Delete the file Vs DeActivate

[Shankar19]

Hi All,

I have a existing "UI Policy", it is no longer needed now.

Question : What is the best way, can I delete the file or deactivate it?

Deactivate : It sits in customer instances forever.

Delete : I need to write fix script to delete for upgrade customers.

Please advice.

[Gaurav Shirsat]

Hello @Shankar19 

as per my experience, when you are developing things in Dev or You wanted to perform this Activity(Delete or Deactivate) in Lower Instance then you are free to Perform the things you wanna try. because over the period of time your Lower Instances are Cloned with PROD Instance.

Do Check Below Points : 

Deleting record is not best practice.
Deleting record may cause affect on back-end reference records.
In some organization there is policy of not to delete any data or records.(Check with Architect/Technical Lead/Client Technical Advisor over there)

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0726509

Now if you ask me personally in this situation,

would recommend you Not to Delete, Please Deactivate only.

Possibilities are : the Update Set in which this is captured, that entry also you have to remove, which is Again Bad Practice.

in future if its needed to Migrate Things somewhere definitely team gonna use Update Set to Move as they are Ready Made 😉 which will throw errors. so, Deactivate it and Capture in an Update Set, later Either Provide Appropriate Naming Convention  or Merge Update Set Later.

Thanks and Regards

Gaurav Shirsat

ServcieNow Community MVP-2022