Clean up data and catalogs when first moving to production

[Fred Jean]

Hello,

I'd like to have feedback and best practices regarding what to do with demo/test data when moving to production for the first time.

First I noticed that on our subprod instances we have demo data, including a large number of catalog items, while on the (OotB) production there is almost no data but there are still records that I wonder why there are there :

• 49 locations
• 4 stockrooms
• 1 kb article
• models
• 2 catalogs (Resources and Service catalog with a number of catalog items, mostly Record producer
• 2 CIs
• 1 Consumable Asset

Is it always like this when ServiceNow provides a new set of instances ?

If I request to clear demo data on a subprod instance, I found that we end up with about the same data as the prod instance and thus things are inconsistent because we have the models but their manufacturers are missing as the company table got cleared.

Given this, using this feature to clear the data does not seem a very satisfying solution.

What is your approach regarding the clean up of demo and test data ?

I am also especially concerned about catalog items :

Do you know if the catalog items that are not removed should all be kept ? How can we know which catalog items are actually required by OotB processes/features ? for instance I have seen there are catalog items of type "Composite Record Producer" that seem to be used by catalog builders, but I'm not sure all the other record producers that are preserved are also required.

I am considering disabling the OotB Service Catalog and then have all the catalog items we will actually use on a bespoke catalog; would that be OK or would it be recommended to keep the Service Catalog active ?

Also, I have seen in this very interesting article :Update Sets - Things I wish I knew  (see "Initial Implementation) that it seems to be recommended to first clone your dev to prod with the "Core setup".

In that case I guess that would need clearing the data on dev before cloning, or are there other recommended approaches ?

Thank you for your feedback.

[Community Alums]

Hi @Fred Jean ,

The Data will anyways won't move to Prod as data never gets captured in update sets.

[Fred Jean]

That's unless we do a clone from prod as stated here : Update Sets - Things I wish I knew  (see "Initial Implementation) and on the white paper (https://support.servicenow.com/sys_attachment_java.do?sys_id=267ae866db42b450e515c22305961915)

And even if we don't clone :

- we still have some unwanted data  (Locations ...)

- there is also some data that we will want to have in production even if we didn't create it (companies, catalog items ...)