Navigating the platform
Quick answer
Move around a ServiceNow instance with confidence: the unified navigation menu, favorites, tabbed browsing, impersonation and the settings that trip up new admins.
Key takeaways
- Filter navigator search matches module titles, so name modules the way your users speak
- Favorites are per user, so document a starting set for new joiners rather than assuming they will find them
- Impersonate before you promise a stakeholder that a permission change worked
- History is the fastest recovery path after an accidental tab close
The unified navigation menu
Next Experience replaced the old left frame with a collapsible menu that has three tabs: All, Favorites and History. All is the full application menu, Favorites holds anything you have starred, and History keeps your last visited records so you can pick up where you left off after a meeting.
- Type in the filter box to jump straight to a module, for example typing incident surfaces every incident module you have access to
- Drag any module or list view into Favorites and rename it to something your team recognises
- The History tab is per user and survives logout, which makes it the quickest way back to a record you forgot to bookmark
Address bar shortcuts every admin uses
Most of your day is faster from the address bar than from the menu. These work on any instance.
incident.listopens the incident listincident.do?sys_id=-1opens a blank incident formsys_user_group.listjumps to groups without hunting through User Administration/nav_to.do?uri=sys_script_list.doopens a list inside the frame when you are sent a raw link
Impersonation and why you should use it daily
Impersonate a user from the profile menu before you sign off any change to roles, ACLs or catalog visibility. What an admin sees is never proof of what an ITIL user or a self service user sees. Impersonation logs the session, so it is auditable, and ending it returns you to your own session without a re-login.
Settings that save time
Open the gear icon and set these once per instance.
- Turn on Compact mode if you work in long lists all day
- Set your timezone so scheduled job times and SLA clocks read correctly
- Enable the developer flags (JavaScript log and field watcher) only while debugging, they slow the browser down
Want to learn this properly?
Our live, instructor-led ServiceNow Training covers this hands-on, with real projects and a certification path.
Check your understanding
Which address bar shortcut opens a new, unsaved incident form?
- A. incident.list
- B. incident.do?sys_id=-1
- C. incident.new
- D. new_incident.do
Show answer
B. incident.do?sys_id=-1
A sys_id of -1 tells the platform to render an empty form for that table.
Why impersonate a user before signing off a permissions change?
- A. It clears the browser cache
- B. It writes the change to the update set
- C. Admin sessions bypass most ACLs, so admin view proves nothing
- D. It speeds up the instance
Show answer
C. Admin sessions bypass most ACLs, so admin view proves nothing
The admin role overrides most access controls, so only impersonation shows the real end user experience.