Structure

Service Portals are made up of navigation pages, and widget instances. Each out-of-the box portal introduces product-specific layouts, unique widgets, and additional capabilities to meet its unique needs.

Service portal navigation diagram

Service Portal navigation

Portal navigation allows users to navigate to a series of predefined pages and explore related service catalogs and knowledge bases. The main navigation (1) provides access to search, user profile, open items, and anything else the admin configures. The secondary navigation (2) is connected to the taxonomy(ies) assigned to the portal; this allows users to navigate to topic pages and find related catalog items and knowledge articles.


Page layouts

Individual pages can define unique layouts based on a 12-column-vertical grid. On each page, you can use containers to define a grid specification with responsive parameters for various screen sizes. Each container can contain one or more widgets, as well as additional containers to define more specific layouts.


Widgets

Service Portal widgets are reusable components, similar to the components used by other ServiceNow app frameworks, that allow you to easily add functionality to your portal experience. ServiceNow products provide a library of widgets for you to reuse and extend. The platform also provides a builder environment to create your own widgets.