I'm Forrest Falk, a ServiceNow Certified Master Architect (CMA). In this post, I'll share practical insights from a CMA’s perspective and show how to use build agent to create, edit and deploy full stack ServiceNow applications that encompass front and backend components. This post is part of a series, and I will be posting updates as I go along. Each post I will be sharing my experience with build agent and add more features. I will cover starting from scratch to how to edit our application.
First, we need to determine what application we want to build. Traditionally in your organization, you would want to create something that is a mix of not too difficult for a MVP, something that is high volume, and something that automates a lot of worker hours. Finding the sweet spot in that zone usually helps you find a good candidate. Of course, with GenAI and Now Assist Build Agent the bar of what is not too difficult for an MVP keeps rising as we are able to more easily create and maintain an application that is more complex.
If you need any documentation on build agent visit: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-application-development/page/build/build-agent/concept...
Build Agent is integrated in the ServiceNow IDE. We can get there by going to All -> App Development -> ServiceNow IDE.
Once you are in the ServiceNow IDE, click on “Create a workspace” to create a new workspace for our application.
You will see a couple popup boxes asking the name of your application and a description. I am going to enter in “Storeroom Tracker” for mine.
Once you press enter, it should redirect you back to the homepage and under “All Workspaces” you should now see your application. Click your newly created workspace to open it.
You should now be in your workspace. Here you can view all of the files of your project in the file explorer on the left. On the right you will see the Now Assist Build Agent. Let’s go ahead and start our prompt there.
In my use case, I am going to tell my build agent that I want to create a storeroom (stockroom) application that lets me see all the storerooms. I should be able to see all the items in the storeroom. I also want to see what items are low in stock within those storerooms so I can order them before they run out. I also, want the build agent to investigate other useful features that I cannot think of. You will want to be as specific as possible with your requirements when prompting so it will generate as close as possible to the result you want. You can always prompt it to adjust what it generates as we go along if it does not. Let’s go ahead and type a version of what I said above.
I inputted: “Create a Storeroom Asset tracking application. It should have a display that shows me all the storerooms, how many items are in each storeroom, items that are low in stock, and any other useful features you can think of.”
Below is the response I got back. It will start creating my asset tracking application. It went ahead and identified what tables, business rules, UI Pages, and sample data it should create. Note that behind the scenes it is making a lot of calls to the LLM to create these different pieces and verify that they work. I let it run for a few minutes on my demo instance.
After running for a few minutes, it stated that it completed the application structure and gave me a description of what was accomplished. It also asks if I am ready to deploy the application on the instance. I am going to say “Yes” so I can review it.
Unfortunately, it could not deploy the storeroom application as there are errors in the build. Please join me in my next post where we prompt it further to correct our build.
Join me for part 2 here:Creating an application with Now Assist Build Agent - Part 2
