Grouping Favorites

[Mark Roethof]

Hi there,

When working with Favorites, ever wondered if it would be possible to group them? Or might you have noticed that you could add an Application Menu to your Favorites and that it actually is presented as a group, though how?

Out-of-the-box visually you don't see a possibility for the grouping of Favorites, though actually it's fairly easy to realize!

Structure

When talking about Favorites, technically you are talking about the Bookmarks table [sys_ui_bookmark]. This is also answered on lot's of Community topics, asking for how to export Favorites. Though actually, this is not all! There's also a Bookmark Group table [sys_ui_bookmark_group]!

Out-of-the-box

Bookmark Group

As mentioned, out-of-the-box visually we don't see possibilities to group Favorites. Though how does for example an added Application Menu to your Favorites then work? Knowing the above-mentioned structure, you would probably already guess: the Bookmark Group table is the key here.

Upon creating a new Bookmark Group record, you don't really see anything useful. It's just a record, you can add a Color, Title, Order, etcetera. Though nothing looking like relating the Bookmark Group to something.

Bookmark

So let's have a look at the Bookmarks table then. Upon creating a new Bookmark record, you don't see anything useful. Like the Bookmap Group, it's just a record, you can add Title, URL, etcetera. Though nothing looking like relating the Bookmark to something.

Bookmark->Group

Bookmark Group

The out-of-the-box look of the forms doesn't help us. Though let's have a look at the available Related Lists… There's a Related List Bookmark->Group available.

After adding the Related List, on existing Bookmark Group records, the form layout would now display a Related List Bookmarks. Out-of-the-box also with the New UI Action.

Bookmark

The out-of-the-box look of the forms doesn't help us. Though knowing that the Bookmark Group table has a Related List Bookmark->Group available, this indicated that there should be a Reference field on the Bookmark table which references the Bookmark Group table. Let's have a look at the available Fields… There's a field Group available which indeed references the Bookmark Group table.

Let's Group

Now let's Group some Favorites! On my Personal Developer Instance, I've got two (2) Favorites, which I would like to Group.

Adding a Bookmark Group and relating the Bookmark(s) can be done from both the Bookmark Group as the Bookmark. In this example, our Bookmark is the starting point.

Open one of the existing Bookmark records:
> On the Group field do a Lookup Using Lis
> The Bookmark Groups list would open in a Pop-up
> Click the New UI Action
> Add a new Bookmark Group
> Save/Update the Bookmark record

Open the other existing Bookmark record:
> On the Group field, select the just created Group
> Notice only Sys Id's are displayed, this is because out-of-the-box the Bookmark Group table hasn't got a Display Value set
> Select the Group and Save/Update the Bookmark record

Result

Upon browser refresh, my Favorites would now look like:

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

👍	If this post helped you in any way, I would appreciate it if you hit bookmark or mark it as helpful. Interested in more articles, blogs, videos, and Share projects on User Interface I published? - User Interface

Kind regards,
Mark
2020 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020 ServiceNow Developer MVP

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LinkedIn

[PavanReddy1]

This is really helpful. Thank you very much for the article.

[Hardik Panchal]

Hello Mark,

I've followed your instructions and it worked very well for me.

Just got stuck in one thing and I've posted a question for that in community.

Can you please check it on the below url and give some advise.

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=c59864abdbf3ac106064eeb5ca961921

Thanks.

[suewolfe]

I'm finding that the color on the group is ignored and the image selection on the individual bookmarks are ignored, so my bookmarks have no color and no default icon. If I select a specific icon (image), that doesn't show either.

[Mark Roethof]

No issues here.
Can you share detailed steps to reproduce?

Kind regards,
Mark

[Amanda Grugan]

I've noticed the same thing with the bookmark group color. As shown in your example, Mark, you set Color for the bookmark group you created (Bookmark folder) to purple. However, in your screenshot you'll see that the font color for that bookmark group name is not purple. Am I missing what the intent of that field is for perhaps? If so, where would the purple color come into play? Thank you in advance!

Regards,
Manda

[Magda13]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing this wonderful solution. 

Have you tried implementing this on San Diego, with the new Polaris UI enabled? We noticed that when the new UI is activated, the newly created folders and bookmarks added to these folders appear in the nagivation after a few minutes delay, which is not ideal. 

Have you encountered this issue?

Thank you in advance.

[Anish Reghu]

Hey thanks Mark,

I had already tried this. I was revisiting your article to check if I did something wrong.

On my PDI, I have the bookmarks and the groups created, as well as grouping done at the backend via the Group field, but still my login shows all my favorites ungrouped.

What could be the reason or where do I need to check additionally to troubleshoot?

Tried logging out and logging in as well to refresh the instance, no go!

Regards,

Anish

[Mark Roethof]

No issues here.

Kind regards,
Mark

[Mark Roethof]

Can you share some more details of how your Favorites and Groups look like?

Kind regards,
Mark