Upgrade Customizations

[kathymorris]

Hi,

We have made multiple upgrades from Kingston to New York to our instances. During the upgrade, none of our customizations on the "Customizations Unchanged Related List" have not been reconciled or updated since Kingston. So there is a long list of P1,P2,P3 items that were  "Skipped" during the upgrade process (some are related to access/security). What is the impact to our environment of not reviewing or updating those customizations since they were originally built on Kingston? What should we be doing with those customizations that are on the "Customization Unchanged Related List" tab?  What is best practice?

Best,

Kathy 

[tomashrobarik]

Well, it's definitely worth the time for checking those skipped records. Higher priority also means higher impact it can have on your environment. P4-P5 can usually be skipped since they are mostly about differences between form layouts, notifications etc. But P1 can contain things that might affect availability or even performance of your instance. This is the price you pay for implementing customizations. You are taking responsibility for maintaining those changes and keeping them aligned with the latest changes. On the other hand, chances are, that your instance might be running completely OK and nobody would notice that something is wrong. In most cases if you don't review the skipped records you probably miss some of the new features that are coming with newer versions. But from time to time they might include some problem fixing so it can prevent you running into some issues in the future. So reviewing the skipped records should be one part of a successful upgrade. But you should also not forget about retesting at least the most critical parts of your instance. The official docs site has some nice checklist and upgrade steps decribed here: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-release-notes/page/release-notes/upgrades/concept/upgrades-overview.html

[kathymorris]

Tomas, does your reply refer to the "Customizations unchanged" tab?

[kathymorris]

Hi,

Does this apply to skipped records on the "Customizations Unchanged" tab?  These customized records have not been resolved (i.e. Revert to base or Save Merge) since Kingston. We're on NY. To clarify, my posting did not refer to the "Skipped Changes to Review" tab because those have been reviewed.

[tomashrobarik]

Ah, sorry I misunderstood your question. In that case I would say it's OK. They are identifying the baseline component records that has not changed since the last release. So it is expected that you have already reviewed them in the previous upgrade in "skipped changes to review". And since there is no change included in it, it is safe to just skip them.