Seeing Changes in Scoped Application Update

[jmiskey]

We had an issue the other day.  We have a scoped application, and it was requested to make a very minor change to the workflow used by it.  So I updated the workflow and then published the Scoped Appplication update.  When I went to install the update in our Test instance, it updated 105 records (way more than the one change I made)!  It appears that a former employ was working/testing a bunch of changes that were never published, and got picked up!  So I needed to rollback the version in Test to back all of those out of there.  I then just added the Workflow change to an Update Set and promoted that to Test to accomplish what we needed done.  So our Test system is fine (though our Dev system is now messed up for this Scoped Application, and we will need to clone down to get it back in alignment).

My question is this: Is there some way to view all the changes a Scoped Application will make before publishing it?  It is pretty easy when promoting update sets, as you can easily see all the change records contained in any update set.  So is there some way to do something similar in a Scoped Application before publishing an update (to see exactly what will be included in that update)?

Thanks

[Marcos Kassak]

Hi @jmiskey,

We had the very same issue a few months back, and I brought the idea to start using GitHub as our repo to create branches for each user story for different developers and check every change before our last commit to sub-prod and prod.

Refer to the below link on how we also verify the changes for each developer before committing:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/sandiego-application-development/page/build/applications/task/vie...

If you want to configure it, here's the link.

Otherwise, you can always check the application files:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/sandiego-application-development/page/build/applications/concept/...

If my response helps to solve your issue. Kindly mark it as helpful & correct. It will be helpful for future readers! 👍

Thanks,
Marcos Kassak
The world works with ServiceNow!

[jmiskey]

I am pretty sure my work won't let us use GitHub.  In looking at the application files, I don't see where it links each change to the version it was updated in.

Ideally, we want to see all that will be updated before installing the update.

[Miguel Donayre]

HI,

What functionality are you using for your promotion to your other environments? App Repo, Source Control, or Update sets?

[jmiskey]

I think it would qualify as Source Control.  They are Scoped Applications, and we bring them up in Studio, and publish them with a new version number.  Then we go to the next environment, find them under the Application Manager and install the latest update.

As I said, if it was updates sets, it would be easy, as we can easily see what it contained in any update set.  But I don't see how to easily see that using Source Control before an update is Installed (exactly what will be updated in that particular update version).  Ideally, we want to see all that will be updated before installing the update.

We used to always use Update Sets, but there has been a big push to use Scoped Applications with Source Control now.