Hacktoberfest 2025: Building with ServiceNow, Giving with Hack4Good

[Earl Duque]

It’s here! The air is crisp, and our keyboards are ready. Hacktoberfest is back, and this year is special. 

CALLING THE ENTIRE SERVICENOW BUILDER COMMUNITY! 

This marks the 9th year that the ServiceNow community has participated in DigitalOcean's Hacktoberfest. Almost a decade of open-sourced, collaborative, ServiceNow-specific projects! 

Every year, you set new records. Last year in 2024, you blew us away with 1,375 Pull Requests by 453 Participants! You can see the full results from last year's amazing event here. The bar is high, but we know you can raise it. 

This year, our theme is intentionality. We're thinking about where you are in your builder journey and challenging you to go one step up. Did you participate last year? Take yourself one level up and challenge yourself to do something a little bit harder. We want your participation to be about growth, not just getting contributions in. 

Need some motivation? Watch this 2 minute video from Sr. Developer Advocate, Laszlo Balla, and one of last year's top 3 volunteers:

What’s New in 2025: A Guided Journey 

We heard you. In the past, the sheer number of projects could be overwhelming. This year, we’re taking a more focused approach with a guided journey split into three clear levels. Find the path that’s right for you, or challenge yourself to complete contributions to all three! 

Level 1: "Start your open-source, collaborative journey here." 

New to open source or Git? This is your starting line. We're bringing back our most popular project, Code Snippets, which allows you to contribute to our open repository without needing to spin up a ServiceNow instance. It’s the perfect way to get used to the idea of contributing to a Git project and make your first mark. 

Level 2: "Understand open source in ServiceNow." 

Ready for the next step? This level is about taking a Git repository and connecting it to a ServiceNow instance. You'll see how Git/source control works inside ServiceNow and start contributing records accordingly. It's a little more complex than Level 1, but we've created an incredibly guided and straightforward project to help you learn this crucial skill. And this year, this project has a special purpose... 

A Special Partnership: Hack4Good 

We are thrilled to announce that we are partnering with our friends at Hack4Good this year! 

Typically, ServiceNow Hack4Good is a hackathon where developers, partners, and customers create real-world solutions for nonprofit organizations. After two successful years at the Knowledge conference, Hack4Good is spreading its wings into more year-round events, and our Hacktoberfest is one of its first stops! 

Our Level 2 project will be to contribute to a new Hack4Good Ideation Portal. The records you contribute will be ideas and app suggestions that will fuel future Hack4Good initiatives. You’ll learn how to contribute records to a ServiceNow repo, and your contributions will directly support future social impact projects. 

Level 3: "Contribute to our cornerstone project." 

For our more advanced builders, this is your challenge. We are building a new utility that the entire ServiceNow community can benefit from. The more people that contribute to this cornerstone project, the more the wider community will benefit. We envision this as an ongoing project that will be constantly enhanced, making everyone’s jobs easier. Check out our action-packed project in the main repository! 

What is Hacktoberfest? (And a Git Refresher) 

Hacktoberfest is an annual, month-long celebration of open-source software run by DigitalOcean in partnership with GitHub and others. We, the ServiceNow community, participate by providing ServiceNow-focused projects for you to contribute to. 

Feeling rusty on the terminology? Here's how it connects to our guided journey: 

Imagine you're adding to a community cookbook. 

• Fork (Making Your Own Copy): You photocopy the main cookbook. This is your personal copy of a project to work on. 
• Branch (Starting a New Recipe): You grab a new piece of paper to draft your recipe. This keeps your work separate from the main book while you perfect it. 
• Commit (Saving Your Drafts): You write down the ingredients and save that version. A commit is a snapshot of your work. Your first commit might be a simple snippet for our Level 1 project! 
• Pull Request (Sharing Your Recipe): Your recipe is ready! You ask the head chefs to review it and add it to the main cookbook. This is a pull request (PR)—the core of Hacktoberfest. 
• Push (Adding it to the Main Cookbook): The chefs love it, and your recipe is officially added! For our Level 2 and 3 projects, this is how you'll get your work into a shared ServiceNow application. 

Prefer to learn more about Hacktoberfest in an audio/video format? Check out the episode we recorded for the Break Point Podcast:

And here are more live streams from this year's Hacktoberfest!

• Kickoff stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXfgmnqm270
• Office hours #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iezYXb2KmLE 

Your Rewards for the Journey 

We’ve got some fantastic prizes to celebrate your contributions this year! 

• From DigitalOcean:
  • Evolve your customizable digital badge from Holopin with every pull/merge request you make. 
  • The first 10,000 participants will receive a shirt from DigitalOcean.
• From the ServiceNow Community: 
  • An exclusive Community Badge on your profile for completing Hacktoberfest. 
  • Codes to the ServiceNow store to redeem awesome ServiceNow Merch. Pick from:
    • Official CreatorCon T-shirts (available on a first-come, first-served basis, so contribute early!). 
    • Other miscellaneous ServiceNow merch

IMPORTANT: How to Qualify for ServiceNow Prizes 

To be eligible for the Community Badge, Merch, and T-shirt, you must meet both of these conditions: 

1. Have SIX (6) of your Pull Requests accepted in eligible Hacktoberfest repositories. (Notice it's 6 now, not 4!)
2. Post a comment on this blog post detailing your contributions and sharing your experience! 

How to Get Started 

Everything you need to know is in our main Hacktoberfest repository. This is your central hub for project links, detailed instructions, and leaderboards. 

https://github.com/ServiceNowDevProgram/Hacktoberfest 

The projects for this year are now live in that repository. Start contributing today! 

Each project repository has detailed instructions that you can follow, but here is a crash-course 3-minute video:

Your Guides on the Journey 

This event is only possible thanks to a massive effort from our community volunteers. They’re reviewing your pull requests and helping you along the way. Meet the full Hacktoberfest 2025 Crew in the main repository! 

Need help? The entire crew and fellow participants hang out on the SNDevs workspace chat. 

Join us via this link (https://invite.sndevs.com/) and then find us in the #hacktoberfest channel. 

Get Started! 

The journey has begun! Here’s how you can participate: 

• Bookmark this blog post! It will be updated with the latest information. 
• Go "Star" the main GitHub repository to get notifications. 
• Join the SNDevs Slack and say hello in the #hacktoberfest channel. 

HACKTOBERFEST IS BACK BABY WOOOOOOOOO 

[keshavaP]

Super excited!!! Contributed 7 PRs till now and its my first time. Learnt how to use github by participating in the event.

[abirakundu23]

Hi @Dr Atul G- LNG ,

Thanks for your input. I was able to redeem T-shirt from Digital Ocean .Will receive any mail from ServiceNow community for Creator con T-shirt if you share some insights?

[Frankee]

It’s been a busy few weeks of coding and testing, and I’m pleased to share that I now have seven approved pull requests in this year’s ServiceNow Hackathon, after having a few rejected- lessons learnt! 

Each one tackles a real problem that developers run into and provides a simple, reusable way to solve it.

1. Server-Side: Safe Bulk Update Runner (#2383)
   A reusable batch pattern that timeboxes work, checkpoints progress and safely handles large data updates using ScheduleOnce. Useful for CMDB hygiene and data backfills.
2. GlideAggregate: Incident Resolution Percentile (#2384)
   Works out incident resolution percentiles (P50, P90 etc.) by assignment group using GlideAggregate and ordered queries for a clearer view of performance.
3. Integration: Webhook Receiver with HMAC SHA-256 Validation (#2386)
   A secure Scripted REST API pattern that checks payload integrity with HMAC signatures before accepting requests.
4. Script Include: Next Business Window Calculator (#2468)
   Works out the end date and time after adding a set number of working minutes to a GlideSchedule, taking holidays and time zones into account.
5. Mail Script: Redact PII from Outbound Email Body (#2465)
   Removes personal data like emails, phone numbers, IP addresses, NI-style IDs and card-like numbers from outbound notifications to support privacy compliance.
6. Background Script: Incident Resolution Percentile (#2466)
   Looks at incident resolution times, calculates percentiles and highlights where there are outliers or process issues.
7. Integration: Scripted REST API to Expose MID Server Status as JSON (#2467)
   Provides a simple JSON feed showing MID Server status, last update time and a calculated stale flag for monitoring and dashboards.

I also want to give a big shout out to @Hanna_G or her help, guidance and patience throughout this. My dev skills are still in their early days, and this Hackathon was a steeeeep learning curve - having her there to bounce ideas around and sanity-check things made all the difference.

[adityapawar]

My Hacktoberfest 2025 Journey — 6 Pull Requests Completed

Hacktoberfest 2025 was a great opportunity to dive into real-world open-source projects and challenge myself across multiple tech stacks.
With the updated requirement of six accepted pull requests, I focused on making contributions that were small but meaningful — improving structure, documentation, and functionality in several repositories.

---

Contributions

1. Ghostfolio – Extract Footer into Angular Component
   Refactored the footer into a standalone component to match project architecture and improve modularity.

2. Sort Quest – Implement Bubble Sort Algorithm
   Added a comparator-based Bubble Sort implementation, ensuring immutability and passing all performance tests.

3. Nelty Website – Add Documentation and Code Comments
   Improved code readability and onboarding by adding detailed comments, CSS documentation, and a clearer README structure.

4. GDG Babcock University – Refactor Home Component in React
   Moved the Home component into its own directory, separated styling into CSS, and cleaned up routing in App.jsx.

5. Privacy Analyzer – Add CLI Filtering Options
   Implemented command-line filters (--filter trackers, eval, fingerprinting) to help users narrow down privacy results.

6. Nelty Website – Fix Broken Markdown Formatting in README.md
   Reviewed and fixed broken Markdown syntax to ensure the README rendered cleanly from start to finish.

---

Takeaways

Hacktoberfest reinforced the value of writing clean, maintainable code and collaborating effectively with maintainers.
Each PR—whether a refactor, feature, or documentation update—was a reminder that good engineering is about consistency and clarity as much as it is about logic.

Completing all six PRs was a solid experience in balancing technical contribution with communication and documentation.
I look forward to contributing even more in the future.

[chasemiller]

This was my first Hackathon, I learned a lot about the ServiceNow platform and had fun doing it! My PR’s started off simple and gradually got more complex.
I ended up with a total of 15+ approved PR’s and reached the top 5% on the leaderboard!

My approved PRs:

Code-Snippets - 16 Cnt
ActionPack - 1 Cnt

Some of my favorite submissions:

1. Predictive Intelligence (PI) Model Training Data Prep Utils:  Categorized into data groups, these scripts analyze the quality of data in ServiceNow to assess readiness for PI model training. It provides statistics and actionable insights to help developers improve data quality before building machine learning models.
2. AI Sentiment Analyzer: Analyzes text sentiment using Groq API (Swap it out with any LLM) for a positive/negative/neutral sentiment classification and confidence score per conversation.
3. Virtual Agent Analytics - Topic Scanner: Analyzes Virtual Agent conversation logs to identify the most common topics over a configurable time period.

I enjoyed reading feedback on PR’s and learned new tricks regarding ServiceNow SDKs because of it, shout out to  @Maik Skoddow!

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @abirakundu23 

Not sure, is a creator con t-shirt as well. 

@Earl Duque inputs please.

[ChimereobimO]

it great and fun 
to be part of this

[ChimereobimO]

if you need help let me know 
thank you

[Sai_Charan_K]

This year’s Hacktoberfest has been an amazing journey of learning, collaboration, and contribution! I successfully made 6 pull requests, all of which were accepted — each one helping me deepen my understanding of ServiceNow development and open-source collaboration.

Here’s a quick summary of what I worked on:

1. Get form elements using client script : An on-load script was developed to retrieve all field names present on the current form when it loads and displays them in an alert message. It helped me understand more about the g_form API and how to interact with form elements dynamically.
   Link: Get Form Elements
   
2. Difference between 2 dates in days : Created a custom Flow Designer action that calculates the difference between two dates in days. This action takes two date inputs and outputs the number of days between them. It was a great learning experience working with GlideDateTime and understanding how to handle date calculations in Flow Designer scripts. I also learned how reusable actions like this can simplify automation and reduce redundant script logic across multiple flows.
   Link: Difference between 2 dates in days
3. StringToJSONUtil : This custom Flow Designer Action safely converts a JSON-formatted string into a valid JSON object. It allows developers and flow designers to dynamically parse string data — such as API responses or text inputs — and leverage key-value pairs in subsequent flow steps. This utility makes handling dynamic data more robust by including error handling to prevent failures due to invalid JSON inputs.
   Link: StringToJSONUtil
4. Get active tickets : This custom Flow Designer Action retrieves all active tickets assigned to a specific user in ServiceNow. It can query one or more task-related tables — such as Incident, Problem, or Change Request — or any table you specify. The action then returns a list of active records (ticket numbers, short descriptions, and other key details) for that user. This utility is especially useful for automations, dashboards, or notifications where you need to show or process all active work assigned to someone.
   Link: Get Active Tickets
5. Find Similar Tickets without using NLP or AI : 

   This script identifies and ranks tickets in ServiceNow that are similar to a specified reference ticket. Similarity is determined by analyzing the text content of the short_description and description fields using text-matching techniques. The script can optionally boost similarity scores based on matching category or assignment_group values. Designed for background script execution, it supports testing, analysis, and automation use cases such as duplicate detection, trend analysis, and intelligent ticket routing.

   Link: Find Similar Tickets
6. Feature: LifeLink : This application streamlines the process of connecting patients in need with potential donors within an organization. It allows employees to submit requests, register as donors, and track request status through an intuitive portal. The system automatically matches donors and location, notifies suitable donors, and tracks the fulfilment process from initiation to closure. Coordinators can monitor urgent requests, manage communication with donors, and view dashboard insights showing fulfilled versus pending cases — all within ServiceNow’s unified workspace.
   Link: LifeLink 

Overall, I had enjoyed myself contributing to the open source and the best part Treenation planting a tree on my behalf for 6 successful pull requests. A big shout-out to the Hacktoberfest crew in spending their valuable time in reviewing code and helping developers like me in successfully submitting the requests.

Thanks and Regards, 
K. Sai Charan
Sr. ServiceNow Developer
Deloitte.

[Trimbakesh]

This is the first time , I am participating in ServiceNow Hacktoberfest, had contributed to multiple code snippets..and few Hack4good topics..
Got a refresher on GIT and Source control concepts..
The Holopin badges, Treenation Contribution and GIT PR/MR review processes were super exciting...

6 PR Contributions:

Title: GRC Policy Retirement Guard with Control Objective Check

Title: GetHelpAI Script include

Title:Create Critical P1 Incident from Alert using GlideJsonPath

Title: Find Oldest Open Incidents per Group

Title: Count Inactive Users with Active incidents

Title:Create Problem based on incident volume