Customizing choice field with new choices and impact on upgrades.

[Afsar2]

Hi,

We always add new custom choices on any choice fields in ServiceNow based on business requirement.

All I want to know about the impact on such custom choices and choice field during instance upgrade.

For example on cmdb_ci_computer table we have a choice field "Operating System".

This os choice field contains new custom choices defined by admin.

I am curious to know if this os field will be excluded with new updates after upgrade

or It will continue to get new updates (may be new set of choices or any modification at dictionary level for the field).

I referred docs site which speaks about customized object which can be replaced on next upgrade.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/rome-application-development/page/build/system-update-sets/task/t...

I want to know if adding custom choices to choice field will treat the OOB choice field as customized object? or individual custom choices on the field are treated as customized object?

Any suggestion will be of great help.

Thank you,

Afsar Sheikh

[Aman Kumar S]

The OOB choices that you will modify, will be considered as customized and skipped in next upgrades if there are some changes in that release.

[Afsar2]

Hi @Aman Kumar ,

Thanks for the great info.

Can you please share me some KB article associated to this if possible.

I appreciate your help.

Thank you.

[Aman Kumar S]

Here's one from @Chuck Tomasi  himself

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=80448b29dbd8dbc01dcaf3231f961962

[dmathur09]

Hi Asfar,

I would say there is no harm in creating new choice for a particular field if there is a requirement. The Servicenow docs mentions mostly about the scripting part like a customization that you did today might come as a feature from Servicenow. In that case you would need override your customization with Servicenow feature.

To your example I would not think Servicenow will deprecate a whole field, it generally updates or deprecates majorly on the scripting part. But anything new changes that Servicenow bring and may cause collision with your customization will always be defined in the skipped updates during upgrade and then it is up to you whether to stick with customization, revert to OOB or do a merger.  

Regards,

Deepankar Mathur