How To Use a Custom Set of Homepage Refresh Interval Settings on an Instance - Support and Troubleshooting

How To Use a Custom Set of Homepage Refresh Interval Settings on an Instance Issue  Description As some ServiceNow administrator may be aware, an administrator of the system can opt to enable or disable the auto-refresh capabilities of Homepages on the instance. However, most administrators and users are not aware that the selectable options for the refresh rate times can also be customized.

In an out-of-box, uncustomized instance, the list should contain the options Off , 5 minutes , 15 minutes , 30 minutes , and 1 hour . These options coincide with the interval of time after which a displayed Homepage will refresh, redrawing that Homepage and all the objects on that Homepage. The default setting for a new instance is to have the auto-refresh capabilities enabled, however, users would be set to Off for their personal setting. If a user changes this setting to another of the selectable values, this will be stored for that user as a system preference and that value will then be the Refresh interval value for that user for any Homepage he has open.

These options are selectable from the cog icon found in the upper right of any Homepage that user has rights to view.

While these default options should be adequate for most any instance, occasionally, an administrator may have the need to change or add options to these settings to allow different values to be selected for these Refresh intervals. This article will describe the steps that can be used to customize these refresh interval settings on that instance.

Procedure To adjust these options, log into the instance with an admin account.

Once logged into the instance, in the Filter navigator search bar type sys_properties.list . This will bring up a list of the system property records as found on that instance.

Filter the list to determine if a System Property with the name glide.home.refresh_intervals is already found on the instance. In an out-of-box instance this property does not exist, but if these values have been previously edited the system property may already be found on the instance. if the system property is already found on the instance, click the Information icon associated to it property to open the record for editing.

In most cases, the property will not already be found on the instance. In that case, click the New button at the top of the list of system properties to create a new System Property record.

Populate the new system property record form that appears with the following data:

Name : glide.home.refresh_intervals

Description: A brief description of what this property is intended for on the instance (i.e. Values (in seconds) for the Homepage refresh options).

Type : String

Value : This should be a comma-delimited list of the settings which will appear in, and can be selected from, the Refresh Intervals selector on the instance. The Off value will automatically appear and does not need to be specified. Each of the settings should be in a number of seconds for the selected Refresh rate. The system will convert these seconds into the appropriate unit measurements for display in the Refresh Interval selection dialog. Each value should be delimited by a comma but no spaces. For instance, to replicate the out-of-box values that will appear by default on an instance, the following could be specified in the Value field of this new system property: 300,900,1800,3600 . These values would coincide with the values 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, and 1 Hour.

After filling out the necessary fields, click the Submit button to save the new system property record.

Discretion should be used when modifying the selectable values for the auto-refresh rate, as each auto-refresh of a Homepage causes all objects found on that Homepage to redraw. In some cases too frequent a refresh rate can cause performance issues on the instance and in very extreme cases could cause performance issues on the entire instance.

Example As an example, if we wanted to modify the values that appeared in the Refresh Interval window to be 10 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 Hours, we could set this property to have the value 600,900,1800,3600,5400.

When accessing the Refresh Interval, it would then appear similar to the following:

Additional Information Note that the actual refresh interval as selected from the list by an individual user is stored as a user preference for that user. Thus, even if the list of selectable options is changed, the Homepage refresh rate for individual users will continue to operate at the last setting unless that user opts to change it (which will then be limited to one of the selections in the list of selectable options).

In order for the Refresh Interval selections to be displayed and considered, the Auto Refresh system property that controls auto-refresh for Homepages must also be set to true. By default, this property is set to true on a new instance but if it has been disabled for any reason, the auto refresh settings as specified in this article will not appear and the Homepage will not auto-refresh as expected. The following KB Article describes the steps to enable and disable Homepage auto-refresh on an instance:

KB0744603 - How to Disable or Enable Homepage Auto-Refresh