Getting started with lists and filters

Introduction

This video provides a detailed look at ServiceNow list features and functions.

Important information

A list displays the records from a data table, such as the Incident, Problem, or
User table.

Lists appear in the content frame. For example, here’s the list of all incidents.

The list interface consists of a title bar, filters, breadcrumbs…

…and columns of data. Each column corresponds to a field on the table. But
the list doesn’t necessarily display all fields from the table.

List controls

We access list controls via the list title menu icon, or by right-clicking the title bar.

We can select a specific view, which is a predefined set of columns for the list…

…or select a saved filter to filter the list display. Currently we’re viewing all
incidents, with no filter applied.

When we select a filter—in this case, Active—the list displays only records that
satisfy the filter criteria. Here are the active incidents.

Selecting None removes the filter.

Group By allows us to group records by a column.

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trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
When we select Group by Priority, for example, we can easily see how many
incidents there are for each priority value, and review them specifically within
these groups.

We remove the grouping by selecting None.

We can also change the number of rows displayed per page. Changing the
value under Show…

…affects the paging controls, at the top and bottom of the list.

More records take longer to load, so let’s go back to 20.

To ensure that we’re viewing the latest updates to items on the list, we can
refresh the page by clicking Refresh List.

Creating a favorite adds a link on the Favorites tab to the currently displayed list.

For example, if we want to frequently review the list of all active and unassigned
incidents, we apply the Active – Unassigned filter to the Incident list, and then
select Create Favorite.
Creating a favorite captures any filter conditions currently applied to the list, not
just a predefined filter.

Because this name appears in the Favorites list as a link, it’s a good idea to
customize it to reflect any applied filters.
We can also change the color and icon.

Personalize a list view

You can personalize your view of a list without affecting other users.

These check boxes offer display and editing options.

And here we specify which fields to display in the list columns.

Let’s replace Caller with Opened by.

2
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trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
It’s best not to change the first column in a list—Number in this case.

That’s because lists are usually configured so that when a user clicks an item in
the first column, the system opens a record from that list.

If Opened by were the first column in the Incident list, clicking an item in that
column would open a record on the User table—not the Incident table. This is
inconsistent with expected behavior.
Here’s our Opened by column.

Notice that a green dot appears to the right of the gear if you’ve personalized
the list.

Sorting and filtering lists

We can sort the list by any column, by clicking the column name. Clicking the
name again reverses the sort order.

You can also access sort options through the list column context menu.

A filter is a set of conditions applied to a table to help you find and work with a
subset of data in that table.

A quick way to filter a list is to right-click a value we want to exclude and select
Filter Out.

Or right-click a value and select Show Matching to display only matching

records.

You can always tell how a list is filtered by looking at the breadcrumbs.

For example, here are the filters we applied: Assigned to is empty, Active is true,
Category is not Inquiry/Help, and Priority is 1 – Critical.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
This symbol separates the conditions.

The breadcrumbs start with All, where there are no filters and all records are
displayed.
Each filter condition further refines the results, from left to right.

We won’t do this, but clicking a condition removes all conditions to its right. For
example, clicking here would remove the priority condition.

And clicking All would remove every condition, to display all records.

To remove a condition from the middle of the filter without affecting those to its
right, we click the condition separator at the left of the condition we want to
remove.
Clicking the rightmost item refreshes the list.

Now let’s see how to filter a list with the condition builder.

Here are our current filter conditions.

Each filter condition consists of a Field,…

…Operator,…
….and Value.

Let’s get rid of our Category conditions and add an OR condition to include
Priority 2 incidents.

The condition builder allows you to filter on any field…

…not just those displayed in the list.

We’ll set the filter to identify active incidents of priority 1 or 2 that have a
problem related to them.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
We can also add a default sort option. In this case, we choose to sort by
Assignment group.

The advantage of building a filter here is that you can save it for yourself for
future use. Depending on your roles, you may also be able to make the filter
visible to other users.
We’ll save this filter, making it visible only to the currently logged-in user.

The filter appears in our filters list.

And we can edit or delete it through Edit personal filters.

Searching lists

Now let’s look at several ways to search a list. The Search option allows us to
perform a quick search on one column.
Our choices include all visible fields in the list.

Let’s search the Number field for 1. If we don’t enter a wildcard along with the
search term, the system automatically applies a default wildcard.

In this case, it applies the Ends with wildcard…

…which is reflected in the breadcrumbs.

And the search locates all incident numbers ending in 1.

Clicking the magnifying glass icon hides or displays the column search fields,
which allow us to search on multiple fields.

Let’s search for records whose Short description field contains the term, email,
and whose Category ends with ware.

Using the asterisk wildcard tells the system to return records where our search
term appears anywhere in the string.
And the category search brought up both software and hardware.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
You can use wildcards to construct complex searches. Refer to product
documentation for a list of available wildcards.
Wildcards are also reflected in the breadcrumbs…

…and in the condition builder.

And, of course, here you can add more conditions, if you want to.

If the table was defined with a text index, we can run a keyword search across
all its fields—even those not visible in the list—by searching for text.

This text search supports Boolean operators, which must be entered in

uppercase.
You can also search for exact phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks.

All records containing the specified keywords are displayed.

List, column, and field context menus

Context menus provide three different levels of list control:

The list title menu, which we’ve already seen…
…The list column context menu, which appears for each column…
…And the list fields context menu, which is available for each value in the list.

Administrators can configure the content and behavior of these menus,

including which users have access to each option, by role. The base system
includes default configurations for most of them.
Here, we’ll show the more commonly used options. You can check out the
others in the product documentation. Options available to you may differ from
those shown here.

The column context menu provides options in addition to sort, which we’ve
already covered.

Show Visual Task Board allows you to create a new visual task board based on
the list of records. The visual task board is a collaboration tool with a special user

6
© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
interface for presenting the tasks in the list. This option is only available on lists of
task records, such as incident, problem, or My Work.

The Group by option groups records by the column.

Ungroup removes the groupings.

The Bar Chart and Pie Chart options allow you to view the list of records in a bar
or pie chart, also automatically grouped by values in the column.

Configure provides advanced list configuration options, which allow users with
the admin role to set up a list display for all users.

For example, List Layout is where we configure the default column display for
each View.

Similar to list personalization, fields can be added to the Selected list…,

Reordered up,…
or down,…

and removed.

Any changes we make affect the view selected here.

We can configure the default column display for any View by selecting the view
name, making changes, and saving them.

These views correspond to those appearing on the View menu: Default view,
Indicators Panel, Major incidents, Mobile, portal, Self Service, and so on.

Individual users can still personalize the list columns to display the fields they
want, as we did earlier.

Import allows you to insert new records or update existing records in a list, using
data from a Microsoft Excel file.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
And with Export, you can save all currently displayed records and columns in
several formats, like Excel, CSV or PDF.

Update Selected allows you to update one or more fields on multiple records at
a time. First you need to select the records, like this.

It works the same way as update all records. For example, Bert is out on disability
leave, so we need to reassign all of his incidents to someone else.

This confirms that we want to update all the listed records.

Now we just fill in the field or fields we want to change, and click Update.

Right-clicking any value in the list opens the list fields context menu, which varies
by table.

Here, we’ll just cover these items, which appear on the field context menu for
most tables.
Additional options appear for certain record types and user roles.
For example, Assign to me assigns a record—such as an incident, problem, or
change—to the logged-in user. See the product documentation for details
about these options.

We’ve already seen how these first two items filter the list by the value we
clicked.

The next two items copy the record’s URL or sys_id, respectively, to the
clipboard. The sys_id is useful to identify the record, for example, to make
certain REST API calls to the instance.

Assign Tag allows you to create a new tag or assign an existing one to the
record. Users can filter records by tags, and the system administrator can
configure notifications to be sent out when records with specific tags are
updated.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.
Other ways to act on list records

Now let’s look at other ways to act on list records.

We can preview a record, in this case an incident, by clicking its reference icon.

Clicking a linked item in a list opens that record.

For example, clicking the record number opens the incident…
…Clicking a user name opens the user record…
…And clicking an assignment group opens the group record.

If it’s enabled, the list editor allows us to edit field values in a list without opening
a form, by double-clicking beside the value to be changed.
We won’t go into detail about the list editor here, but it’s enabled by default for
most tables. It can be configured by users with the admin role, and it supports
editing multiple records at a time.

The activity stream icon appears in the list title bar for all tables that track
activity—for example, the Incident, Problem, and Change tables. Clicking this
icon displays a real-time, sequential account of activities for the currently listed
records.

By clicking an entry in the main list stream, we can view the activity stream for
that record.

You can also perform actions on list items by selecting all currently displayed
records…

…or a subset of them…

…And then selecting the action from this list.

For more information, please see our product documentation, knowledge base,
or podcast. Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.

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© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective
companies with which they are associated.