Are you still developing in the global scope?

[Chuck Tomasi]

I'm hearing more and more that a lot of people are still developing their solutions in the global scope despite all the great development advancements we've built in to the platform (e.g. Git integration, Studio, delegated development, publish/install, etc.). Our platform business unit has the vision that we should all be building using scoped apps. This includes new apps as well as extensions to existing applications (even in the global scope.) I'd like to know what's keeping you from realizing that vision. Examples may include:

• There is a scripting API that is not available to scoped apps
• Our requirements force us to use synchronous Ajax
• We are still on Eureka
• I love update sets!
• I just don't know enough about creating scoped apps (and that's OK.)

Specifics are always appreciated. Thanks!

[Chuck Tomasi]

Hi William, let me see if I can take each of these in turn.

- Lack of consistent message/guidance from ServiceNow support.

This is a message we have heard loud and clear from customers - not just in development, but across many of the other business units (ITOM/ITAM/ITSM/HR/Security/etc) as well. We are creating the Customer Success Center and launching it at Knowledge 18 to help customers on their ServiceNow journey. This should help not only the messaging across ServiceNow, but also across the partner ecosystem. 

- There are so many script includes that are still locked to global and accessible from the global scope only. Why hasn't ServiceNow made those accessible for scoped apps?

Many are used exclusively for global apps, so you don't/want access to them in other apps (e.g. change risk calculator). Some, like JSUtil, contain calls to legacy Java objects which are not scope friendly. I agree, there can be more focus on fixing the issues of the past. Product management drives the features of the next release based on feedback from customers. We'd love to hear what you need. Please be as specific as possible - i.e. specific script includes rather than just saying "global script includes". I invite you to open an enhancement request! Our product managers DO listen.

Enhancement requests: Tell us how you would improve the ServiceNow product 

- ServiceNow does a great job delivering new tools/functionality but less than stellar job or communicating why we should care or invest in adopting them.

I'm curious where you are getting your information from (or not). Specifically around Flow Designer, we've had blog articles on this community, several webinars/videos, discussions at developer meetups and SNUGs (most of those with accompanying email announcements.) This extends to the other product features in the other BUs as well. To some, it's been hard to miss! I'd love to hear if there are other ways we can get the content to you.

With respect to Flow Designer, the strategic position is to make the next workflow engine for the masses. The current graphical workflow has been in place since 2008 and isn't "citizen developer friendly". Flow Designer, and accompanying IntegrationHub are intended to be available to the "drag-n-drop" users in your organizations. Right now Flow Designer can replace many business rules scheduled jobs, and workflows. To me, it's on a different level than the graphical workflow engine. In my experience, admins have tended to build out fairly monolithic workflows using the legacy engine. These were challenging to build, debug, and maintain. Flow Designer breaks this down, much like business rules to be more discrete and thus easier to build and manage.

If you'd like a deeper dive, with examples, I encourage you to watch episode 44 of TechNow from Dec 4.

TechNow Episode List

[William Busby]

Chuck, I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Great feedback. I will begin documenting the barriers for scoped apps and start sending enhancement requests.

Your last response shows I wasn't clear in my example but your response got there anyway. I didn't mean to imply ServiceNow doesn't do a great job in showcasing the benefits of the changes they make - just that we customers sometimes don't understand the problem you're trying to solve. I've been doing Orchestration workflows since the early days of Fuji and yes, some are monolithic (well in excess of the 100 activity barrier). Then Flow Designer shows up like the new cool kid on the block. Lot's of fanfare, etc. but when I look at it and realize it only has a small subset of the Orchestration workflow functionality I had to wonder... why? It takes a huge investment to bring in these platform changes so there's got to be a big perceived driver, but nobody talks about the why.

Until your second paragraph... that is exactly what I needed to know. It does represent the first leg of a new direction for workflows which, when stated as part of a strategic direction which extends beyond the functionality delivered in the initial Kingston release makes the 'why' clear and that it's not going to be 'workflow lite' for long.

Thanks for taking time to explain.

Seriously, just take that paragraph and paste it into the start of every video and tech doc ever released on Flow Designer.

[Toby Schwartz]

Hi Chuck,

what is your recommendation for below scenario?

I need to create a custom Orchestration activity for AzureAD. Ideally I would like to copy an OOTB AzureAD activity and then modify accordingly.

Where should I create the custom activity?

1. OOTB AzureAD scoped app 

2. global scope

3. create new scoped app

It looks like Orchestration activities cannot be copied into a private scope. See docs article below. So for option 1 and 3 I would probably need to create the activity from scratch rather than copy.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-servicenow-platform/page/administer/orchestration-activity-designer/task/t_CopyACustomActivity.html

Many thanks,

Toby

[William Busby]

Been in the same situation and I've gone with developing them in a scoped app. The OOB ones are pretty simple and rarely are a direct replacement for what you need in your environment due to security restrictions, etc.

Anything you need from OOB just cut and paste into yours.

[William Busby]

Forgot one thing to mention. If you develop a custom activity in the global scope there is no supported method of deleting it. At best you can create a category for deprecated activities and move it there. But... you CAN delete a scoped app.