question Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently? in ITSM forum

Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

PN2 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:47:25 GMT

Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently? I looked at Dev's Clone History but it is blank.

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

Ankur Bawiskar — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:57:04 GMT

Hi,

Clone history is the only place which tells whether clone happened or not.

if no records found in clone history then it means no clone has happened.

Mark ✅ Correct if this solves your issue and also mark 👍 Helpful if you find my response worthy based on the impact.
Thanks
Ankur

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

Weston Wilson — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:58:00 GMT

The clone history will typically only show in the instance where the clone occurred from. If you cloned over Dev with Prod, it will show up in the production instance.

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

PN2 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:59:11 GMT

Hi Weston,

This is exactly my use case. So in my case, since Dev was cloned from Prod, Prod will show the Clone History and Dev won't? Does Dev show anything that will indicate that it has been cloned anywhere?

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

Weston Wilson — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 15:08:54 GMT

You may be able to check in the upgrade history for a glide.email_accounts record. This should show up as part of the post-clone scripts from the other instance.

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

PN2 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 15:58:40 GMT

Weston,

I don't see com.glide.email_accounts. I do see com.glide.rollback though? Not sure if that matters.

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

Weston Wilson — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:29:43 GMT

Do you have any idea of when the last clone would have happened, if ever? Clones can only happen if a user has sufficient permissions in the development instance. If this is a ServiceNow personal developer instance, those cannot be cloned.

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

PN2 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:40:37 GMT

Yes a clone was completed in our Dev environment yesterday 10/22. The only way that I can tell that it was done is because our data now matches Prod. But is there any other way to check and confirm that Dev has been cloned and completed?

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

JamieB497228883 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:03:19 GMT

Hi,

Figured I would post my solution to this seen as this thread seems to have had a few hits but no solution.

I created a clone clean-up script like so:

var propName = "last_clone_date"; var propValue = new GlideDateTime().getValue(); // Current date/time var prop = new GlideRecord("sys_properties"); prop.addQuery("name", propName); prop.query(); if (prop.next()) { // Property exists, update it prop.value = propValue; prop.description = "The date this instance was last cloned."; prop.ignore_cache = 'true'; prop.update(); } else { // Property doesn't exist, create it prop.initialize(); prop.name = propName; prop.value = propValue; prop.description = "The date this instance was last cloned."; prop.type = "string"; prop.ignore_cache = 'true'; prop.insert(); }

Re: Is there a way to tell if my Dev instance was cloned recently?

jens_t — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:19:21 GMT

Yeah, if the Clone History is blank, it does make things a bit tricky — but there are still a few ways you might be able to tell if your Dev instance was cloned recently. First, check for anything that feels “reset” — like missing recent test data, default users showing up again, or roles that got wiped. Those can be signs that a fresh clone happened.

Also, if your platform keeps system or audit logs, you might be able to spot some clues there — sometimes clone actions are logged even if they don’t show up in the UI. If you’re using something like ServiceNow or a managed cloud platform, reaching out to your admin or support team might help too — they usually have access to backend activity logs that we can’t see. Hope that helps!