ServiceNow can serve up a user's personal preferences either with server-side API access or client-side function calls.  Get it your way.

ServiceNow can serve up a user’s personal preferences either with server-side API access or client-side function calls. Get it your way.

You may already be aware of this, but ServiceNow has the capability to set and retrieve user preferences within the platform. You can easily get or set these preferences using both server-side APIs as well as client-side APIs. This article will explain how you can do this both at the server level and at the client level.

API Functions

Server Side API Calls
Since user preferences are tied to and individual user, the server-side API gets you access to those user preferences at the gs user level. To access these APIs on the current user simply use the following method:

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//Set your current User Preference
gs.getUser().setPreference("DESIRED_PREFERENCE_NAME", "DESIRED_PREFERENCE_VALUE");
//Get your user's current User Preference Value
var prefVal = gs.getUser().getPreference("PREFERENCE_NAME");

To get the API on another user using a Server Side script, you would do the following:

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//Set a User Preference
var user = gs.getUser().getUserByID("a2826bf03710200044e0bfc8bcbe5ded");
user.setPreference("DESIRED_PREFERENCE_NAME", "DESIRED_PREFERENCE_VALUE");

//Get the value for a specific User's User Preference
var prefVal = user.getPreference("DESIRED_PREFERENCE_NAME");

Client Side API Calls

You can also allow your client scripts to access the current user’s user preferences in the following way:

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//Set your current user preference
setPreference("DESIRED_PREFERENCE_NAME", "DESIRED_PREFERENCE_VALUE");

//Get your current user's preference
getPreference("DESIRED_PREFERENCE_NAME");

Viewing the user preferences manually

You can also view and manage all user preferences as the system administrator. Simply navigate to User Administration > User Preferences.

User preferences can be found in the "User Preferences" module in your ServiceNow instance.

User preferences can be found in the “User Preferences” module in your ServiceNow instance.

Demo Video

Watch a Demo Video of this feature