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Hi there,
Fresh out-of-the-box ServiceNow instances come with a ton of demo data, which is by itself pretty nice. At a certain moment in time, for new instances (and possibly personal developer instances) you do want to clean up that demo data. Demo data that reaches way further than just Task data.
There is a "Remove demo data" option available. However be aware, that this does have a few side effects. One of them… removing demo data removes Service Catalog Workflows!
This is definitely not new, already been around for years, though somehow this is not known for every ServiceNow admin or ServiceNow partner. So giving it a bit more spotlight.
Demo data
As mentioned new ServiceNow instances are provisioned with a ton of demo data. At a certain moment in time, it will be desired to clean this up. You could do so manually, but that would take a massive amount of time and most likely you would oversee a lot of tables and related records that need to be cleaned up also. ServiceNow has an automated workflow available (for both customer instances and personal developer instances, free of charge) to support the demo data removal process.
For customer instances you would request the demo data removal through the ServiceNow Support site. One of the routes to take can be navigating to "Instance Dashboard" and select "Actions" on the right side of the instance you are after. Within the actions under "Administration" there should be an option "Remove Demo Data" available.
For personal developer instances you would request the demo data removal through the Developer site. Under "My Instance" choose "Remove demo data" within the "Instance action" section.
Remove demo data
After having opted for the demo data removal, a Schedule Item is created on the instance that will trigger the scripting involved for the demo data removal.
Once the demo data removal is finished after a few hours, you will be notified through a notification.
Service Catalog Workflows
Removing demo data through the above method does have a few side effects. One of them: out-of-the-box Service Catalog Workflows are removed also! You might wonder, why should I care? One of the Workflows concerns the "Service Catalog Request" Workflow. This is the Workflow that approves the Request, and once the Request is approved the Workflow or Flow for the Catalog Item concerned will trigger. Without the Service Catalog Request Workflow the Request won't be approved and with that, your Request Management process is broken!
You won't be the first customer to encounter this. Recently I heard this at a ServiceNow partner where they were close before the go-live and thought it was a good idea to apply the Remove demo data option, not realizing this would happen…
At one of my new customers one of the issues on their backlog was that they couldn't figure out what they did wrong in creating their Catalog Items and Flows… they didn't really do anything wrong other than that their ServiceNow partner (who left already) applied the Remove demo data option.
So if going for applying the Remove demo data option, export the Service Catalog Request Workflow first! Or better, create a Flow performing this logic 😀.
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That's it. Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!
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Kind regards,
Mark Roethof
Independent ServiceNow Consultant
10x ServiceNow MVP
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