Configure, customize, or build new apps

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Configure, customize, or build new apps

    The ServiceNow AI Platform offers flexible options to tailor applications and workflows according to your company's unique requirements. You can personalize, configure, customize existing apps, or build entirely new applications to support novel use cases or departmental processes beyond the default capabilities.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Personalization: Adjust the app’s look and feel for individual users without changing the underlying system or code.
    • Configuration: Modify app behavior using built-in tools or instance-wide settings without altering base flows or system code. Code extensions here are owned by you but do not affect the baseline installation.
    • Customization: Involves changes to scripts, business rules, flows, or base code including adding custom tables, integrations, or workflows. These changes affect upgrades and support and may create technical debt.
    • Building new apps: Use App Engine products like ServiceNow Studio to develop custom scoped or global applications tailored to new requirements. This can impact licensing, upgrades, and may also create technical debt.

    Impact and Best Practices

    Each type of change has distinct implications:

    • Personalization does not impact upgrades or support.
    • Configuration generally has minimal upgrade impact, but code extensions require ownership and management.
    • Customization requires managing customer updates during upgrades and may cause support challenges because custom behaviors are difficult to replicate in out-of-the-box (OOTB) environments.
    • Building new apps can influence licensing and upgrade processes and should be carefully planned.

    When customizing, the platform tracks changes in the Customer Update table, and you must decide to retain, revert, or merge these during upgrades, each with potential support consequences.

    Recommended Approach

    • Start with personalization to adapt the user experience.
    • Apply configuration changes before considering customizations.
    • Customize only when extending the app’s original purpose.
    • Prefer building new applications with App Engine tools for functionalities outside existing app scopes.

    This approach helps minimize upgrade complexity, reduce technical debt, and streamline support.

    Configuration and customization are hallmarks of the ServiceNow AI Platform that enable your company to customize workflows to fit its specific needs. You can also build new apps for novel use cases or departmental processes that don't fit within the scope of your current applications.

    Whichever way you choose to make changes to the platform and app functionality, consider the following information to make the most informed choice.

    Configuration and customization

    While the terms configuration and customization may sound very similar, they mean different things on the ServiceNow AI Platform. There are many ways you can update OOTB apps to work for your use case. Whether you personalize, configure, customize, or create an application, there are general guidelines for how to approach making your apps work for you. Each relevant term is defined in the following table.

    Table 1. Terms and definitions
    Term Definition
    Personalization When users modify an application's look and feel only for themselves.
    Configuration When users modify an application's behavior without making changes to flows or the base system code.
    Customization When users make any change to the flows or the code that are part of the baseline installation on a ServiceNow instance.
    Building new When a user builds a custom app using App Engine products like ServiceNow Studio.

    Impact of changes

    The impact of changes you make on the platform can have cost and support implications. Carefully consider the updates you want to make. See examples of each type of change and its implications.

    Table 2. Examples and impact of each change
    Change Examples Impact
    Personalization
    • Choosing Dark mode or Light mode.
    • Choosing which columns to display in a table.
    • Does not change the baseline code installation.
    • Does not impact customer support or interfere with upgrades.
    Configuration
    • Using built-in tools to add tables and more.
    • Setting instance-wide parameters.
    • Using code to extend an app’s functionality.
    • If you add code, you own it, even if it doesn’t alter the baseline code installation.
    • Reverting a configuration should not require code changes.
    Customization
    • Creating scripts or business rules with logic that modifies baseline code.
    • Adding custom tables.
    • Adding custom integrations, widgets, portals, or workflows.
    • Customer Service and cost implications.
    • Upgrading to a new version requires reapplying or reverting your customizations.
    • Can create technical debt.
    Building new apps Creating new global or scoped apps, no matter the size or purpose.
    • May impact licensing agreements, based on which products you have provisioned.
    • May impact upgrades.
    • May create technical debt that must be managed.

    What happens when you customize

    When you customize an application, several things happen that you must be aware of.
    1. Customizations trigger the platform to create a record on the Customer Update [sys_update_xmll] table.

      Each record on this table must be addressed when upgrading to a new version.

    2. The platform skips customized records during platform upgrades. You must choose what happens to customizations.
      • Retain each customization.
      • Revert each customization to the OOTB state.
      • Merge the customizations with the base system.
    3. With each retained customization, there could be customer support consequences. Because Customer Support agents don't know what the expected behavior of a customization should be, it's difficult to reproduce the issue on an OOTB instance and help with support cases.
    Keep these situations in mind when you create customizations.
    Tip:
    Remember, only customize an application when the customization extends the intended purpose of the application. If it doesn't extend the intended purpose, consider creating a new application.

    Recommended order of changes

    1. Personalize your instance and apps as much as you’d like.
    2. Configure ServiceNow applications as much as you can before customizing them.
    3. Customize an application to add functionality only when it extends the intent of the application.
    4. Use App Engine developer products, such as Creator Studio and ServiceNow Studio, to create new applications rather than customizing an application to create functionality that doesn’t align with its original purpose.