Figure 1 - “I’m not saying you should build an Adventure Mode experience for your task tables, I’m saying that you can.” – Matt Hendershott
Over my years of working with enterprise data, I’ve noticed that there are two main types of data consumers. The technically minded consumers want all the data, delivered in the most efficient way possible. For them, ServiceNow's out-of-the-box experiences work perfectly—they manipulate data like modern magicians using tables, workspaces, analytics, and database views.
On the other hand, there’s a different group of users I often encounter. These people are not engineers; they don’t surf tables and relational data models with ease. To them, ServiceNow feels like just another technical system for technical people, and they muddle through it begrudgingly. These users can manage tasks using the Service Portal and record producers, but it’s still far from what they’re used to. They prefer specific apps with tailored interfaces—just like the ones they have on their phones.
This is where I see a lot of potential value that developers can add for users by leveraging ServiceNow UI Builder. This tool offers developers a way of creating custom and focused experiences to help users manage the wealth of data they have access to, by presenting and manipulating data in new ways at the presentation layer.
One use case comes to mind. Several approvers were receiving requests to attend an event—as many as 40 requests per event. Their role was to approve those with the best business case, ensuring that the people who could generate the best outcomes would attend, all while staying within the event’s travel budget.
The data was there, but the experience was cumbersome — approvers faced piles of request emails or isolated request tasks, making it impossible to see the whole picture. Enter UI Builder. Using it, I created a single page that displayed all the attendees for a specified event, their business cases, estimated travel costs, and the event budget—all in one view. From that page, the approvers could see the big picture of the event and its budget, and directly approve or deny attendance requests without ever leaving the page.
The issue was never a lack of data; it was the lack of presenting that data effectively for their use case.
As developers and solution architects, it’s crucial to remember: data availability is only half the story. Presenting it effectively to the right audience makes all the difference.
“A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.” —Thomas Edison
This applies just as much to how we present data as it does to any well-intentioned project.
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