Navigating the platform in Getting started

Navigating the platform

Move around a ServiceNow instance with confidence: the unified navigation menu, favorites, tabbed browsing, impersonation and the settings that trip up new admins.

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.list opens the incident list
incident.do?sys_id=-1 opens a blank incident form
sys_user_group.list jumps to groups without hunting through User Administration
/nav_to.do?uri=sys_script_list.do opens 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

Practice challenge

+0 XPStreak ×0

Question 1 of 2

Which address bar shortcut opens a new, unsaved incident form?

Frequently asked questions

Where did the classic left navigation go?

It is still there behind the All tab in the unified menu. The structure of applications and modules did not change, only the shell around it.

Can I get back to the old UI16 interface?

Some instances still allow UI16 through the browser URL, but new features are only built for Next Experience, so treat UI16 as a fallback rather than a target.