Introduction
Visual Task Boards provide Kanban style visualization of your ServiceNow work. It allows you to track tasks and their status with just a glance. There are three types of visual task boards: freeform, flexible, and guided. The ability to pull in ServiceNow records makes it a valuable tool for individuals or teams to track and manage their ServiceNow work.
Instructions
Contents
- Introduction
- Instructions
- Main Features and Benefits of Visual Task Boards
- Creating Visual Task Boards
- Using Visual Task Boards
- Example Uses of Visual Task Boards
- Best Practices
- Related Links
Main Features and Benefits of Visual Task Boards
Visual Task Boards are Kanban type task boards. You can monitor and update your progress easily through the drag-and-drop interface. Visualizing processes for your work, staying updated on progress of work, and having it all in one place can help teams to find opportunities to improve on work efficiency. Using swimlanes (columns within a board) expands organization and the ability to bring to attention items that might slow down the process. Ability to add and remove members to your board ensures that necessary individuals will have access. In addition, communication can be improved by using the Connect Chat feature built into ServiceNow within the board.
Creating Visual Task Boards
Creating a Freeform Board
Freeform boards provide a way to create your own tasks or to add ServiceNow tasks from a list, and place them in customizable lanes. Lanes and cards (individual items within lanes) can be renamed, moved, deleted, and created to manage tasks that may not be tracked by other ServiceNow applications such as incidents, problems, changes, etc. Freeform boards are ideal for creating personal to do lists and personal tasks.
NOTE: In a freeform board and flexible board, moving a card to a different lane, updating the card, or assigning to someone will not update the ServiceNow record. You need to go to the record to update it. When you view the record on your Dashboard, you will not see the updates unless you open the record and update it.
To create a freeform board in ServiceNow:
- Navigate to Self-Service > Visual Task Boards or search for Visual Task Board using the search filter for the navigation menu. It opens My Task Boards and will show All Boards, Boards you own, and Boards you belong to.
- To create a new freeform task board, select New.
- Two choices appear: Freeform Board and Data Driven Board. Select Freeform Board.
- Double-click the name of the board to give it a descriptive name.
- Three lanes are created: To Do, Doing, and Done. You may change the title of a lane to anything to fit your workflow by double-clicking the lane title. To add an additional lane, click Add Lane. You can also move a lane by dragging and dropping it to where you want it in the process.
- To create a task, select Add Card.
- Alternatively, to add a task from lists, go to a list, right-click anywhere on the row of the task you want to add and select Add to Visual Task Board.
- A popup window with Visual Task Boards lets you choose which task board you want to add the task. Select the task board you want to add and the task will be added in the “To do” lane. To add multiple tasks, go to a list, select the checkbox beside each record you want to add and right-click (for Windows or two fingers on most trackpads or control-click for Mac OS) and select Add to Visual Task Board.
To add multiple tasks, go to a list, select the checkbox beside each record you want to add and right-click (for Windows or two fingers on most trackpads or control-click for Mac OS) and select Add to Visual Task Board.
- Please note that when you move a task from one lane to another on a freeform board, no changes are made to the ServiceNow record. You will have to update the record manually. To do so, open the record by clicking on the number at the right-bottom corner of the card to update the ServiceNow record.
- To archive a card, click the X at the top-right of the card. You will see a confirmation screen asking if you are sure you want to archive it. Click Archive.
- To view archived tasks go to the Info tab in the board at the top-right of the Visual Task Board, then select View Archived Tasks.
Creating a Flexible Board
Flexible boards allow you to load tasks from a ServiceNow table, e.g. incident, and place them in customizable lanes that you create. You can add additional tasks and organize tasks by moving them between lanes as needed just like in the freeform board. Flexible boards are the best option when you don’t want to impact the existing work or workflow on the platform such as when you want to create personal to-do lists, planning exercises, etc.
NOTE: In a freeform board and flexible board, moving a card to a different lane, updating the card, or assigning to someone will not update the ServiceNow record. You need to go to the record to update it. When you view the record on your Dashboard, you will not see the updates unless you open the record and update it.
To create a flexible board in ServiceNow:
- Navigate to Self-Service > Visual Task Boards or search for Visual Task Board using the search filter for the navigation menu. It opens Visual Task Boards and will show All Boards, Boards you own, and Boards you belong to.
- To create a new flexible task board, select New.
- There are two choices, Freeform Board and Data Driven Board. Select Data Driven Board.
- Select the table to get records from and populate the cards. Commonly used are Incident, Catalog Task, Change Request, Change Task, Demand, Idea, Problem, Problem Task, Project, Project Task, and Requested Item.
- Select None for the vertical lanes.
- Create a filter to control which tasks load into the board by adding conditions, such as Assignment Group or a combination of conditions. Click Create.
- Tasks will be loaded according to the table you chose and the filters you set. Notice in the example above that 143,301 records would be pulled in. Add additional filters to limit the amount of records you will be pulling into your board. The above example shows it is limited to all records with the Assignment group 4Help. Additional filters could be Active is True, AND State is not On Hold AND State is not Resolved.
- You can customize the lanes to match your work, such as states of incidents.
- Cards can be moved between lanes to track work. Lanes may be states such as Work in Progress or Complete or process steps you created.
NOTE: Work within the flexible board does not change records even when it is assigned to someone on a board. Records must be opened, updated, and saved. You can open task records by clicking on the number at the bottom of the card.
Options for a flexible board:
- You can use this type of board for your own tasks or with a group. Add members or assign tasks by using the User icon in the board’s Configuration Panel.
- To pull in tasks (e.g., incidents, catalog tasks, demands, etc.), select Task for the table. Then set condition filters for Assignment Group is YourGroup, AND Task type is incident, AND Task type is catalog task, AND Task type is demand.
Creating a Guided Board
Guided boards are similar to Flexible boards except that their lanes cannot be edited in most cases because they correspond to field values and another important difference is that moving a task between lanes will change the value in the record.
To create a Guided board in ServiceNow:
- Navigate to Self-Service > Visual Task Boards or search for Visual Task Board using the search filter for the navigation menu. It opens Visual Task Boards and will show All Boards, Boards you own, and Boards you belong to.
- To create a new Guided board, click New.
- There are two choices: Freeform Board and Data Driven Board. Select Data Driven Board.
- Select the table to get records from and populate the cards. Commonly used are Incident, Catalog Task, Change Request, Change Task, Demand, Idea, Problem, Problem Task, Project, Project Task, and Requested Item.
- Next, select a field for your vertical lanes. For the board to use this field for the lanes, select a choice field, like State, or a reference field like Assigned to. A reference field stores a reference to a field in another table. The example below shows Task Type selected for the vertical lane field.
- Additional conditions can be added to narrow the work that is added to the Visual Task Board. For example, adding the conditions “Task type is Incident OR Task type is Request Item OR Task type is Catalog task.” If you choose the Task table as the table when you set up the board and use this method, you can pull only the records you need to appear on the task board. The following example shows only incidents, request items, and catalog tasks for a group. It organizes the work using “assigned to” for swimlanes.
Using a Visual Task Board
Configuration Settings
After you create a visual task board, you can use the filter panel or configuration panel to filter tasks or make changes to the board.
Filter Tasks
You can filter tasks by their title, number, or due dates.
- To filter by title or number: In the Filter by title or number text box, type in the title or number of a task or tasks. Only task(s) that meet the criteria will show in the visual task board.
- To filter by due date: You can also filter tasks by their due dates by choosing options from the Due By drop-down. Only tasks that meet the specific due date criteria will show in the visual task board.
Info
The Info tab provides some basic information about the current Visual Task Board. It allows you to select color themes, use swimlanes, view archived tasks, and get the URL to share the board, and view the tasks as a list. To learn more about each function, see the details below.
- Swimlanes: For Freeform boards, if you wish to use the swimlanes, you will need to turn it on at the bottom of the The Basics section.
- Add Sort: You can sort the current board by certain criteria.
- Click Add Sort, you will see the Sorting Order window. Pick a criterion, e.g. “Assigned to”. Then select the sorting order to be either ascending or descending. You can also add more criteria by selecting + (plus) or remove a criterion by selecting - (minus) next to it.
- Below is an example of sorting a Visual Task Board by “Assigned to” in ascending order.
- View Archived Tasks: instead of deleting a task, which you will not have access to any more, you can archive a task that you do not need for now and restore it from the archive later when it is needed. To view archived tasks, click View Archived Tasks. You will see a window similar to the one below. You can view the archived tasks by Title or Recent Activity. You can also Filter by title or number. To restore a task, move your mouse cursor to the right-bottom corner of the rectangle that represents a task, the time information will change to “Restore.” Select Restore; this task will be restored to the specific vertical and/or swimlanes where it was deleted.
- To archive a task, move your mouse cursor on to the card. A close window icon will appear at the upper-right corner of a task card.
- Click the close window icon.
- The following window will appear. Click Archive to archive this task.
- Share: The Share text box has the URL for the current board. You can copy this URL and share it with others to view the board.
- View List: this option allows you to view the tasks of a Visual Task Board as a list. Find the View List button by clicking Info from the board control panel, and scroll down after Share to find the View List. Click View list to see the list of tasks on the board.
Users
- Click the Users icon.
- Use + Add Members to add people that can access the task board.
- Under the Users icon you will find people that have assignments listed. They can be elevated to members of the board and be able to see all work on the board and make changes to the board.
- When you click on an assignee’s name, you have 3 options, Send a Direct Message (which uses Connect Chat), Add to Filter, and Promote to Member. All members are able to change label titles.
- When you select Add to Filter, only task(s) assigned to this individual would show in the Visual Task Board.
Labels
- Use Labels as an additional way to organize and visualize your work. Flip the Show Labels switch on by clicking it.
- You can create additional labels, or use the ones provided: Defect, High Priority, Feature, Idea, Request, Story, Low Priority. Turn off the labels if you do not want them. Change the names of the labels by clicking on the label title.
- Once you have the labels set, you can label cards and then filter to view only the cards with certain labels.
Activity Stream
- The Activity Stream shows the recent activity on cards. You can open the Activity Stream to view the most recently completed activity and open the cards from there to view all the details. By clicking Open Entry, view details of the task of the activity shown.
Configuration
- For Flexible boards that have swimlanes, disable the swimlanes under Info before making changes to the board. You can enable them after you are finished with the configuration settings.
- Click the configuration icon to go to the configuration window.
- In the configuration panel set options for whether to show the Quick Panel, User Names, Labels, and Label names. You can also set options for whether to show Compact Cards and SLAs.
- At the bottom of the Configuration menu, click Advanced Settings.
- For freeform boards, Advanced Settings lets you choose colors for your board and change the lane configuration by dragging and dropping in this menu.
- For Flexible and Guided boards, Advanced Settings let you choose colors for your board and choose items you want to display for your board. For these boards there are many choices for vertical lanes and for swimlanes.
- For freeform boards, Advanced Settings lets you choose colors for your board and change the lane configuration by dragging and dropping in this menu.
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Managing Cards on a Visual Task Board
Once you have cards on your board, you can change the settings for each card: assign cards, add or remove members to/from your Visual Task Board, set labels for the card, add attachments, and create Checklists.
Info
Info gives you the details of the card and lets you assign it to one or more people.
Assignees
- You can add a Primary Assignee and as many other assignees for the card as necessary.
Labels
Setting labels for the cards can help you to filter certain work that needs to be reviewed. You can use the labels provided. Turn on or off the ones you want, and change the names of the labels by clicking on the name and typing a new label title.
Attachments
You can add attachments such as images, videos, or files to the card. They are saved in the card and appear as work notes.
Checklist
- Checklist will help you keep work moving forward. You can also have a visual in the card view to see how many steps there are for that card and how many have been completed.
- Create a checklist of tasks by clicking Add item.
- Add as many tasks as needed. They will be added to the work log of the card.
- If these are repeatable steps, click the vertical dots at the right of Checklist to save it as a template and use it again for other cards.
- Give the template a detailed name and choose which group can use it.
- To use the template, open a card, and click the checkbox in the card control panel. Click the vertical dots and a menu will appear with templates to choose from. Select the one you want to add to this card.
- The list is added to the card’s activity log.
- The completion progress of the checklist will show on the card when viewed with the other cards on the board.
- To remove a checklist from a card, go to the check list, click the three vertical dots, then select Remove Checklist from the drop-down.
Add a Visual Task Board to a Dashboard
In addition to direct access to visual task boards, if you want to access the homepage of visual task boards from a dashboard, you can use the following workaround. However, please note that after the initial setup (which is demonstrated below), you will need to manually select the desired dashboard to display within a dashboard widget window every time you access the dashboard.
To add visual task boards to a dashboard, you must have the sufficient permissions to edit the dashboard. If you have the require permissions, follow the steps:
- Navigate to the tab in the dashboard where you want to add the visual task board. To have more screen space to view your dashboard, we recommend you to add a new tab to host the visual task boards.
- In the top right corner, select the Add Widgets icon.
- From the Widget Category drop-down menu, select Content Blocks.
- In the Filter box below the Content Blocks, type “Visual Task Boards” or just “visual” and select the corresponding option.
- Select the Add button on the next screen.
- Wait until the Visual Task Boards widget appears. If you need more screen space to view the visual task board widget, select the “Close add widget panel” icon to close the Add Widgets panel.
- All the visual task boards available to you will appear in the window. You can either choose an existing task board or select “New” to create a new visual task board.
- You can add multiple visual task boards to the same tab. To add another visual task board, select the Add Widgets icon and then select the Add button. The newly added visual task board will appear at the top of the dashboard tab. To reorder multiple visual task boards, select the Add Widgets icon, select the visual task board that you want to move. Drag and drop it to a desired location.
- To remove a visual task board, select the Add Widgets icon. And then select the Remove icon at the top right corner of the visual task board that you want to remove.
Examples for Using Visual Task Boards
Using Visual Task Boards for Incidents
A Visual Task Board can be used to track work with incidents. This is a good option for a team that wants to be able to see all team work yet also have the option to use filters to view only their own work.
- Navigate to Self-Service > Visual Task Boards or search for Visual Task Board using the search filter for the navigation menu. It opens Visual Task Boards and will show All Boards, Boards you own, and Boards you belong to.
- To create a new Data Driven board, click New.
- There are two choices: Freeform Board and Data Driven Board. Select Data Driven Board.
- Select Incident as the table. Either type it in to the search or scroll until you find it.
- Next, select a field from the incident table for your vertical lanes. For the board to use this field for the lanes, select a choice field, like "State," or a reference field like "Assigned to."
- Select a field for swimlanes.
- To sort the cards by state, use the filter to pull the states you want to see.
The view for incidents can be set up with the vertical lanes as
- Assigned to - This would be a good option for teams that have a few members.
- OR Task type - This would be a good option for teams that have several tasks types that their group works on, such as incidents, tasks, request items, problems, changes, demands, etc.
Additionally, you can also add swimlanes to break down the work. Examples are:
- Assigned to - if you did not use it for the vertical lanes.
- Task type - if you did not use it for the vertical lanes.
- Priority
- States
The following example shows the conditions to be set to pull in incident records for the 4Help group into a Visual Task Board.
- Assignment group is 4help AND
- Active is true AND
- State is not Resolved OR
- State is not Closed
The following example shows the settings for the Vertical Lane Field as State, the swimlanes Field as Assigned to, and with the Due Date not set.
Visual Task Board Results
Caption: Lane titled with states: New, Active, Awaiting Problem, Awaiting User Info, On Hold, Resolved, and close Closed. Three swim lanes: "No Assigned to", with 5 cards in the active lane; Agent 1, with 1 card in the "Awaiting User Info" lane; Agent 2, with 3 cards under the "Awaiting User Info" lane and 1 card under the "On Hold" lane.
Using Visual Task Boards for Request Items
A Visual Task Board can be used to track work with Request Items.
- Navigate to Self-Service > Visual Task Boards or search for Visual Task Board using the search filter for the navigation menu. It opens Visual Task Boards and will show All Boards, Boards you own, and Boards you belong to.
- To create a new Data Driven board, click New.
- There are two choices: Freeform Board and Data Driven Board. Select Data Driven Board.
- Select Task as the Task Table.
- Next, select a field from the incident table for your vertical lanes. For the board to use this field for the lanes, select a choice field, like State, or a reference field like Assigned to. A reference field stores a reference to a field on another table. Then select a field for swimlanes.
- To sort the cards by state, use the set conditions to only pull the states you want to show on the Visual Task Board.
The following example shows Requests and Catalog Tasks:
- Assignment group is ITEE Training AND
- Active is true AND
- State is not Resolved
Results for ITEE Requests and Catalog Tasks by Task Type with swimlanes set to Assigned to.
Using Visual Task Boards for Software Development
Agile development is a set of principles that are widely adopted in software development. The two major agile development methodologies are scrum and Kanban. Scrum is ideal for managing complex projects that involve changing requirements and multiple milestones and stakeholders. Kanban helps to visualize tasks and workflows. It is ideal for lightweight projects. Kanban is friendly to users at different levels while effective utilization of scrum requires relevant training. If you need additional information to help determine which approach fits you better, please refer to relevant articles in the reference section.
The Visual Task Boards in ServiceNow is essentially a Kanban board. Individuals and teams in various functions, such as marketing, HR, web development, and software development may find it useful in improving their workflows. In addition to Visual Task Boards, ServiceNow also offers the Agile Development application that is ideal for full-scale software development. It is available to users with scrum user roles at Virginia Tech.
For individual developers or teams, you may select either the Freeform or Flexible visual task boards since these two options allow you to add tasks from both existing ServiceNow tasks and create your own tasks. The two images below show an example of using Visual Task Boards for software development. You can utilize both the vertical lanes and swimlanes to better organize your tasks and visualize the process.
Caption: A board with 4 vertical lanes: Pool of Ideas, containing 4 cards; Feature Prep:In progress, containing 2 cards; Feature Prep: Ready, containing 1 card; Feature Selected, containing no cards. A swim lane titled "Discarded": Pool of Ideas, containing 0 cards; Feature Prep:In progress, containing 2 cards; Feature Prep: Ready, containing 1 card; Feature Selected, containing no cards.
Caption: A board with 5 vertical lanes and 2 swim lanes: User Story Prep lane has 1 card under Epic 332 swim lane; User Story Dev lane has 2 card under Epic 332 swim lane. Feature Acceptance has 1 card under Main swim lane; Deployment has 1 card under Main swim lane; Delivered lane has 1 card under Main swim lane.
Best Practices
To help you better utilize Visual Task Boards, we summarized the following best practices:
- Define your workflow: Before setting up your Visual Task Board, it's important to define your workflow and identify the stages that a task must go through from start to finish. This will help you determine the appropriate columns to use on the board and ensure that tasks are tracked accurately.
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Customize your columns: Customize the columns on your Visual Task Board to match your workflow and make it easier for team members to quickly understand the status of each task. Use clear, concise labels and avoid adding too many unnecessary columns that may clutter the board.
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Use swim lanes: Use swim lanes to group tasks by project, team, priority, or any other relevant factor. This will help you quickly identify tasks that require attention and provide a clear overview of the status of each project or team.
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Update tasks regularly: Encourage team members to update tasks regularly with accurate and up-to-date information. This will ensure that the task board provides an accurate representation of the current status of each task and prevent any delays or confusion.
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Use labels: Use labels to help categorize tasks and make it easier to search for and filter tasks based on specific criteria. Be consistent in your use of labels to avoid confusion.
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Use work notes: Encourage team members to use the work notes section to provide updates, ask questions, and provide feedback. This will help ensure that team members are aligned and working towards a common goal.
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Use notifications: Use notifications to keep team members informed of any updates or changes to tasks. This will ensure that everyone is aware of any changes and can adjust their plans accordingly.
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Review and refine: Regularly review your Visual Task Board and refine your workflow and processes as needed. Solicit feedback from team members and make adjustments to ensure that the board is meeting the needs of the team and the organization.
Related Links
- Visual Task Boards overview: an overview on Visual Task Boards
- Visual task boards: introduction about visual task boards and the features
- Visual task boards documentation: official documentation on visual task boards, detailed instructions on usage
- Articles that compare Kanban and scrum