5 Practical Tips for Getting Comfortable with Custom Applications

[Brad Steinberg]

Walking into a new ServiceNow implementation can be daunting for both new ServiceNow professionals and seasoned veterans alike. Whether you have been working within the ServiceNow ecosystem for years or you are just entering the custom application space, there is a high chance you will be responsible for an application that you have inherited. Below are 5 things you can do to learn about any application(s) you will support.

Table of Contents

1. Find the documentation
2. Submit a record [in sub-production environment]
3. Use the Schema Map
4. Review the Update Sets 
5. Use ServiceNow Studio Code Search
6. Conclusion

Find the documentation

Documentation is super critical to keep around and keep current. Chances are someone has created documentation, even if just a small note on how a discrete piece of functionality is meant to work. While full length documentation is usually sparse, more often than not, there is something around.

In ServiceNow, check your Knowledge Bases. Did the developers before you write up some handy architectural diagrams? Did the product team create customer documents? Does your customer support team keep a text file around with troubleshooting tips? Any of these documents you can use to learn about the products you will now be responsible for supporting.

Take a moment to unify what you find into one space (preferably a Knowledge Base). Don't forget to add it to regularly. As you learn more about the system, develop enhancements and remediate bugs, that is your time to refresh the documentation. Let future you and your future colleagues, have the documentation that you would have appreciated.

Visit the ServiceNow Docs: Searching using Knowledge Management.

Submit a record [in a sub-production environment]

This may seem silly. If I don't know how to use the app, how can I submit a record? Remember the first time you used a self-checkout machine at the store? You looked at the screen with a little bit of hesitation but you figured your way through it. While you may not have designed the interface, you can figure out how to navigate the application. If you are lucky, perhaps at the end of the workflow, there's a delicious sandwich awaiting you, just like after using the self-checkout machine.

In this exercise, you'll also gauge the user experience which will allow you to consider possible future enhancements. Most important, you'll learn about the application. Ask yourself questions along the way such as:

• What happens when I enter a number into a text field?
• Which items are available in this choice list?
• When I click Submit, Save and Update, do they all do the same thing?
• If I open the Developer Console (F12 tools), is there anything printed out to the console or are there any errors reported?
• Did a workflow get initiated?
• Are there any approval requests sent out?

The answers to these questions serve as a great starting point for documentation (see the previous section) for your team, people who inherit responsibility of the application portfolio and of course, you.

Use the Schema Map

One of my first ServiceNow mentors taught me the mantra, "Everything, everything, everything is a table, table, table with a record, record, record." ServiceNow uses the relational database model and at the core of every application is at least 1 table. Many tables inherit from a core table; some tables reference other tables; some tables are standalone tables. ServiceNow has a great feature called the Schema Map that allows you to see how tables are connected. Use it as another tool to figure out which tables are a part of the applications you are owning.

Visit the ServiceNow Docs: Generate a schema map.

Review the Update Sets

Okay, so you've exhausted the documentation that might have been around, you've learned about every table there possibly could be and you've submitted a few records to see how the application works at a high-level (or even further than that). Now let's use a strategy that I use so often. Open up the Update Set record(s) for the custom application. Depending on the application scope, this application could be in the Global scope or a custom scope. Look at the Update Set description. If it has some notes, then you are off to a good start. For my development, I love to treat the Description like a Change Log. The Change Log (Description field's text) should indicate to the developers what it is that this Update Set is adding, updating or removing.  Second, let's talk about Version history. 

Many of the records in your application have versions. ServiceNow automatically captures changes to records that are part of you application's configuration. The Customer Updates are the records in the Update Set that are versioned. You can click on a record in the Customer Updates Related List. In the Default view of the Customer Update record, look for the Related Links section and the click the UI Action called Compare to Current. You can compare the older version of a record to the current version of the record. This will help give you perspective on the changes that were made and, you can correlate that with the description of the Update Set.

Visit ServiceNow Docs: View customizations and compare with new version.

Use ServiceNow Studio Code Search

ServiceNow Studio is a really powerful IDE (Integrated Development Environment). I highly encourage you to use it when developing scoped applications within the platform. It has an extremely useful feature called Code Search which allows you to scan the instance for records that contain the text you are interested in finding. You can limit your search to an Application Scope too so that you narrow down the location of the record(s) you are seeking.

Visit ServiceNow Docs: Find an app or app file using code search.

Conclusion

The world of application development is vast. You have the tools at your disposal now to navigate ServiceNow Applications like a pro. Try out these techniques and comment with any strategies you use that help you get comfortable with new applications.