Is it normal for NOtifications to show as skipped updates if the only difference is the Active flag?

[Brian Bouchard]

The last few months of patching, I've done a lot of work to move things back to OOB configurations in an attempt to reduce the number of skipped updates in our patches each month.  I've noticed in the more recent patches Many of our notifications are showing up as skipped updates even though the only difference is we have unchecked the Active flag.  I thought I had read somewhere in the community that if the only thing you changed was the active flag that the records should not show as skipped updates. Is that true?

50% or more of our skipped updates each month are related to notifications, so I'm trying to understand if this is normal behavior and/or is there something we can do to reduce skipped updates related to notifications in general.  Or is this just the nature of the beast and something we need to live with because it's different than the OOB configuration?

[Allen Andreas]

Hi,

Setting something to active = false ONLY, when it was active out of box, is a customer change/modification, but...read below for a deeper dive...

Per ServiceNow from 7 years ago, and then updated 3 years ago, they've said this: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=1dace225dbd0dbc01dcaf3231f96194a which basically says that it's a customer update...but...the "replace on upgrade" flag will be set to true. Meaning, it won't generate a skipped change record and will automatically be updated on the next upgrade.

To me...and my research...THIS IS FALSE:

I have tested this in a brand new PDI instance (Rome) and simply set a notification on the incident table for "Incident commented for ITIL" to active = false. I did this via the list view just to ensure I didn't open the record fully and change anything else on accident. On the customer update table...a record was generated, but...the "replace on upgrade" flag is set to false...meaning...it WILL in fact generate a skipped change record on the next upgrade.

In your case, if you're saying all you did was set the notification to active = false and you did an upgrade and skipped change records were in fact created, then that proves what I'm saying above and what I see happening.

My belief and my experience is that it's cut and dry with this (the only exception, I think, is that the table doesn't have update_synch=true on it):

With the asterisk meaning:

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Brian Bouchard]

Thanks @Allen A 

This helps, I think.. But let me ask one more way to see if I understand the * above.

If I have a notification that I have modified to be inactive and I do an upgrade, I would expect to see that notification show as a skipped update to review.

Let's say I retain the modifications.  The the next patch/upgrade comes along and has no new changes to the notification, but I still have my one modification.  Should I then expect the notification to show in the customizations unchanged related list? OR is it ALWAYS flagged as a customization because it's different than OOB?

[Allen Andreas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Brian Bouchard 

I edited my reply above just to be slightly more politically correct to include verbiage from ServiceNow that they have previously said and probably what you're referring to as to something you've seen before.

I then cover what I have seen and believe happens with evidence to back that up.

Now, on to your follow-on questions here...

Per the SN documentation it says this: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/success/quick-answer/... and the piece we'll focus on is this: During the upgrade process, ServiceNow will evaluate each record in an instance and evaluate for changes since the last upgrade to determine if a skipped change record is needed.

So from what the documentation is saying and then using your scenario, on the next upgrade, it would not generate a skipped change record.

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Brian Bouchard]

Thanks @Allen A - You've confirmed what I think should be happening. However, It appears I'm going over the same skipped updates month after month even though the only difference flagged is the Active flag. I'll take note of the ones that I'm showing this month and verify I see them again next month. If what I think I am seeing checks out it sounds like a Support case is warranted.