About Upgrade Plan Items

Koji Yanase
Tera Contributor

‎07-31-2023 11:29 PM

We have built "Upgrade Plan - Utah Patch 4". It has eleven Upgrade Plan Items. For example, "Benchmark Client" has only Customized Files made by "system" and "admin". We did not make any changes. Could you explain how those Upgrade Plan Items are created? I'd like to know the condition or the rule about the item creation. I can't find that in the documentation.
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Nia McCash
Mega Sage
Mega Sage

‎08-01-2023 06:55 AM

Items are generated from the entries in the [sys_app_customization] table. If you click into one of those records, you should find a related list called Customized Files which shows you the files that were modified, which means the app was 'customized'. The list would also indicate who modified the file:

NiaMcCash_0-1690897801149.png

 

As you noted, some files are modified by 'system' or 'admin' which means they were modified by ServiceNow and not us (the customer). When I asked support about this, this was their answer:

I see that the customizations that you are referring to logged by 'admin' or 'system' are from scoped applications. When Upgrade plan creates customization versions for scoped applications that have skipped records, it moves all the files present in Customer Updates(sys_update_xml) for such applications to their respective customization version(sys_app_customization). The customizations that you see logged by 'admin' or 'system' are also present in Customer Updates(sys_update_xml).

I asked them to convey feedback to the Product Managers that this was confusing and it would be nice to NOT have these flagged as customized Items.

 

I also ran into App Customizations that had zero Customized Files. When I asked support about that, this was their answer:

I see the customization versions of [some apps] do not have records in the Customized Files related list. This is because when upgrade plan built those customization versions, it could not move the records that were skipped from these applications to the respective customization versions.
e.g For App Analytics Workspace application, there is only one skipped record i.e. sys_properties_28dbc10493023300ebd4f157b67ffbc1. This file is owned by different application (Scoped App Client). That's is why it could not be moved to customization version of App Analytics Workspace application.

Koji Yanase
Tera Contributor
In response to Nia McCash

‎08-01-2023 08:56 PM

Hi Nia,

Thank you so much for your reply. Shoud we inactivate the items that we didn't make any change for the scope before publishing the upgrade plan?

Koji

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Nia McCash
Mega Sage
Mega Sage
In response to Koji Yanase

‎08-02-2023 11:57 AM

I didn't end up using the Upgrade Plan with my upgrade due to the issues and unknowns that I ran into so i don't have a definitive answer.

 

But I might do a few things...

  1. Exclude/deactivate any Items where the Customized Files list is empty.
  2. For Items where the Customized Files list only contain changes by 'system' or 'admin', I would check the target instances to see if those Customized Files were also changed on the target.
    1. If so, I might try excluding/deactivating the Item
    2. If not, then I might try including/activating the Item

#2 above is really questionable and would require testing/trial and error.

Koji Yanase
Tera Contributor
In response to Nia McCash

‎08-04-2023 09:59 PM

Thank you for your reply.

My understanding is that the benefit of an upgrade plan is that the actions for skipped records do not have to be repeated on the target instance. Is it right? If so, I have no choice but to ignore these items that I haven't make any changes, so I don't think the result will change whether the items are active or inactive. What do you think?

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