Update Set vs. GitHub Integration

[Luca Michalczyk]

Happy new year SNow Family,

so basically I have an application all planned out and now I want to start the whole dev process. I want to develop it on my PDI and since there will be some time between me finishing it and the app getting reviewed, I started to worry about this whole pdi reclaiming thingy. I simply fear that at the time when the app is about to be reviewed, I simply forgot to extend my PDI and that it got reclaimed. To prepare, I was thinking about creating an update set or a git hub repo to solve this problem and of course to transfer it to different PDIs if it gets "accepted". 

Just in case if the question to wether go with an update set or a git hub repo is depending of the content of said application, let me first give you a quick summary of the things i want to build:

I will create a new scope for new tables for my usecase, create a new service catalog with some new flows, new KB articles and do some changes to the now-mobile app. If there is time, I will also configure some stockrooms, surverys and maybe even walk-up experiences. So it feels like some of the changes will be done in my custom scope while some of the configurations are done in some of the ootb-scopes. 

i) Would you use an update set or a git hub repo to make it "accessible" from different dev instances?

ii) If you would go with an update set, can you simply put every change into one set or would you split it up? Scope-wise or somehow splitted up for Service Catalog, Now-Mobile changes, flows, etc.

iii) What are the general differences between update sets and pushing everything to git hub except the version control?

iv) Something different i should keep in mind? 

Thanks in advance, hope all of you are doing well

Luca

[Hitoshi Ozawa]

Update set has a benefit of being able to create tables, forms, and lists from UI and not having to run scripts to "install" these in other instance.

With git, scripts to create tables, forms, and lists can be written but they will also have to be executed on the new instance.

Whether to use update set or git will largely depends on the skill of people involved in development. If ServiceNow was chosen because of zero coding, use update set. It's going to take too much time explaining git and scripting.

Update set are fine except that git has more control of the development and testing process. Most git services also supports flows to check conflicts, merge, and test. Update set do support conflicts but doesn't yet have a feature to automatically conduct a test before doing an actual update on the instance.

ServiceNow does have ATF (automated test framework) but this is to be used in test instance and not in production instance.

Nevertheless, if there's only 1 or 2 developers, git is a overkill. It would be more efficient to develop using UI and use update set.

If there are many developers, git can be used but it's probably be best to just use git up to merge into a test instance and use upset set between test instance and production instance.

[Hitoshi Ozawa]

Almost forgot, another way to use git is to keep track of update sets. Studio does this. It let everybody share their update sets and keep versions on each commit to git.

ServiceNow's dev training update set on github.

https://github.com/ServiceNow/devtraining-needit-rome

[Maik Skoddow]

Sorry, but this is completely wrong.

As you can read on https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/rome-application-development/page/build/applications/concept/migr...

"When you link an application to Source Control, the update sets and customer update records are deleted"

Kind regards
Maik

[Hitoshi Ozawa]

The page that's mentioned is storing an update set on git. It's not replacing the update set with git but using update set and git together. That's what Studio is doing.

In a large scale development, people who write scripts, create tables, and those who create UI are often in a different team. It's difficult for one script developer to share just some script with another script developer using an update set.

That's probably why ServiceNow also supports GitHub spoke and GitLab spoke in IntegrationHub instead of just relying on Studio.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/rome-servicenow-platform/page/administer/integrationhub-store-spo...

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/rome-servicenow-platform/page/administer/integrationhub-store-spo...

IMHO, ServiceNow isn't trying to replace update set with git but rather trying to make them work together.