ServiceNow Update Set Batching - Best Practices & Lessons Learnt

[The SN Nerd]

Hi Community,

ServiceNow introduced Update set batching in Jakarta.

This is our experience so far:

Usage

At this stage, we have used it for Releases, where we create an empty Parent Update Set and relate Update Sets to be included in the release as children.

Pros

• Can remove individual items from the release at the last moment.
• Similar to merging, except you can essentially unmerge but unrelating a child at any time
• Easy to deploy, only need to commit Parent Update Set
• More Granular Update Sets makes it easier to tie changes to requirements and documentation

Cons

???

There isn't much information on it at the moment, especially around Best Practices, so I thought I would reach out and see what the Community Experience is so far.

Will you keep merging Update Sets, or will you start batching? Is this the way forward?

[timhorn]

I have mixed feelings about batch updates.  All the pros you mentioned are accurate.  However, ServiceNow kind of dropped the ball in terms of collision resolution.  It identifies collisions, but asks you to manually identify which of the original update sets should take precedence.  My opinion is that it should be able to determine which update is newer and automatically accept that one.  We've been using batch update sets for the past couple months, and aside from the collision resolution, I have no other complaints.

[The SN Nerd]

I have blogged about this:

How to Backup Your Update Sets in 4 Easy Steps

[The SN Nerd]

That is interesting. Hopefully they will automate this in future.

[Fred Jean]

Hi,

I'm not sure what the good practice would be regarding "Can remove individual items from the release at the last moment.":

• say you have 3 platforms : development, acceptance tests and production
• you create a batch on development, and deploy it to acceptance
• your process is tho deploy from development to acceptance and then from acceptance to production
• then you are asked not to deploy one of the update sets to production

So that means you have to remove the update set from the batch; but should that be done :

• on development platform ? (trouble is I cannot deploy this again to acceptance)
• on acceptance platform ? (trouble is the batch would be different in development)
• on both (manually) ? (that sounds wrong doesn't it ?)

Or should we create a brand new batch (on acceptance platform) ?