Getting started with forms

This video demonstrates the features and functions of forms in the ServiceNow
user interface, including form elements and form header options.

Important Information
A form displays information from one record in a data table. For example, here’s
Joe Employee’s record from the User table.
Forms are displayed in the content frame. Depending on your roles in the
system, you can use forms to create, view, or modify a specific record in a data
table, such as Joe’s user record.

Here are additional examples of forms: Incident, Change, and Knowledge.

Forms in your instance may appear different from these.

We’ll use the incident form to demonstrate basic form elements.

We’re logged in as a user with the itil role, which is required for some actions
shown here.
We can access the form by opening an existing record…
…Or by creating a new record.

Form fields
Forms contain fields to collect and display data.
These are the fields on the main part of the Incident form. Each field represents
an individual item of data on one incident record. The system has auto-filled
some of the fields in this record.

The red asterisk identifies required fields.

Some forms also have sections with additional fields.

Here, sections are displayed in tabs.

You can enable or disable form tabs in the System Settings.

© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
…And click these icons to collapse or expand form sections when tabbed forms
are disabled.

But we’ll leave tabbed forms enabled.

There are many field types that could appear on a form. See the product docs
for a complete list.

Here are just a few examples: string fields…

…where users enter plain text…

…choice fields…

…where users select from a list of choices…

…Boolean true-false fields—like this check box to indicate whether or not a draft
knowledge article is to be created from this record when the incident is closed…

…and reference fields, where users enter or select a value from a related table.
For example, the Caller field must contain a value from the User table.
If we enter a value that doesn’t exist on that table, the field turns pink and an
error message is displayed.

It may be easier to enter part of the name and select the related record from a
list…

…Or use the lookup icon to browse through available values or perform a
search.
Our search can include wildcards.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
Clicking the reference icon displays a preview of the related record…

…And from here, we can open the user record.

A shaded field means we can’t change the value. For example, Number is
assigned by the system….

…And Priority is calculated from the Impact and Urgency values.

We’ll discuss Related Search Results later.

List fields, like this one, are reference fields that accept multiple references
rather than just one—like the Caller field we showed earlier.
Let’s add Fred to the watch list so that he gets notified when this record is
updated.

And we’ll add our logged-in user as well.

Additional comments and Work notes are both Journal fields, where we provide
notes on a record, viewable by different users.

Comments are visible by all users…

…whereas Work notes are viewable only by users with the itil role.

Some fields are dependent on others. For example, the On hold reason field isn’t
displayed unless the State value is On Hold.

When we set the State back to New, the On Hold field is hidden.

We’ll go ahead and complete this form.

Saving a record

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
There are several ways to save a record.
Clicking the form context menu—or right-clicking the form header—allows you
to save the record and keep it open.

But we’ll click Submit to save and close it.

After the record is saved, a new option, Copy Incident, appears on the form
context menu. This creates an exact copy of the record with a new record
number, which you can then save or submit.

This is a handy way to create multiple records with many fields already filled in.
You can then change the fields where the new record differs from the original.

Some records—for example, surveys and catalog items—allow you to copy

records through Insert and Insert and Stay. Check for these options on the form
context menu if you want to create a copy of the current record.
Insert copies the record and redisplays the list. Insert and Stay copies the record
and keeps it open so that you can work on the new copy immediately.

Related Lists
Many forms contain one or more related lists, which display records in other
tables that have relationships to the current record.

Related lists don’t appear until the form has been submitted and the new
record created.

Here, we find the Task SLAs list.

When there are more than one related list, as in this change form…

…They are displayed according to the Tabbed forms system setting we showed
earlier, which also applies to related lists.

Also, if a form contains many related lists or there are many records in the
related lists, the form may load slowly. You can improve form response times by
changing this setting.
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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
Form views
A form usually displays only a subset of the fields on the underlying table. And
users with the personalize role can create views to specify which fields on the
form are visible to which users.

Users with the view_changer role can switch their form view. This doesn’t affect
the views of other users.
Right now, we’re looking at the default view.

Here are the form views available to the logged-in user.

Let’s switch to Self Service.

The currently displayed view, if not the default view, is reflected at the top of the
form.

Let’s go back to the default view.

Personalizing forms
When the form personalization feature is activated, users with the itil or
personalize_form role can personalize which fields appear on a specific form
view according to their individual preferences. These changes don’t affect
other users.
Only the fields that the form is configured to display are available. Currently,
they’re all selected.

Check boxes that are shaded and selected indicates those fields cannot be
hidden because they’re required or are already hidden by UI policies or client
scripts.
For example, Caller is a required field, and as we saw earlier, On hold reason is
hidden unless the State is On hold.

We can hide fields on the form by clearing their check boxes in this list…
…or by clicking the hide field icon.

The cleared check box indicates that these items are hidden.
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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
Clicking outside the Personalize Form menu saves our changes and closes the
menu.

To show a hidden field, we select its check box.

Clicking Reset restores the default form view.

Activity stream
Now we’re logged in as the caller, Marcie Shulz. Here, we get a different view of
that same incident form than we did when logged in as Beth, who had the ITIL
role.
This is the Self-Service view. We don’t have the option to change views.

Forms configured with the activity formatter display a stream of activities

associated with the record.
Clicking the Go To Activity Stream icon scrolls the page to the beginning of the
stream.

A count of activities is displayed here…

…and each activity is stamped with the activity type, date, and time.

Managing attachments
We see Beth’s request and capture a screen showing the error message.

To attach it, we click the attachments icon, and then select and open the file.

Or, we could drag and drop a file from our local file manager or desktop into
the form header.

File attachments are documented in the activity stream.

To delete an attachment, we click the attachments icon, select the

attachments to delete, and then click Remove.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
We can also rename an attachment here.

Reloading the form displays the updated activity stream.

Formatters
A formatter is a form element used to display information that is not a field in the
record.
For example, the activity stream is a formatter.

And so is Related Search Results.

Here, the Incident form displays contextual search results based on text entered
in the Short Description field. These include knowledge articles, pinned articles,
and community content.

In this case, logged-in as a customer service agent, we find a promising

knowledge article that may address Marcie’s issue.
We preview it and then attach it to the incident.

The activity formatter provides an easy way to track items not saved with a field
in the record, for example, journal fields like additional comments, or
attachments.

We can filter the content that appears on the activity formatter by selecting
and clearing these check boxes.

Following a record
Following a record adds the logged-in user to the activity stream conversation in
Connect and sends notification of any new comments or work notes.

This badge means we’ve received a Connect notification.

Clicking it opens the Connect sidebar….

…And clicking a conversation here opens it in the Connect mini window.
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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
After reviewing the latest activity, we close the Connect mini window and the
Connect sidebar.

If we no longer want to receive notifications, we just stop following the record.

Other form header options

Additional options are available on the form header. These vary, depending on
the roles of the logged-in user.

For example, the form context menu lists actions.

And more options are available here.

These buttons vary depending on your role, the form you’re viewing, and other
factors, such as the State.

When making changes to a record, click Update to save the changes and close
the record.

In our case, the attached KB article solved our issue, so we’ll resolve the
incident.

And now we see that with the record in Resolved state, the buttons have
changed.

These icons allow us to display the previous or next record in the list—just those
that we have permission to view.

For more information, please see our product documentation, knowledge base,
or podcast. Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.