Season 2 of The Update Set is HERE!

kristymerriam

Season 2

After a short break, The Update Set is back and this time, it’s a double episode covering two months of news, tooling, and community highlights. There’s a lot packed into this one, but a few themes stand out: stronger community recognition, better developer tooling, and a growing focus on AI and scale.

Celebrating the 2026 MVPs

The new MVP class highlights what makes the ServiceNow ecosystem work: people who consistently show up, share knowledge, and help others succeed. These aren’t just experts—they’re active contributors shaping the community day to day.

Build Agent Momentum

The Build Agent Challenge showcased what happens when you give developers the right tools and a bit of freedom. The resulting App Gallery includes everything from practical business solutions to creative experiments (yes, including games).

On top of that, Build Agent itself continues to evolve:

Planning tools for long-running builds
Image uploads for design guidance
Figma MCP integration
Automated Test Framework (ATF) troubleshooting support

This is a clear push toward faster, more guided app development.

Release Ops: Visibility Without Overhead

Release management gets a boost with Release Ops, a tool designed to bring transparency and governance into the release process—without requiring external CI/CD pipelines or additional licensing. It fits directly into how teams already build on the platform.

Developer Passport

Replacing the TechNow webinar series, Developer Passport introduces a more interactive format:

Live demos
Real-time Q&A
Focused multi-day sessions

Even if you missed the live event, recordings are available, making it easy to catch up.

Practical Dev Tips That Matter

This episode didn’t just cover announcements—it delivered real-world lessons:

Data Consistency Across Environments
Assignment rules alone aren’t enough. Proper seeding (via XML export/import) ensures consistent behavior across dev, test, and prod.

AI Guardrails
As AI becomes embedded in apps, filtering unsafe or inappropriate content before it reaches models is critical. AI Guardrails provide a built-in safety layer.

Wrapper Classes
If you’ve ever lost customizations during an upgrade, this one hits home. Wrapper classes let you extend functionality safely without modifying out-of-box code.

The N+1 Problem (and Why It Hurts)
A standout moment in the episode: a theatrical explanation of how nested queries can destroy performance.
What works at 100 records can fail spectacularly at 100,000. The fix? Smarter query patterns and avoiding unnecessary database calls.

Community Spotlights

Two standout contributors were featured:

Brad Steinberg – A rising star building creative and practical solutions, including custom apps and accessibility advocacy
Wessel Van Enk – From service desk agent to MVP, now focused on improving employee experiences through HRSD

These stories reinforce how quickly developers can grow in the ecosystem with the right mindset.

Knowledge 26: More Than a Conference

Set for May in Vegas, Knowledge 26 (and CreatorCon alongside it) is positioned as a hands-on, builder-focused experience:

Labs and deep dives
GenAI exploration
Hackathons
Direct access to product teams and community leaders

If you’re actively building on the platform, this is where ideas turn into real projects.

Final Thoughts

This episode sets the tone for Season 2: more depth, more community, and more focus on the realities of building at scale. Whether it’s AI safety, performance tuning, or release management, the platform—and the conversations around it—are clearly evolving.