Lists and Forms

In this chapter, we'll discover how lists in ServiceNow are similar to tables in any other relational database, and just what exactly that means for our data. We'll learn how relationships between data are created and stored in these lists, and get a brief introduction to the data-types in ServiceNow. While we're at it, we'll also learn how to either personalize or configure how list data is displayed, and edited.

As an integral part of understanding data structures in ServiceNow, we'll also learn about forms and form views, the types of data that you'll see in forms and lists, and how to personalize or configure what data shows up where.

In this chapter, you'll also learn how to create a custom table as part of the foundation for your first application: a virtual war room for major incidents. This application will be used to demonstrate various pieces of functionality throughout the ServiceNow platform for the earlier chapters of this book, so it would be a good idea to follow along!

Remember: lists are where data is displayed, and forms are where work is done in ServiceNow. As you might imagine, there's a lot to say about them! In this chapter, we'll learn about the following topics:

• The list view, and list components
• List v2 vs. List v3
• Creating custom tables
• Creating update sets to track your work within tables (and elsewhere)
• Adding fields, and filtering tables

In Helsinki and later versions of ServiceNow, there are two versions of lists available: List v2, and List v3. For the most part, we'll use the example of List v3 in this book, but will attempt to call out important differences in case you're on List v2. If it's not already active, you can activate the List v3 plugin from System Definition | Plugins.