Foundations · Lesson 1.3

Pages, variants and audiences in UI Builder

Beginner
15 min read
Tested on Australia
Updated 18 Oct 2026

UI Builder
Next Experience
Roles

What a page really is

In the previous lesson, you saw that a URL like /now/sow/home leads to the Home page of an experience. A page is that destination: a named screen with its own path inside the experience, such as home, list or record.

Here is the part that surprises most beginners. The page itself does not hold the layout, the components or the data. It is more like a slot with an address. Everything you actually see on screen lives in the page’s variants, and every page has at least one.

Why variants exist

Different people need different things from the same screen. A support agent opening the workspace home page wants their queue of incidents. Their manager wants charts about the whole team. Someone from another department who opens the same link should see something simple, without tools they cannot use.

You could build three separate pages with three different URLs, but then everyone would need to know which link to use, and every link shared in an email would show the wrong thing to someone. Variants solve this. There is one page and one URL, and ServiceNow quietly shows each person the version meant for them.

How ServiceNow picks a variant

When someone opens a page, ServiceNow looks at its variants in order, starting with the lowest order number. For each variant, it asks two questions:

Question	What it checks	Example
Is this user in the variant’s audience?	The user’s RoleA named set of permissions given to users, like itil for support agents or admin for administrators.Learn more , through the audiences attached to the variant	Audience “Agents” means users with the itil role
Do the variant’s conditions match?	Details about the page being opened, such as which table a record comes from	Show this variant only when the record is an incident

The first variant where the answers are yes wins. ServiceNow stops checking and shows that variant. Any variants further down the list are never looked at.

Two simple rules follow from this. A variant with no audience fits every user, and a variant with no conditions fits every situation. That makes a variant with neither the perfect last entry in the list: a fallback that catches anyone the variants above it did not.

Press Play to watch the same page pick a variant for two very different users.

InteractiveWatch ServiceNow pick a variant for two users

Step 1 of 8 · Open page
Priya opens the Team overview page
Priya is a support agent with the itil role. She opens the Team overview page in the IT Team Workspace. The page has three variants, and ServiceNow will check them one by one, in order, until one fits her.
User
Priya (roles: itil)
Checking
(not started)
Audience match?
-
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 2 of 8 · Variant 1
Variant 1: Manager dashboard
The first variant, with the lowest order number, is the Manager dashboard. Its audience is Managers. Priya is not a manager, so this variant does not fit her. ServiceNow moves on.
User
Priya (roles: itil)
Checking
Manager dashboard (order 100, audience: Managers)
Audience match?
No
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 3 of 8 · Variant 2
Variant 2: Agent view
Next is the Agent view. Its audience is Agents, meaning anyone with the itil role. Priya has itil, so this one fits.
User
Priya (roles: itil)
Checking
Agent view (order 200, audience: Agents)
Audience match?
Yes
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 4 of 8 · Result
Priya gets the Agent view
The first variant that fits wins, so ServiceNow stops checking. Variant 3 is never even looked at. Priya sees the Agent view, with her team's open incidents.
User
Priya (roles: itil)
Checking
(stopped at the first match)
Audience match?
Yes
Variant shown
Agent view
Step 5 of 8 · Open page
Now Rahul opens the same page
Rahul works in Finance and has no special roles. He opens the very same page, at the very same URL. ServiceNow starts checking from the top again.
User
Rahul (no special roles)
Checking
(not started)
Audience match?
-
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 6 of 8 · Variant 2
Variants 1 and 2 do not fit
Rahul is not a manager, so the Manager dashboard does not fit. He does not have the itil role either, so the Agent view does not fit. ServiceNow keeps going.
User
Rahul (no special roles)
Checking
Manager dashboard, then Agent view
Audience match?
No, and no
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 7 of 8 · Variant 3
Variant 3: Read-only view
The last variant, the Read-only view, has no audience at all. A variant with no audience fits everyone, so Rahul matches it.
User
Rahul (no special roles)
Checking
Read-only view (order 300, no audience)
Audience match?
Yes (fits everyone)
Variant shown
(not decided yet)
Step 8 of 8 · Result
Rahul gets the Read-only view
Rahul sees a simple read-only summary. Same page, same URL, a completely different screen from Priya's. And because Variant 3 fits everyone, nobody ever ends up with nothing to see.
User
Rahul (no special roles)
Checking
(stopped at the first match)
Audience match?
Yes (fits everyone)
Variant shown
Read-only view

Conditions: different variants for different records

Audiences decide who sees a variant. Conditions decide when. The most common example is the record page in a workspace. There is one Record page, but opening an incident should show incident fields, while opening a change request should show change fields and an approval section.

So the Record page has a variant for incidents with a condition like “table is incident”, another for change requests with “table is change_request”, and so on. The table name comes from the URL you followed in the previous lesson, where /now/sow/record/incident/... passed incident to the page as a parameter. You will build conditions like these in the Data and State module.

Audiences are reusable

An audience is its own record, not a setting buried inside one variant. You define “Agents” once, as users with the itil role, and then attach it to any variant on any page that should be shown to agents.

This matters as the workspace grows. If the definition of an agent changes, say a new role should count too, you change the audience once and every variant using it follows. Nobody has to hunt through dozens of pages.

See it in your instance

Open UI Builder in your PDI (Personal Developer Instance)A free ServiceNow instance you get from developer.servicenow.com to practise on safely.Learn more , as in the first lesson.
Open any experience, then open one of its pages.
Look at the list of variants for that page. Many ServiceNow pages have more than one.
Open a variant’s settings and find its Audience, Conditions and Order. These three settings decide when it is shown.
Notice the option to duplicate a variant. This is how you make your own version of a ServiceNow page safely. Do not save any changes yet.

Practice: which variant will they see?

PracticeWhich variant will they see?

The Team overview page has three variants, checked in this order: 1. Manager dashboard (audience: Managers), 2. Agent view (audience: Agents, the itil role), 3. Read-only view (no audience). Pick the variant each person sees.

Priya, a support agent with the itil role.
Answer: Agent view. She is not a manager, so variant 1 does not fit. She has itil, so variant 2 is the first match.
Anil, the IT manager. He is in the Managers audience and also has the itil role.
Answer: Manager dashboard. He fits both variant 1 and variant 2, but variant 1 is checked first. The first match wins, so he gets the Manager dashboard.
Rahul from Finance, who has no special roles.
Answer: Read-only view. He fits neither audience, so he falls through to variant 3, which has no audience and fits everyone.
A new joiner whose itil role has not been granted yet.
Answer: Read-only view. Without itil, the Agent view does not fit yet. Once the role is granted, the very same page will show her the Agent view, with no change to the page itself.
Meera, a manager in the Managers audience who does not have the itil role.
Answer: Manager dashboard. Variant 1 only checks the Managers audience, and she is in it. The itil role does not matter for this variant.
A contractor given the itil role for a three-month project.
Answer: Agent view. Audiences look at roles, not job titles. With itil, the contractor fits variant 2 exactly like a permanent agent.

What’s next

You now know what a page is, why variants exist, how audiences and conditions decide who sees what, and why the order of variants matters. In the next lesson, A tour of the UI Builder editor, you will open a variant in the editor and learn your way around every panel before you build your first page.

Quick check

A page has two variants: Agent view at order 100 (audience: Agents) and Manager dashboard at order 200 (audience: Managers). Anil is in both audiences. Which variant does he see?

Show answer

Agent view

ServiceNow checks variants from the lowest order number up and stops at the first match. Anil matches the Agent view at order 100, so he never reaches the Manager dashboard. To fix it, give the Manager dashboard a lower order number than the Agent view.

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