2.2.2. Personalizing/Customizing the Instance

💡 First Principle: Empowering users with personalized views and providing administrators with controlled customization options enhances usability and productivity, while balancing flexibility with adherence to "Configuration over Customization."

Scenario: A user complains that their Incident list shows too many irrelevant columns, while a manager wants a specific field to be mandatory on a form for all users. You need to address both needs.

ServiceNow offers various ways to tailor the instance experience for both individual users and the organization as a whole. The fundamental 'why' of personalization and customization is to optimize the user interface and platform behavior to best suit specific roles, departmental needs, and individual preferences, thereby improving efficiency and adoption. However, a key distinction must be made between personalization (user-driven, low impact) and customization (admin-driven, higher impact).

Key areas of personalization and customization:

• User Personalization:

  • List Layouts: Users can reorder, add, or remove columns in lists, and apply filters to create custom views. These changes are saved per user.
  • Form Layouts (User-specific): Users can sometimes personalize the order of fields on a form (though this is less common than admin-controlled layouts).
  • Homepage/Dashboard Personalization: Users can add, remove, and rearrange widgets on their homepages or dashboards.
  • Favorites: Users can create shortcuts to records, modules, or reports for quick access in the Application Navigator.
  • Why it's important: Empowers individual users to optimize their own workspace without impacting others or requiring administrator intervention. These changes are typically stored in user preferences.

• Administrator Customization/Configuration (System-wide):

  • Form Layout & View: Administrators can define the default layout of a form for specific views (e.g., "Default view," "Self-Service view") for all users. This controls which fields appear and their order.
  • List Layout & Filters (Global): Administrators can define default list layouts and saved filters for specific tables or roles.
  • UI Policies: Used to dynamically change form fields (make mandatory, visible, read-only) based on conditions, improving data entry and user experience.
  • Client Scripts: Used for front-end validation, dynamic UI changes, and client-side calculations on forms.
  • System Properties: Global settings that control various aspects of instance behavior.
  • Themes: Applying custom branding (logos, colors) to align with organizational identity.
  • Why it's important: Ensures a consistent, optimized experience for groups of users, streamlines data collection, and enforces business rules at the UI level.

As an administrator, you'll manage customizations that affect all users (e.g., form layouts) while also guiding users on how to personalize their own experience. Balancing these aspects, always favoring configuration over heavy customization, is crucial for maintaining a healthy, usable, and easily upgradeable instance.

💡 Tip: When a user reports a UI issue or requests a form change, first distinguish if it's a personalization issue (they can fix it themselves) or a system-wide customization issue (requires admin intervention). Guide users towards self-service personalization where appropriate to reduce your workload.

⚠️ Common Pitfall: Confusing user personalization with system-wide customization. Changes made by a user to their list layout only affect them, while changes to a form layout by an administrator affect all users (or a specific view).

Key Trade-Offs:

• User Flexibility vs. System Consistency: Allowing extensive user personalization can lead to a less consistent user experience across the organization, while strict standardization might limit individual productivity.

Reflection Question: How does distinguishing between "personalization" and "customization" help an administrator efficiently address user requests while maintaining the overall integrity and manageability of the ServiceNow instance?