Plan before you build

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Plan before you build

    This guide emphasizes the importance of careful planning before building a ServiceNow application, highlighting key decisions and best practices to avoid irreversible actions and ensure smooth development and deployment processes.

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    Key Features

    • Agentic AI Assistance: Utilize agentic AI to assist in application creation, enhancing development efficiency through the ServiceNow AI Platform.
    • Application Scope Selection: Decide early whether the application should be in a private or global scope. Private scopes restrict access to application artifacts within the same scope and support source control integration and delegated development. Global scopes are necessary only if the application needs to delete global data, modify access on multiple default tables, or access APIs exclusive to the global scope.
    • Passthrough Script Includes: Use globally scoped passthrough script includes to grant private scoped applications access to global APIs not accessible by default.
    • Instance Selection for Proof of Concept and Production: Build PoC applications in separate instances such as sandbox or Personal Developer Instances (PDIs) to avoid namespace conflicts. Production-ready applications should be developed within the organization’s developer instance to align with testing and deployment workflows.
    • Application Naming and Scope: Naming influences the suggested scope, which follows the format x[company code][applicationname] truncated to 18 characters. The scope uniquely identifies application resources and is inherited by all application files, making careful naming essential. Names can be changed later if needed.

    Key Outcomes

    • Minimized risk of irreversible development actions through upfront planning.
    • Clear understanding of when to use private versus global application scopes to leverage features like delegated development and API access.
    • Proper instance usage separating PoC and production applications to maintain clean development environments and prevent namespace conflicts.
    • Consistent and meaningful application naming conventions that ensure unique identification and easier management of application resources.

    Essentially, an application is a digital program that supports user tasks. Some actions you take when building an application might be irreversible. Be aware of these actions and plan for them in advance.

    Agentic AI

    Create applications with help from agentic AI. For more information, see Agentic development on the ServiceNow AI Platform.

    Application scope

    One of the first major decisions to make when creating an application is: Should the application be in a private scope or a global scope?

    By default, applications are created in their own private application scope. Applications in a private application scope restrict access to their application artifacts so only application artifacts in the same scope have full access to create, modify, remove, or run application data. Scoped applications can use source control integration and delegated development. Globally scoped applications cannot use delegated development.

    Create custom business applications in scope unless:
    • The application has to delete global data.
    • The application needs to change application access settings on multiple default tables to function.
    • The application needs to access APIs only available in the global scope. Creating a globally scoped passthrough script include would not be enough for this requirement.
    Note:
    Globally scoped passthrough is a script include created in a global scope that is accessible from the private scope. The passthrough gives access to a global API that is not accessible by default from a private application scope.

    For more information, see Application scope and Understanding Application Scope on the ServiceNow AI Platform (Whitepaper).

    Instance selection

    Proof of Concept (PoC) application builds can and should be built in a separate instance from a regular development instance. The instance can be a sandbox instance or a Personal Developer Instance (PDI) from the Developer Site. The PDI naming format is dev12345.service-now.com.

    If using an instance with a different scope namespace, rebuild the PoC applications in the organization’s development instance. Do not import the applications into the organization's development instance. The scoped namespace for the applications will not match the scoped namespace for the company’s development instance.

    Applications the organization intends to use (i.e. production apps) should be created in the organization’s developer instance, so the application can follow the organization’s testing and deployment process.

    Naming decisions

    The application name matters. ServiceNow suggests a scope based on the application’s name. Application file names are appended to the scope to uniquely identify application resources in an instance. Scope is in the format: x_[company code]_[application_name] with a maximum of 18 characters. For example, an application name Legal Request has a suggested scope of x_acme_legal_reque.

    All application files within the application inherit the scope, so carefully consider what the value should be. The application name can always be changed.