Enable/Disable Next Experience UI on user level (San Diego)

Mark Roethof · ‎02-13-2022

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Hi there,

Seen the new Next Experience UI yet? Enabling it on an upgraded San Diego instance only concerns changing the value of System Property "glide.ui.polaris.experience", while on new/zBooted San Diego instances Next Experience is automatically active. Automatically active, for all users. Though what if you are after making the Next Experience available for some users, and for some users not? For UI16/UI15 that was also possible, would it be also possible for Next Experience?

System Property "glide.ui.polaris.experience"

"Enables Unified Navigation experience on platform". Clear, the System Property which basically enables/disables Next Experience on an instance.

User Preference "glide.ui.polaris.use"

Just browsing through a San Diego instance with Next Experience active, there doesn't seem to be an option to enable/disable Next Experience on the user level or it's well hidden. The ServiceNow Product Documentation also doesn't mention anything about this. Turning a San Diego instance inside out, I did notice some new User Preferences, one of them:

Searching again on the ServiceNow Product Documentation, "glide.ui.polaris.use" is mentioned though as System Property. Clearly this is incorrect. The description mentioned is "Toggles Next Experience for a specific user." That sounds interesting!

Updating the value of User Preference "glide.ui.polaris.use" which has System checked, to false, and logout/login... UI16 is active! Because this is a User Preference with System checked, let's duplicate this User Preference, uncheck System, and add our own user:

Logout/login... Next Experience is active! Impersonating a random user who can access the Platform UI... UI16 is active!

So that's it for making Next Experience active on a user level. Obviously System Property "glide.ui.polaris.experience" does need to be active for this. Though just change the value of User Preference "glide.ui.polaris.use" which has System checked to false, and add User Preferences for individual users.

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And that's it. Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!

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Kind regards,

Mark Roethof

ServiceNow Technical Platform Architect @ Eraneous

3x ServiceNow Developer MVP

3x ServiceNow Community MVP

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Roshan Rao · ‎03-03-2022

Mark - Thanks for posting this.

All - I have created an application that has some utilities to help with controlled rollout of Next Experience.

Here is the link to the project on the Developer Share site: https://developer.servicenow.com/connect.do#!/share/contents/2262252_rollout_next_experience

v/r

Brad Bowman · ‎04-01-2022

Awesome as usual. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this!

Snowman · ‎04-29-2022

Tried in my personal DEV instance and didn't work.

Updated glide.ui.polaris.use

Add user

Logged off/on.

eddie17 · ‎05-13-2022

For some reason I do not have that property (glide.ui.polaris.use), do you know why it would not be there?

Harish malipedu · ‎05-19-2022

Hi Mark,

Thanks for posting this!.

Mike322 · ‎05-25-2022

Hi Mark,

Thank you for the information!

However when I do this, I login again and I'm still send to the Unified Homepage (now/nav/ui/home in the URL) but where I can't do anything from.

I played around with my browser and when I timed it so that after the navigator loads, I have a frame or 2 to press the 'Stop' button in my browser. When timed correctly, I can use the classic UI again. But when I'm to early, the navigator doesn't respond (the loading process is cut short) and when I'm to late, I still get redirected to the dysfunctional Unified Homepage.

It sometimes takes a couple of tries but I can get it to work eventually.

But is there a better way? And with better way I mean actually using the classic UI without having to stop my browser. Using the 'Next Experience' is not better in MY experience.

Kind regards,

Mike

Vishnu_X95 · ‎06-06-2022

Hi Mark,

Thankyou for the Info. Works perfectly.

But, if you can see in the User preferences -> glide.ui.polaris.use -> It looks like only we can only apply this to one single user? Is there a list collector option where multiple users can be added?

Mark Roethof · ‎06-06-2022

That's not how User Preferences work.

Anyway, there's an User Preference for "glide.ui.polaris.use" which has system checked. This will cause that it's activated for all users. Then for individual users you could deactivate this.
(or turn the situation up side down, having the system user preference false and having for specific users a user preference with true).

Kind regards,
Mark

ctsmith · ‎06-30-2022

I can't take credit for this find, but is this the route to go for setting it at individual level? https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1117832

Got the info from this thread: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=7d41b6f61bb6c15098a1ece6b04bcb70

Thanks @Mark Roethof and @Maik Skoddow for looking into this! And howdy @Brad Bowman!

Ashley · ‎07-06-2022

Great find, much nicer way of doing it

Kind Regards

Ashley

tsutherland · ‎07-11-2022

I was having a very similar problem and submitted a HI ticket. The issue was the system property "glide.login.home" needed to be set to "home_splash.do?sysparm_direct=true." Hope this helps you, or someone else who is experiencing that issue.

danno928 · ‎07-13-2022

Very nice....

mayorka · ‎07-13-2022

Thanks for the information that what i like about this group as usual on top.

Tutuapp

Ashwini Gunjal · ‎08-03-2022

Awesome!!! it works for me

Daileena1 · ‎08-10-2022

Hello; In our Sandiego patch 6 instance, "glide.ui.polaris.experience" is set false, however user on first login get the guided tour (not sure if thats the correct term)...is there way to disable this and turn it on when we plan to turn on next genration ui.

Attached is a screen that user are taken on first login after San deigo upgarde.

Mark Roethof · ‎08-10-2022

Hi there,

You could turn that off by applying a User Preference with system checked. That this will not be shown for any user upon first login.
- 2022-04-12 Disable modals shown on login after San Diego upgrade

Kind regards,
Mark

renna808 · ‎08-11-2022

Hi Daileena,

To suppress the tour of the Next Experience, set the default overview_help.visited.SanDiego user preference to true.

When you want to enable the tour, you can set this value back to false.

ytrottier · ‎09-05-2022

Hi Mark.

Looking at a Youtube video about this, I saw that there is another undocumented system property that actually allows easier control of this new UI : glide.ui.polaris.on_off_user_pref_enabled.

You can see an example at teh end of this video starting at minute 14 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIOyt2rbQHo

This is one more detail to add to your nice summary above, which is also already related to Christopher Smith comment above.

Thanks.

bhuvana · ‎10-03-2022

Hi @Mark Roethof ,

How can we give enable 'Next Experience' only to specific roles OR Company level.

whatever there on the article read and write roles in system property not working for me. is there anything that i missed.

Thanks you in Advance,

Bhuvana.

Theresa Hallenb · ‎12-15-2022

I don't like the Next experience UI. It's horrible. 😞 Please add the scope and update set pickers back to the main banner (not obfuscated behind that globe).

Mike Strik · ‎12-15-2022

@Theresa Hallenb you can enable this with SNUtils Plugin.

Nick Zitzer1 · ‎01-09-2023

Because this link still comes up as number one on google search results, this knowledge article includes all the necessary information:

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1113554

SeanM1 · ‎01-09-2023

Disabling Next Experience to use Connect in Classic UI16:

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1113554

Option 2 in article if you want to give the functionality to nominated users.

One of my users has MS and 'voice to text' doesn't work with Next Experience, so I needed to get him back to the Classic UI16 where it did work.

ericgilmore · ‎04-13-2023

Here's a wrinkle for you.

I implemented this in my Dev & Test instances;

System Property: glide.ui.polaris.experience | true
User Preference: glide.ui.polaris.use (System checked, No user specified) | false

I then copied glide.ui.polaris.use, unchecked System, and added my account to the User field.

What I wanted was to enable NextExpUI for myself and leave it disabled for everyone else. I did this in my Dev & Test instances.

The results?

- Dev works as expected. If I impersonate anyone else, their environment looks like UI16, cool.

- Test no sir, not working. If I impersonate anyone else, their environment looks like the Next Experience.

What gives? Has anyone else run into this?

**UPDATE**

Solved: Enable/Disable Next Experience UI (Tokyo) oddness - ServiceNow Community

I guess it was just gremlins.

Rajini2 · ‎06-29-2023

Thank you so much. This was very useful.

John Johnson · ‎02-26-2024

@eddie17

it is NOT a system property... rather a User Preference.

in the filter navigator, search for user preference..... search there