Welcome to part four of the Builder series.
In this video, we’ll show you how to create your no-code application quickly and easily.
We’ll demonstrate the primary tools to use and explain the options along the way.
If you haven’t already seen the previous videos in this series, it’s a good idea to watch them.
They cover prerequisites for this video.
We’ll continue with the use case described in these videos...
... where Luke Wilson wants to migrate his company’s safety issue management from a spreadsheet to an app on the Now Platform.
Here, we’re logged in to our ServiceNow instance with administrator credentials...
... but you could use a non-admin account with the role displayed here.
To begin, we navigate to System Applications, My Company Applications.
And click Create New to bring up Guided Application Creator.
If this is your first time using Guided App Creator, you should review the information on the screen.
This tool provides an easy, step-by-step process to guide you through your initial application construction.
Step one is to click “Let’s get started."
And the first thing we do is give the app a name.
In our case, we’ll call it Safety.
Let’s also fill in the description, so that others know what the app is for.
And we can optionally add an icon.
Remember the discussion about application scope in the Making permanent decisions video?
The system automatically assigns a scope name...
... but we can adjust the suffix if we prefer.
We’ll leave it as-is.
The final thing on this screen is to click Create.
We’ve just created a “container” to help manage the rest of our app components.
Now it’s time to apply the information we discussed about the personas by creating a role for each of them.
We click Create new role and enter the name of each role here.
In our safety app, we need three roles: for users, approvers and admins.
Note that we only enter the suffix...
... because the scope prevents this somewhat generic name from conflicting with other roles in the system that have similar names.
When we’ve completed the three roles, we click continue to go to the next screen.
This is where we choose what experiences, or user interfaces, to create.
Workspace, for those who manage records as their primary work...
... mobile for those on the go...
... and classic for the simple list and form layout...
For our safety app example, we’ll select all three to demonstrate what’s available.
Guided App Creator will configure these in a moment.
First, we must define the data we’re going to need for our app.
We can select existing tables in our app using the choice list.
It’s a pretty impressive list, and if you’re not familiar with it...
... you may want to have a quick chat with your system administrator to understand which tables may be helpful.
We can generate new tables by clicking Create new table.
This presents three options.
We could upload a spreadsheet, extend an existing table, or create the table from scratch.
Let’s dive deeper into each of these options.
For the safety app, we’ll click Upload spreadsheet and then continue.
If you have questions about the format of your spreadsheet, there’s a helpful link in the lower left.
Keep your eyes open for these, as they appear in various places throughout Guided App Creator.
We locate the spreadsheet on the local hard drive.
If the header row isn’t row one, we can change it here...
... and we definitely want the data from the spreadsheet...
... so we’ll select this check box and click Continue.
The system assigns the field types based on the data in the spreadsheet...
... but sometimes more than one type would work for a field...
...so we’ll use this screen to do some fine tuning.
Our Opened by field could be a string...
... but that can lead to data inconsistency issues.
So we’ll change it to a reference field to the system’s User table...
... which other applications also use.
Let’s make the field mandatory because we really want to know who submitted the safety issue.
We’ll do the same for the Location field by making it a reference to the existing location table.
We’d like the State field to be a choice list, so we’ll change that to a choice field here.
We won’t include “None” as an option.
Using this link, we can expand the field options to populate the choices we want in the choice list.
The display value is a label, which can be translated later, if needed.
The system value is what the system uses behind the scenes.
Avoid changing it, because that can impact your process.
Note that the display value and system value don’t have to match.
If needed, we can drag and drop the choices to change the order they appear in the list.
Using the same method, we’ll quickly adjust the other fields and click Continue when done.
Now we name the table.
This is a good time to review decisions discussed in the Making permanent decisions video, in case you missed it.
We’ll call our table, simply, Issue (without the word ‘safety,’ and with no plural, as in “issues”).
We’d like to have each issue automatically numbered sequentially, so we’ll select this check box.
Let’s also change the prefix to something that reads a little better.
And just under here, where it says Manage Access...
... we can review basic security for each role on this table.
We’ll modify the security settings so that users and approvers don’t have rights to delete records on this table.
Only those with the admin role should have that access.
After that’s done, we click Continue.
That’s it.
We’ve created a new table and imported our spreadsheet data in just a few clicks.
Let’s see what else we can do with tables.
We can extend an existing table.
There are some advantages to extending an existing table to quickly build out the fields and functionality.
If you need more information about extending tables, click the link at the lower left.
The list of tables is pretty long…
Again, a quick chat with your system administrator would be in order.
Common tables to extend include Task for routing work and Configuration item for managing assets.
We’re not going to extend a table for this particular app.
The third option is to start from scratch by defining each field one-by-one.
If you don’t have a spreadsheet and you don’t need to extend an existing table, this is the choice for you.
Because we have everything we need for the safety app, let’s move on by clicking Done with Tables.
Now that we have our data defined, and—in our case—imported,...
... we can determine how it will be displayed using the three experiences we selected earlier.
Let’s start with the Workspace experience.
After reviewing these options, we don’t see anything that needs updating, so let’s continue.
Next, we choose which of two navigation options our workspace will use.
Based on discussions with the safety techs, they like the tabbed interface, so we’ll go with that.
The utilities are available on the top bar of the workspace.
We want all the options available here, so let’s go on.
Finally, we choose what goes on the navigation bar – Home, Lists, and Inbox seem right, so we’ll continue.
And Workspace has been configured!
To see our masterpiece, we click Open, and workspace opens up in a new tab.
Under Lists, we see issues.
We can modify this later. But for now, it’s a nice, simple way to let the safety techs address their issues.
Okay.
With workspace done, let’s go back to the other browser window and configure the mobile experience...
... so that employees can capture safety issues on their mobile devices...
... and technicians can manage them while away from their desks.
To do that, we click Start on the Mobile row.
If you thought Workspace was easy, Mobile will really seem simple.
We just review the options on this screen—which all seem fine—and click Create.
We check our mobile device and see that we have access to our safety issues.
Finally, we start the classic interface to quickly build out some lists, forms, and a navigation menu.
Once again, we review it and click Create.
That’s it, we're done.
So we click Done with Apps.
Note that there are some additional options to continue configuring your app in Studio...
... or build some automation using Flow Designer.
We’ll cover those in later videos.
For now, we’ll click Done, so that we can see what was built for the Classic UI.
A quick refresh of the browser window, and we enter Safety in the navigation filter.
And there’s our new Safety app menu with the modules to create a new issue or list all existing records.
Your app may not involve all the options shown here...
... in which case you’ll speed through Guided App Creator in just a few minutes!
Now you’re ready to configure your app!
Let’s get started in the next video.
For more information, see our product documentation, knowledge base, or podcast.
Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.