First time cloning - Dev to Prod?

[Tim_Berger]

Would like to get some input from someone that has dealt with this already.

Question: What is the preferred method - best practice - recommended when moving your content from the Development instance to the Production instance?

Background: The Dev instance still has all the content from SN in it from when SN originally stood it up (Example flows and users)...

Nothing has been moved into the Prod instance at this point. We are hearing mixed messages on what is best to do. 1st we were told to move things into the Prod instance thru update sets. Then we were told it is easier to Clone the existing Dev to Prod then run clean up scripts afterwards, and if anything is broken SN will revert our Prod instance back. Then we would just clone it again and do a manual clean up in our Prod instance.

'From experience, what is the preferred method?

[Dan Tolgyesi1]

Hi Tim,

If you put a request into ServiceNow, they will clear down all of the demo data.

What we did is got Dev exactly how we wanted it, then did a direct clone over prod, that way you are not messing around with importing loads of update sets.

Then any changes you want to make into prod once the clone has been implemented, I would use update sets.

We had ServiceNow onsite for our implementation and this is what they reccommended.

Thanks,

Dan

[Tim_Berger]

Thanks for the response. I would see how that approach is benificial. We did not have SN assist with the integration since we were basically starting from scratch and not having to convert anything over. Amongst our team we had all suggested different approaches so I thought I may as well ask people who have experieced this. So I appreciate your suggestion.

[Jeremy44]

As this is your first time going to production I would use the clone method followed by a request to clear the sample data from production.   You'll want to check carefully any integrations you have once they are cloned into production to make sure they still work.   One common reason for issues here is if your integrations pointed to your development instance URL, the clone will carry the same URL into production.

An alternative method you could have used back on day 1 is to do all of your development in the instance that would become production.   It's not really production yet since you don't have users conducting business there.   Then you know all integrations work with your production instance URL.   Once your "flip the switch" and start using the instance you then clone from production backwards to test / development, and from that point moving forward use update sets from development to test to production.

[Tim_Berger]

looking back now that would have worked perfectly. Thanks for the response.