Portal Experience FAQs

[Ashley Snyder]

 Center of Excellence / Portal Experience / Portal Experience FAQ

1. Is Service Portal being deprecated?

Per the Employee Center FAQ: 

No, Service Portal is not currently being deprecated, as there are many customers who are currently heavily invested in it.

Employee Center (built on the Service Portal technology stack) is our recommended solution for portals to keep employees engaged, productive, informed, and to easily request the services and resources they need. Employee Center was launched in Rome and will see ongoing investments and a robust roadmap with quarterly releases for the foreseeable future. 

Employee Center is based on AngularJS as it is the same tech stack as Service Portal. ServiceNow will continue to provide support and security updates for AngularJS. Note that we will be making fixes directly in Service Portal code base. We will not be maintaining an open-source version of Angular JS library nor any other 3rd party library in the ecosystem.

See this community article for FAQ on Employee Center.

As of the San Diego release it is not suggested to create enterprise portals using UI Builder or App Engine Studio Portal Experience templates. Portal Experiences are suggested to be used as a self-service user interface for custom applications but do not replace Service Portal or Employee Center at this time.

2. Can UI Builder be used on Service Portal or Employee Center?

No, UI builder cannot be used to design Service Portal or Employee Center. Customers need to Service Portal designer to make any desired UI changes to Service Portal or Employee Center.

3. What will happen to Service Portal or Employee Center if I turn on Next Experience UI?

Next Experience UI will not impact Service Portal or Employee Center. Customers should perform upgrade validation testing as usual. The Next Experience UI as of the San Diego release is focused on improving experiences for Service Delivery Teams (Agents, Fulfillers) - the users who spend most of their working day in the Now Platform.

We are still defining the approach and time frame for delivering employee portals on Next Experience. We expect to support hybrid deployments - with a mix of Next Experience and Service Portal features to enable phased transitions of Service Portal based employee portals to Next Experience. We will share more details once the approach and time frames for Next Experience employee portals are defined.

4. Can I create a Portal in App Engine Studio or Studio and use it in place of a Service Portal or Employee Center?

As of the San Diego release it is not suggested to create enterprise portals using UI Builder or App Engine Studio Portal Experience templates. Portal Experiences are suggested to be used as a self-service user interface for custom applications but do not replace Service Portal or Employee Center at this time.

5. What do I use the Portal App Shell or Portal Starter Experiences for?

A starter portal is a site where users inside of your organization can find information, submit requests, and complete business tasks. 

6. What's included with App Engine Studio Starter Portal Experiences?

App Engine Studio starter portal experiences include the following default pages that can be used as-is or edited to suit your business needs:

• Article page
• Catalog item page
• Landing page
• Login
• Order Success
• Record page (request)
• Record page (task)
• Search page
• Settings page
• Task approved
• Task rejected

7. Are the above pages also included with the Portal App Shell?

No, the portal app shell does not ship with any pre-configured default pages, only the header and footer elements and is a reference implementation of how the menu, utilities, logo, and login are configured for a portal experience.

8. Where can I find examples of how I can use starter portals?

App Engine Studio includes a template library over 7 different applications which include workspace and/or portal experiences you can use for reference in a sub-production environment.

9. Does Theme Builder work with Service Portal or Next Experience Portal Experiences?

Currently Theme Builder supports creating a theme for your instance, which is also used by your workspaces. Theme Builder does not support Angular Service Portals, and it currently doesn't work for Next Experience Portal Experiences.

10. What if I think I have found a bug or defect with the Portal App Shell, App Engine Studio, or a starter portal experience?

If you believe you have a defect with the Portal App Shell, App Engine Studio, or a starter portal experience, log a case using the Now Support portal.

11. There is functionality missing that I would like in Portal App Shell, App Engine Studio, or a starter portal experience, where can I communicate this?

For functionality you wish to be implemented, log an idea on our Idea portal.

[bvlo]

This is great, wish I had found it sooner. 

[SB-SatoshiAbe]

If I want to offer a portal for our customers in the future with ServiceNow, would it be better to use App Engine Studio or UI Builder rather than an AngularJS based mechanism?

It is not recommended to use App Engine Studio or UI Builder for enterprise portals, but can you give me specific reasons why it is not recommended?

Also, will that be resolved in the near future?

Thank you.