Plugin update process

[SeanM1]

Hi all,

Just have a question about what process people are doing to update plugins.

Upgrading plugins is easily the worse part of my ServiceNow experience, scheduling the update doesn't work when you have hundreds to deal with.

I've just updated to Xanadu and after making all the initial plugin updates due to the family instance change, I was shocked and frustrated a week later, I had another 250+ updates required (which needs to be completed in 3 separate instances) it's a very time consuming process.

I'm interested in hearing how other people are managing high volume plugin updates, maybe there's a better way that I'm missing.

Ideally, I would like the the ability to opt in to auto update these plugins, overnight between the hours I define and if they don't complete, continue the next night. 

[Kieran Anson]

SN started to build an auto update feature, you can see this on the table as there's a column for it. However that never came to light. 

Personally, I advocate for using a flow and the CI/CD plugin which allows you to do batch installs. If I'm in dev and want to true up every plugin to the quarterly store release, then I use a background script to batch all the plugin installs and let it work overnight 

[SeanM1]

Appreciate the response and recommendations provided. Thank you.

[MattCD]

@Kieran Anson 
Are you able to share this script? Similar version exists here but it's nice to compare ideas.
https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/plugins-update-with-script/m-p/2491153/page/2

[Kieran Anson]

Big thanks to @Eric Riemer 

/*----------------------------------------------------*/
/*                                                    */
/*  Have a bunch of apps that need to be updated?     */
/*  Run this and follow the directions in the output  */
/*  It will build a payload and use the CI/CD API to  */
/*  run a batch install of all of the needed updates. */
/*                                                    */
/*----------------------------------------------------*/

//Want Demo Data with the app?
var loadDemoData = true;


var prevName;
var appsArray = [];
var grSSA = new GlideRecord('sys_store_app');
grSSA.addEncodedQuery('install_dateISNOTEMPTY^hide_on_ui=false');
grSSA.orderBy('name');
grSSA.orderBy('version');
grSSA.query();
while (grSSA.next()) {
    var curName = grSSA.getValue('name');
    if (curName == prevName) {
        continue;
    }
    var installedVersion = grSSA.getValue('version');
    var latestVersion = grSSA.getValue('latest_version');
    if (latestVersion != installedVersion) {
        prevName = curName;
        var appObject = {
            displayName: curName,
            id: grSSA.getUniqueValue(),
            load_demo_data: loadDemoData,
            type: "application",
            requested_version: latestVersion
        };
        appsArray.push(appObject);
    }
}
var appsPackages = {};
appsPackages.packages = appsArray;
appsPackages.name = 'Update Apps';
var data = new global.JSON().encode(appsPackages);

var url = 'https://' + gs.getProperty('instance_name') + '.service-now.com/$restapi.do?ns=sn_cicd&service=CICD%20Batch%20Install%20API&version=latest';
gs.info('Open the following URL in a new tab:\n\n' + url + '\n\ncopy/paste the following JSON into the "Raw" Request body\n\n' + data);