GitHub Copilot + ServiceNow SDK: Converting an existing app to Fluent

[pranayvashi]

Hi Everyone,

I am exploring how to use VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and ServiceNow SDK/Fluent for local ServiceNow development.

I have an existing ServiceNow application that was built directly in the ServiceNow instance. I can pull the application to my local machine, but the pulled code/artifacts are not in Fluent format.

I was hoping GitHub Copilot could understand the existing application and help convert the relevant artifacts to Fluent, but it is not able to do this reliably.

I am trying to understand the recommended way to achieve this:

Existing ServiceNow App → Pull locally → Convert to Fluent → Continue development using Copilot + SDK

Is there a recommended ServiceNow SDK approach or workflow for converting an existing application to Fluent, especially when now-sdk transform does not achieve this?

[Roger Poore]

If you use ServiceNow IDE, you can use the Fluent: Convert an app to Fluent option from the command palette.  I've only used it a couple of times and on small apps but it worked fine.

IDK if you can do that directly from VS Code though so give SN IDE a try.  Let me know if you run into any problems.  I'm no expert but I've done my share of GH Copilot / ServiceNow stuff.

[pranayvashi]

Thanks, this was really helpful. I tried the Fluent: Convert an app to Fluent option in ServiceNow IDE and it worked much better for my use case.

The application is fairly large, and the conversion generated Fluent source for most of the components. A few records were left as XML due to coalesce-key conflicts, and I also saw some conversion errors related to Flow/List artifacts.

So this definitely seems to be the right approach compared to trying to get Copilot to do the conversion itself.

Have you seen similar cases where some metadata remains as XML after conversion? Is that generally expected, or would you recommend resolving those conversion warnings/errors before continuing development in Fluent?

[Roger Poore]

I have not.  Again, though, the apps I converted were small.  

I stopped using VS Code for this purpose.  Instead, I just link the SN IDE code to GitHub and work with Copilot there.  And then push and pull as needed.  So, you could push that code to GitHub and ask Copilot about those XML files.   Just a thought.  

[BryceG]

If you are using now-sdk CLI, you can utilize the --from command on init for this to initialize your app and pull down the xml for it.  After that you can use the `transform` command to convert any of the xml in the metadata folder over to fluent