Building Upgrade-Safe Solutions in ServiceNow – Lessons from a Personal Project

[srikanthmadabhu]

Hi Community,

While working on a personal ServiceNow project in my Personal Developer Instance, I started thinking about something beyond functionality: How upgrade-safe is this solution?

Even though it wasn’t a production environment, it made me reflect on best practices that apply everywhere.

A few lessons I took away:

• Minimize direct modifications to OOB records whenever possible
• Prefer configuration over customization
• Keep scripts clean and well-documented
• Avoid hardcoding sys_ids
• Design with maintainability in mind, not just immediate functionality

This was a self-initiated learning exercise, but it reinforced how important it is to think long-term when building on the platform.

Sharing this in case it helps others reviewing their own designs.

Question to the community:

What practices do you follow to ensure your implementations remain upgrade-safe?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences.

[SohamTipnis · Accepted solution]

Hi @srikanthmadabhu,

Well said!!!👍

I will suggest my opinion that you be careful when you're upgrading your instance, like, for example, when I started, my PDI was the Xanadu version. I directly upgraded to Zurich, which I often found was not a good practice. I should stop at Yokohama, as after Xanadu, it was the next version.

What happens here is that you may miss the upgrades that are done on the Yokohama version, and once you have upgraded to the newer version, you don't go back to the version.

So I will suggest you be careful when you're upgrading your version, including the patch versions.

If you find my answer useful, please mark it as Helpful and Correct. ‌‌‌‌‌😊

Regards,
Soham Tipnis
ServiceNow Developer ||  Technical Consultant
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sohamtipnis10

[srikanthmadabhu]

Thank you for sharing that — that’s a very practical and valuable point.

You’re absolutely right that jumping versions can cause you to miss intermediate release changes, new features, or behavioral updates introduced in the prior family release. Especially in learning environments, it’s easy to focus on getting to the latest version rather than understanding what changed along the way.

Your example of upgrading directly from Xanadu to Zurich instead of first exploring Yokohama is a great reminder that each release family often introduces important updates that are worth reviewing individually.

Going forward, I’ll make sure to review release notes more carefully and upgrade progressively to better understand platform evolution — including patch considerations.

Appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.

[SohamTipnis]

@srikanthmadabhu, good luck. 😊

[srikanthmadabhu]

Thank you 🙂