Form and List Layout

ui-actions-policies covers behaviour on a form — what happens when a field changes. This covers the shape of it: which fields are on the form, in what order, in which sections, and what the list shows. Nothing covered lists at all before this guide.

Views come first

Almost every table in this guide has a view field, and it is the thing to decide before anything else.

A view is a named layout for one table. The empty string "" is the default view — the one everyone gets. "mobile", "ess" and any custom name are separate layouts on the same table, and editing one changes nothing about the others.

await snow_add_list_column({ table: "incident", element: "u_root_cause" })   // default view: everyone
await snow_create_list_layout({ table: "incident", view: "mobile", columns: [...] })  // mobile only

Getting this wrong is the most common way to "change nothing" — the edit landed on a view nobody opens — and the most common way to break a form for the whole company, which is the same mistake pointed the other way.

The field must exist first

sys_ui_element and sys_ui_list_element hold a field name as a string. Neither the platform nor these tools check that the column exists in sys_dictionary. Placing a field that is not there produces a layout row that silently renders nothing.

Check before you place:

await snow_discover_table_fields({ table: "incident" })

The same applies to dot-walked columns on a list (caller_id.department): the path has to resolve or the column comes back blank.

Forms

sys_ui_form       the form layout for (table, view)  — the container
  └── sys_ui_section    a section on it, with a caption and a position
       └── sys_ui_element   one field, with a position inside the section

Build outward from the container:

const form = await snow_create_form_layout({ name: "Incident", table: "incident", type: "standard" })
const sec = await snow_create_form_section({ name: "Root cause", table: "incident",
                                             caption: "Root cause", position: 2 })
await snow_add_form_field({ section_sys_id: sec.sys_id, element: "u_root_cause", position: 1 })

type on the layout is standard, related_list or split. position is an ordering hint, not an index — leave gaps (100, 200, 300) so a later insertion does not mean renumbering.

A field can appear in only one section of a view. Adding it to a second does not move it; it produces a duplicate row and an unpredictable render.

Lists

Two different things share the word "list":

	Table	What it is
List layout	sys_ui_list + sys_ui_list_element	which columns the table shows
Related list	sys_ui_related_list	which child tables appear under a form

Columns

// one column onto the default layout
await snow_add_list_column({ table: "incident", element: "u_root_cause", position: 4, width: 120 })

// or a whole layout at once
await snow_create_list_layout({ table: "incident", view: "", columns: [
  { element: "number", position: 1 }, { element: "short_description", position: 2 },
] })

snow_create_list_view is the third one and does something different: it creates a named view (sys_ui_list) with a comma-joined field list and an optional default filter, so users can switch into a curated column set. It does not touch the default view.

Related lists

await snow_create_related_list({ name: "Child incidents", parent_table: "incident",
                                 related_table: "incident", relationship_field: "parent_incident" })

A related list is addressed by the field on the child table that points at the parent. That is what relationship_field is. Omit it and ServiceNow looks for the conventional reference, which is right for task.parent and wrong for anything custom. Related lists are per (parent table, view) — a related list added to the default view does not appear on mobile.

Saved filters

await snow_create_saved_filter({ name: "My open P1s", table: "incident",
                                 filter: "active=true^priority=1^assigned_to=javascript:gs.getUserID()",
                                 roles: "itil", order: 100 })

filter is an encoded query, the same syntax snow_query_table takes. Leave user empty for a global filter; set it for a personal one. roles restricts who sees it in the dropdown — it is visibility, not security. The rows the filter returns are still whatever the ACLs allow.

Navigation: read this before using snow_create_menu

Both navigation tools write sys_app_module. snow_create_menu does not create an application menu — an application menu is a sys_app_application record. It creates a module, exactly like snow_create_menu_item does, and calls it a menu.

What that means in practice:

• To hang items under an existing menu, use snow_create_menu_item with the application menu's sys_id as parent. This works and is the normal case.
• To create a genuinely new application menu, neither tool does it. Create the sys_app_application record directly (snow_record_manage) and pass its sys_id as parent.
• snow_create_menu produces a parentless module. It is not harmful, and it is not a menu.

await snow_create_menu_item({ title: "Open P1s", parent: appMenuSysId, link_type: "list",
                              table: "incident", order: 200 })

link_type is list, new, detail or home. A list module obeys the table's default view unless its own filter says otherwise, which ties navigation back to the first section of this guide.

Everything here is configuration

sys_ui_form, sys_ui_section, sys_ui_element, sys_ui_list, sys_ui_list_element, sys_ui_related_list, sys_filter and sys_app_module are all captured in an update set. Start one before you change a layout — see update-set-workflow — or the change is unrepeatable on the next instance.

Related

• ui-actions-policies — behaviour on the form, once the fields are on it.
• update-set-workflow — mandatory before any of this.
• blast-radius — what else is configured against the table you are about to reshape.