Hi All,

I had hard time recently to find a solution to redirect to URL when user clicks on a Server Side UI Action on Service Portal in scoped application. Basically what i was trying to achieve is to create a UI action which copies the existing record and then navigates to newly created record and all that on Service Portal.

I noticed there are several challenges here:

1- UI Action can only be Server Side if you have to display it on Service Portal which already limits your options for url re-direction.

2- action.setRedirectURL() or gs.setRedirect() works in Server Side UI Actions but is not supported on Service Portal

3- setPreference on Server Side does not work on Portal either, you need to use savePreference instead.

4- UI Script does not have access to getPreference method.

Here is the solution which I developed to overcome the challenges and get the redirection as described in title.

UI Action

Client: False (as its server side UI action which is visible on Service Portal)

Script: After all your code for functionality you would like to develop just add two lines at the bottom as below in the script.

var url="<your service portal URL where you would like to redirect>";
gs.getUser().savePreference("sfRedirectPortal",url);

the above code sets your url in user preference "sfRedirectPortal" which is later retrieved to redirect.

UI Script

Create a ui script as follows:

UI Type: All

Script:

redirectToUrl();

function redirectToUrl() {
    grUserPreference = new GlideRecord('sys_user_preference');
    grUserPreference.addQuery('user', top.window.NOW.user_id); // picking up current user as g_user doesnt work here.
    grUserPreference.addQuery('name', 'sfRedirectPortal');
    grUserPreference.query(response);

    function response(result) {
        var url = '';
        var sflastRedirect = '';
        if (result.next()) {
            url = result.value;
            sflastRedirect = localStorage.getItem("sflastRedirect");

            if (url != "" && top.window.location.toString().indexOf(url) == -1 && (grUserPreference.sys_updated_on > sflastRedirect || sflastRedirect == null)) {
                localStorage.setItem("sflastRedirect", grUserPreference.sys_updated_on);
                top.window.location = url;
            }
        }
    }
}

above code retrieves user preference using glide record (note that getPreference does not work in UI Script/Service Portal) and then is used to redirect.

Basically in this solution this UI Script is executed each time Service Portal form is reloaded or a UI action is clicked.

Please try this solution and share your feedback.

Cheers

Syed Faheem.

Principal Technical Consultant

ServiceNow.