For organizations seeking a stable ITSM implementation, purchasing a packaged servicing solution is just the beginning. Modern enterprises abstain from rigid definitions of their capabilities. With extending opportunities, they need a diversified solution that can scale and grow as they do. Service portal helps decision-makers carve their needs out of their ITSM investments.

Service Portal is ServiceNow’s content management system that allows IT administrators to create and enhance specific features catering to their organization’s needs from the platform. The central theme of the portal is its accessibility; a novice as well as an expert can derive desired results with the toolkits in a uniform fashion.

Components of the Service Portal

Like any other web interface, Service Portal essentially comprises of some essential components that forms the framework. In this case, themes, pages and widgets can be considered as the core structures that are uniform across all the different modules.

Themes are the overall style that defines the UI of the portal and Pages, on the other hand, describes individual sections that have been created as a part of the underlying theme. While pages have the understanding of where its contents get stored, they do not have a direct relationship to retrieve the records. Widgets are the ways using which developers can bring their desired functionalities to life; usually with the help of HTML templates, CSS and JavaScript.

All the three components of the Service Portal are broadly positioned under two physical sections: a framework and a portal. The framework defines the APIs, services, directives and tools that are utilized to create the actual portal whereas the portal links pages, and the widgets within, through designated page IDs. Thus a simple search of a portal with a URL leads to index mapping of a particular widget within the page of that particular portal.

Service portal

Chart Source: ServiceNow

Service Portal Creation and Enhancement

A typical Service Portal can be brandished by a registered admin within a few clicks. The main page for portal creation brings up an array of fields- from login page creation to 404 error display- that determines the looks and functionality of the portal. Once configured, portals can be associated with a catalog for faster indexing.

Service portal creation

Image Source: ServiceNow

For the advanced users, Service Portal allows complete control over how individual pages are designed. Developers with working knowledge in Angular JS can create their own widgets right from scratch. Whether it is defining CSS in the theme, branding the pages or navigation control in the header’s main menu, the portal design offers developers, who are willing to go the extra mile, complete creative control.

To create pages in the portal, the user has to navigate to the designer option in the portal. By selecting the portal that will host the page (a page can be associated with multiple portals), the creators can add a new page or customize the existing ones. Using container (a menu item to let the users choose the layouts), the creator can define the entire structure and look of a particular page. Once the layout is done, any widget can be dragged and dropped to be part of the page.

When an available widget gets deployed in a portal, it automatically creates a widget instance with the location, properties and CSS associated to the widget stored in it. By deploying the same widget multiple times across the page, the portal maintains separate instances for each one of them. A change in widget properties affects all its instances but a modification in one particular widget instance remains isolated to that instance.

In Conclusion,

With an elaborate platform that encompasses all the needs for a successful ITSM implementation and an extensive user community, ServiceNow’s Service Portal stands tall as a choice for organizations to customize their IT operations. To know in depth on how a good service portal implementation can elevate your organization’s ITSM prowess, register to our Service Portal 360 webinar.

 

Latest posts by Bhargavi Seshadri (see all)