Moving Update Sets with Different Instance Versions

[Joe75]

I have a curious question. Is there any documentation stating anything about what will be moved through update sets based on instance version to different instance version.

As an example, I've encountered the following issue with I believe is from the Instance version difference.

In my personal instance (Orlando) I was making some changes to Flow (Flow Designer). I moved my changes to a coworkers personal instance (Madrid) and was unable to open the Flows; a sys id xxxxxxx was the error. I moved this same update set to another coworkers personal instance (Orlando) and encountered no issues.

The purpose of the test in personal instances is with my current work our customer has a Prod (customer used instance), Dev2 (instance for final approval of changes before going to Prod), Test (our test instance), and Dev (instance dedicated for development). All of the instances are Orlando except for the Prod instance. I'm wanting to make sure we have no issued moving our current development work to the Prod instance if it isn't upgraded to Orlando.

Thanks in advance!

[Ashutosh Munot1]

HI,

As a best practise we always want all instance to be on same version and we can move updates sets to them.

We can move update set from lower version to higher version but not recommended to move it from Higher to lower version. This knowledge comes with experience and seeing some articles and videos about servicenow.

Thanks,
Ashutosh

[Kuldeep Rathour]

But i had already sent higher to lower...Tokyo to San Diego.

[Brad Tilton]

I would agree with Ashutosh here. Generally you want to move things across the same release as the instances will be similar. Going from newer to older, like Orlando to NY, can be problematic because newer releases will have more/newer features associated with them and you could easily introduce a dependency that you don't even know about that doesn't exist in the older release. 

[Luiz Lucena]

Hi Brad, 

Good tips. 

However, sometimes may not be possible to wait for PRD to be upgraded. Let's say, we need to fix something urgent. 

In cases where DEV and UAT where just upgraded and PRD is scheduled for 45 days ahead, what type of changes would definitely not recommended to move from newer to older version?

ACL's changes, new tables, changes to custom tables, database view, workflow changes, etc.?

Based on my experience, I noticed that some changes are simple enough to not cause any harm. But those mentioned above I'm still trying to understand.

As a best practice, I tend to avoid but an opinion from more seasoned professionals are always welcome!