Record Producers: Application Scope vs Update Sets

[Niels Aksel]

Hi everyone,

I know this topic has come up before, but I'm looking for advice on current practices.

Our small, dedicated ServiceNow team handles all administrative and development tasks on the ServiceNow platform, including creating scoped applications, widgets, and maintaining record producers (catalog items, order guides, UI policies, etc.). We don't have citizen developers in our organization and have no plans to introduce them. Everything is managed by our centralized ServiceNow team.

Over time, we've developed scoped applications for HR, Finance, Facilities, and more using ServiceNow Studio, with each application having its own scope. We don't use source control but rely on the native Application Repository to move our applications from DEV to TEST to PROD. The custom application scopes also include the record producers relevant to their respective areas. For example, the HR application scope contains over 100 HR-related record producers.

While we rarely change the applications themselves, updates to record producers across the platform occur almost daily. As the organization evolves, new record producers are needed, or existing ones require updates. This results in frequent updates to many of our applications, necessitating careful planning when multiple record producers within a single application scope have pending changes.

This presents challenges, such as when a more complicated record producer is being updated and tested, preventing us from implementing other, smaller changes to record producers in the same scope.

I see two options and am curious about what others are doing:

1. Continue as we are, with frequent application updates due to changes in record producers and accepting that we might be less flexible or quick to implement minor adjustments or updates.
2. Move record producers to global scope and manage updates through update sets, allowing individual record producers, variable sets, catalog UI policies, etc., to be updated and moved from DEV to TEST to PROD. This approach will enhance flexibility but go against utilizing application scopes rather than update sets.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Perhaps I'm missing something.

Any advice would be super helpful!

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@Niels Aksel 

My thoughts

Hybrid Approach: Consider a hybrid approach where critical and complex record producers remain within their respective application scopes, while simpler and frequently updated record producers are moved to the global scope. This can balance flexibility and security.

Source Control: Implement source control to better manage changes and track updates across different environments. This can help mitigate some of the deployment complexities.

Automation: Use automation tools to streamline the deployment process and reduce the risk of errors. Automated testing can also help ensure that changes do not introduce new issues

If my response helped please mark it correct and close the thread so that it benefits future readers.

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@Niels Aksel 

Thank you for marking my response as helpful.

If my response helped please mark it correct and close the thread so that it benefits future readers.