in a maze of clicks on the Now Learning portal that never quite gives you a straight answer. "Suite Certification — CSM Professional." Great. What does that require? Click. Clic
ServiceNow & Microsoft Intune's Service Graph Connector integration returning blank Assigned To values
We recently ran into a frustrating issue with the ServiceNow Service Graph Connector for Microsoft Intune. Devices were syncing into the CMDB just fine, but the Assigned To field on cmdb_ci_handheld_computing records was coming up empty every time. The first instinct is to check the mapping. In Integration Hub ETL ($cmdb_integration_studio.do), the Assigned To field was configured correctly: a User Lookup transform using u_userdisplayname as the User Name and u_userprincipalname as the Email, o
Embedding reusable custom widgets in catalog items
Level up your request forms with advanced custom inputs and components.
You Don't Need a Spoke for That: Building a Box Integration Without Integration Hub
How we built a fully-functional Box integration using ServiceNow's native REST capabilities – no additional licensing required The Great Integration Hub Paradox ServiceNow's marketing is brilliant in its simplicity. "It just works." or "We have a spoke for that." And when they're demoing to executives, they love showing a pre-built Flow Designer action as part of a spoke. But, what happens when your customer doesn't pay for that spoke? Integration Hub's licensing model is confusing. Service
Server-Side UI Actions: Opening Links in a New Tab
Links. They go places! But what if we wanted them to go to a different tab? The Problem Pick one: current or g_navigation.openPopup ServiceNow lets us add links to forms via UI Actions, which is great! What's not so great is that one cannot easily configure these links to open in a new tab... at least when using server-side UI Actions. The current wisdom is that you need to use client-side UI Actions... function myNewTab() { g_navigation.openPopup('task_list.do?sysparm_query=ac
How to stop getting the OOB VTB Notification
Upgrade Season means a few things: Reading release notes, reviewing skipped records, and my inbox being cluttered with "VTB" Notifications What is it? It's an OOB (out-of-box) notification on the Board Member (vtb_board_member) table, that fires on insert of any record. Since a new visual task board is created for each upgrade [Skipped Records visual task board (VTB)], all admins will receive a notification for every upgrade, patches or hotfix. Is it that annoying? No, not really. It's pre
Using the new fetch API in background scripts
The fetch API was added to ServiceNow in the Yokohama release for use in background scripting and, indeed, this is reflected in the official docs: 💬You can use the Fetch API in a background script and wherever you can make HTTP calls (like a REST endpoint). - ServiceNow Zurich Documentation, September 2025 Unfortunately, the usage examples for how to use the API are (at time of writing) factually inaccurate. The examples given only work as-is within ES Modules and will fail if attempted under
When APIs Don't Exist, We Make Our Own: A Fantasy Football Data Integration Story
How reverse engineering ESPN's fantasy football API taught me that determination beats documentation every time The Problem: Custom League, Custom Problems It's August, which means one thing in my household: fantasy football draft preparation is in full swing. But here's the thing about our keeper league – it's beautifully complex and frustratingly unique. We use custom scoring rules (6-point passing TDs, no PPR), we can keep players from previous seasons, and ESPN's native app doesn't let us
How to import a file from your MID Server in 2 Flow Designer Steps!
The Challenge: When APIs Cost Too Much Picture this: you need to import data from a third-party system, but their API costs $25,000 annually. Meanwhile, they'll let you export the same data for free as a file. What option would you choose? This exact scenario recently came up with a client using Concur. While we'd normally build a sleek API integration (and trust us, we love integrations at Semaphore Partners), the astronomical API pricing forced us to get creative. The client could only drop
Prefill Catalog Items from URL [Zurich+]
Starting in Zurich, prefilling catalog items via URL parameters no longer requires a client script workaround. This is now a native feature that works seamlessly in both Service Portal and Next Experience. The ServiceNow documentation includes a subtle mention of this functionality: ❓Help requesters complete catalog item forms faster on portals and Next Experience UIs using caller-provided key-value pairs that pre-fill catalog item forms. But what does that actually mean, How do I use it, and
What can the Contextual Side Panel actually do? (in HR Agent Workspace)
Within the HR Agent Workspace, the contextual side panel can be a huge help to closing cases efficiently, and training up newer agents. However, some aspects of it can be redundant, confusing and redundant. Internally, we have a handy guide to help illustrate which pieces can do what. Although ServiceNow has some documentation on the Side Panel (seen here), it can be helpful to have everything in one spot. Let us know if there's anything we missed! Each client may not use every piece of this,
Filters, Encoded Queries, and Breadcrumbs: A ServiceNow Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," two children dropped breadcrumbs along their forest path to find their way home. While their breadcrumbs were eaten by birds (spoiler alert!), this simple concept of leaving a trail to navigate back through complex terrain has become a cornerstone of modern web interfaces. Today's digital breadcrumbs help users understand where they are and how they got there, transforming from fairy tale navigation aid to essential UX eleme
One studio to rule them all
Knowledge 2025 was full of excitement and energy and, of course, a lot of talk and what is to come. I wanted to share my favorite lab at Knowledge this year (and believe it or not it actually did not have anything to do with AI.) There is a brand new ServiceNow Studio available starting with Xanadu patch 3. One amazing feature is the ability to search scripts on the platform with ease. Yes, you heard that right, you can even specify if you want to only search script includes for example, or ma
Inline Lists and Graph Visualizations in Scheduled Platform Analytics Data Visualizations in Yokohama
For years, scheduled reports have been the standard solution for automatically exporting and sharing platform data with stakeholders on a regular cadence. One limitation with this solution that I've often received complaints about, however, has been its reliance upon a document (PDF or Excel, depending on the type of report) attached to the automated email, with no option to display the content inline. This solution gets the job done, but requires additional clicks to view the relevant content a
Adding Variables into List Reports on Platform Analytics Dashboards in ServiceNow - Workaround! - CS7468024
As ServiceNow continues to evolve its reporting capabilities, the new Platform Analytics Dashboards offer powerful ways to visualize and analyze your instance data. While these dashboards bring numerous benefits to the table, there are still a few quirks that administrators and developers should be aware of. The Promise of Platform Analytics The new Platform Analytics Dashboards represent a significant step forward in ServiceNow reporting capabilities. They offer: * Improved performance fo
ServiceNow: Beautiful JSON in the Activity Log
Have you ever needed to display a JSON object in a ServiceNow comment or work note? Maybe an integration has failed and we need to convey failure information to a technician. Easy peasy, let's just do something like current.work_notes = JSON.stringify(myData); right? Our Example JSON Object {"id":"card-123","title":"Getting Started with ServiceNow","description":"Learn the basics of ServiceNow platform and how to create your first application","category":"education","tags":["servicen
Revolutionizing Work Management at Lumon Industries with ServiceNow
When Lumon Industries approached Semaphore Partners about implementing ServiceNow, we knew we were in for a unique challenge. The company's innovative workplace management system and distinct departmental structure required a sophisticated approach to service management and workflow automation. The Challenge Lumon Industries, known for its groundbreaking work in data refinement, operates with a distinctive organizational structure where departments are strictly segregated. Their "severed" emp
Streamlining Employee Onboarding: Integrating ServiceNow with Greenhouse Recruiting
Integrating ServiceNow with Greenhouse streamlined tracking new hires, replacing error-prone spreadsheets. By leveraging the API, we eliminated duplicate entries, automated onboarding tasks, and delivered detailed reports, empowering teams to focus on welcoming new employees efficiently.
Workspace: Field Decorators open a URL
Creating a way to deep link to an external system is a great for avoiding lengthy & unnecessary integrations. Providing agents a way to get directly into a system without multiple clicks can be a huge time saver. Prior to Workspace, adding a Field Decorator was accomplished by creating a UI Macro. To implement a UI macro a few steps were needed to getting your decorator on a form, including writing code. Similarly, if you are using one of the Baseline Workspaces (SOW, ITAM, CSM/FSM, HR) or a c
Integrating UKG With ServiceNow to Supplement Organizational Data
Introduction Many organizations leverage Active Directory for good reason—it serves as an excellent central repository for network resources like users, groups, and computers. This data can be imported into ServiceNow, providing visibility into both users as well as Active Directory groups and group memberships. However, what about valuable data that exists outside Active Directory, such as UKG Human Resource information? UKG stores essential data about users, locations, organizations, and com
Orphan Companies with strange characters being created from SCCM Service Graph Connector (Mojibake)
Overview A client was experiencing a strange issue. Dozens and dozens of companies were being created with bogus Chinese, Japanese and Burmese characters following an otherwise normal name. To make matters worse, these companies didn’t have any associated records with them. Was it foreign involvement? Fortunately, not. What do the characters mean? Apparently, it’s called Mojibake. I can try to paraphrase, but anything I’ll write would just be regurgitated from wikipedia anyways: https://en.w
Integrating ServiceNow with SAP (S4 Hana Cloud)
If you don't think your client has SAP, think again. The German behemoth boasts that over 400,000 companies use its software. Bill McDermott, the current CEO of ServiceNow, served as SAP's very first American CEO up through 2019, when he left for ServiceNow. With such a storied background, it should be little surprise that business clients use SAP - quite possibly even including your own company! SAP is everywhere, so let's dive into why it's so important... The core driver behind SAP's dominan
UI Action Client/Server Interactions (without AJAX!)
Do you hate AJAX Script Includes with a fiery passion? I do – they're ugly, error-prone, and full of annoying boilerplate! I consider the unfortunate reliance upon AJAX Script Includes within UI Actions to be one of ServiceNow's foundational sins. It simply should not be this hard to achieve basic user interactions when using perhaps the premiere design verb available to us within ServiceNow. Frequently stumped by this issue, we've poured much time and thought into existing solutions and have c
Keeping tabs on your MID Server
The ServiceNow MID Server is an integral part of a successful deployment, and its features and functionality have grown significantly over the years. It’s a crucial component to keep up and running. Many customers rely on the MID Server for integrations, Discovery, Service Mapping, Cloud Management, Event Management, Operational Intelligence, Log Ingestion, and more. Therefore, it's essential that your MID Servers stay operational to prevent disruptions to the critical business processes that de
ServiceNow: Arrow Functions (and more) Everywhere!
Did you know? Starting in the Washington release, ServiceNow's Rhino engine now natively supports JavaScript Arrow Functions! It works everywhere server-side code runs. Even in the Global scope without using the new "Turn on ECMAScript 2021 (ES12) mode" button. How can this be?? Those of you following recent ServiceNow releases have probably already (correctly) intuited that this new development must be somehow related to the recent introduction of the new "ES12" JavaScript Mode. This is tru
ServiceNow's Key Management Framework - Resource Exchange Requests explained
Again, I found myself confused at some of the documentation that ServiceNow had provided. Am I that dumb? Is it that bad? Honestly, probably a little bit of both. While previously it was regarding the Oracle Cloud HCM - ServiceNow Integration Hub Spoke, this time it was the Key Management Framework. A customer had issues authenticating with their other tools after a clone down process, and we were on the hook to figure it out. ServiceNow Support had suggested running a Resource Exchange Request
Oracle Cloud HCM - ServiceNow Integration Hub Spoke
The words of doom: "No, we should be all set. There's a spoke for that" The problem Sometimes it is as easy as plugging in credentials, sometimes it's not. This time it was not. ServiceNow has great documentation, especially compared to other solutions. It's part of what makes them the king. But that's also what makes it so frustrating when they don't have documentation, or their documentation is missing a step. That's what made this integration so hard. The client needed to integrate with O
Reporting on Field Usage
Often times on the ServiceNow platform, you want to look at the use of columns on a table. While you could easily build a report, that presents a challenge because you want to slice across all of the fields on a table rather than looking at a distinct set of values across one field on the table. I am sure you have your own reasons for this type of report, but here are some potential uses: 1. Platform Hygiene 2. Removing fields with little adoption / use 3. Removing tables with little adopti
Read Time for Knowledge
If you frequent medium.com, wsj.com, or nytimes.com typically you are provided a "time to read" at the top of the article. In today’s busy world, it’s helpful to know if you’ve just got a few minutes to spare on your reading. This got me thinking: Why can't we have something similar for Knowledge content in Service Portal/Employee Center? The calculation is actually pretty simple. Most of these sites utilize the adult average word per minutes to calculate the read time. I decided to whip togeth
Navigating by URL
Navigate by URL, including Service Portal, and Workspaces
Related List Queries
A way to easily join a related table into an existing query
Notification Helper
Introduction Out of box, there’s 17 different notifications for the incident table. What are they for? What do they look like? Who do they go to? When do they go out? Do you want to open all 17 pages and preview them one by one in 17 different tabs? Probably not! This helper will show you all of them on one page so you can review them to ensure you have consistent content, triggers, links for all of your notifications. What does it do? * Previews multiple notifications from one page What
One Click Record Producer Creation
Did you know you could create a record producer with a few clicks without having to redefine variables that already exist on a table? I have a tip that most people don't know about. Often times you have an existing data structure that you just want to enable via the Service Catalog/Service Portal. It's pretty time consuming to have to lookup the column names and create all of the variables manually. Here is how you do it: 1. Visit the table definition via Left Nav. (System Definition > Tab
The KB-Pocalypse is upon us!
On January 1, 2020 a lot of people will wake up with a headache. While some will be due to the previous night's activities, others will be due to a disappearing Knowledge Base, and a lack of systematic delegation.
Leveraging Now Experience UI Components
With the Orlando release of ServiceNow, it's now possible to create components within Agent Workspace. It seems that per the documentation these components can be used in 3 places: 1. Agent Workspace Modals 2. Agent Workspace Landing Pages via UI Builder 3. Agent Workspace Record views Though with number 3 the documentation doesn't specifically go into much detail about using components within record views. It specifically says, "You can add custom or standard components to the component ar
ServiceNow and Siri Shortcuts app
As a huge Apple fan, I eagerly awaited the launch of iOS 12. With iOS 12, Apple has launched the Siri Shortcuts app which allows anyone to create a “Shortcut”: a series of steps that can interact with third party applications, the iOS device, and Siri. As soon as I got my hands on the app, I saw quite a number of similarities between Shortcuts and ServiceNow’s Flow Designer. Steps within Shortcuts can be sequenced and they have inputs and outputs (“Magic Variables”) similar to “Data Pills” with
Scoped APIs are not Global enough
Scoped apps were first introduced in the Fuji release. This was a really exciting time for ServiceNow partners, developers, and the community. For partners, an app store within the ServiceNow ecosystem was a new business model. For developers and admins, there was finally a way to get away from update sets and there were lots of new features to play with. For just about everyone, there was a new way to encapsulate or “sandbox” business logic and data. This idea was and still is welcomed by me; I