Category

Best Practices

Explore our comprehensive guide on best practices for ServiceNow administration and development, featuring expert insights and proven techniques to optimize you

Sep 18, 2023

Understanding Parent / Child Relationships In ServiceNow Tables

Decoding Parent-Child Relationships in ServiceNow Tables: A Deep Dive ServiceNow, the versatile platform it is, encompasses an ocean of tables interacting, linking, and building upon one another. At the heart of this network lies the

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Sep 18, 2023

How To Use A For Loop In ServiceNow

How To Write A For Loop In ServiceNow ServiceNow, with its comprehensive platform for digital workflows, is not just about ITSM; it’s about robust development capabilities that allow for intricate business solutions. One of the

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Sep 14, 2023

What Are Catalog Variables And How Are They Used In Formulating Requests?

Demystifying Catalog Variables in ServiceNow: Crafting Perfect Requests ServiceNow, renowned for transforming enterprise service management, offers robust functionality through its Service Catalog. Central to the Service Catalog’s power is the humble yet mighty ‘Catalog Variable’.

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Sep 14, 2023

How Are Incidents, Problems, and Changes Different in ITSM?

Decoding ITIL in ServiceNow: A Deep Dive into Incidents, Problems, and Changes ServiceNow, revered for its unmatched IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities, anchors its prowess in the principles of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). But

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Sep 14, 2023

How Do I Create, Modify, Or Delete A User In ServiceNow?

ServiceNow User Management: Creating, Modifying, and Deleting Users In the world of digital platforms, managing users is key. For ServiceNow, a top enterprise cloud solution, this is especially true. It’s crucial for ServiceNow admins to

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Aug 9, 2023

How To Use While Loops In A GlideRecord Query

Properly Using While Loops In A GlideRecord Query ServiceNow’s GlideRecord is a powerful tool that every developer and admin should have in their toolkit. With it, querying and manipulating data within ServiceNow becomes a breeze.

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Aug 9, 2023

Improve Your Alerts Using swal() In A Client Script – Use SweetAlert

NOTE: You need to import/commit this update set to your ServiceNow instance, before using the Sweet Alert Library. You can download it in the ServiceNow store, here. Also, props to the creator, Limon Monte (whom

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Mar 9, 2023

Why DOM Manipulation Is Bad In ServiceNow

What Is DOM Manipulation? Maybe you’ve heard of it, but maybe you haven’t. DOM manipulation is something that you should stay away from in ServiceNow, and we’ll explain why. DOM manipulation is essentially a curse

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Feb 20, 2023

What Is The NextGen Program For ServiceNow?

What Is The NextGen Program? NextGen is a ServiceNow sponsored program that helps people, who have historically not been in IT, get a ServiceNow related job. Per ServiceNow’s website, the program has landed over 6,300

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Feb 2, 2023

How To Create An Application Module For A Table

Did you recently create a table in ServiceNow, but you can’t seem to find it in your application navigator? Just by default, when you create a new table, it doesn’t automatically create a module for

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Feb 2, 2023

What Are Approvals In ServiceNow?

What Is An Approval? Approvals are a phenomenal way to safeguard process amongst your IT organization. There needs to be proper checks and balances before certain automation actions can run. Should we approve this change

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Feb 2, 2023

How To Schedule An Upgrade Of A ServiceNow Instance

What Is A Software Upgrade? ServiceNow software upgrades can actually be a lot of fun, if done properly. If you have a healthy instance, you look forward to upgrades so you can get new software

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Jan 30, 2023

What Is The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) In ServiceNow?

What Is The CMDB In ServiceNow? The CMDB is a hot topic and a lot of customers surprisingly don’t implement it correctly on their first go. The CMDB is a bit of a rabbit hole

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Jan 26, 2023

How To Install Plugins In ServiceNow

What Is A ServiceNow Plugin? In ServiceNow, a plugin is a collection of code, scripts, and other resources that can be installed on the platform to add new functionality or extend existing functionality. Some plugins

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Jan 13, 2023

What Is A Dictionary Override In ServiceNow?

What Is A Dictionary Entry? Before diving into dictionary overrides, you first need to understand what a dictionary entry is. Every single field, is tied back to a dictionary entry. It’s really as simple as

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Jan 9, 2023

What Is The Incident Management Application In ServiceNow?

What Is Incident Management? ServiceNow is more than a ticketing system. It really should be seen as a Platform, or Platform As A Service (PaaS). Incident management in ServiceNow is the process of tracking and

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Jan 9, 2023

What Is The Problem Management Application In ServiceNow?

What Is Problem Management? Are you looking to improve your IT Service Management processes? If so, you should highly consider implementing the Problem Management application. Most companies are tracking incidents well enough, but do they

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Jan 9, 2023

What Is The Change Management Application In ServiceNow?

What Is Change Management? Change management in ServiceNow is something that a surprising number of even large organizations don’t get totally right. Keep in mind, the below is a template or framework to follow –

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Jan 5, 2023

Understanding GlideRecord Queries In ServiceNow

What Is A GlideRecord? The GlideRecord class is one of the most important concepts to grasp when learning ServiceNow administration and development. You will see GlideRecord queries everywhere in the system, and not properly understanding

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Jan 5, 2023

How To Use addQuery() With A GlideRecord

What Is The addQuery() Method? Every ServiceNow admin should know how to use the addQuery() method. It’s likely the first thing that an admin learns, when they get into scripting. They know that they have

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Jan 4, 2023

The Complete Guide To System Properties

What Are System Properties? Every ServiceNow instance is controlled, in a major way, by System Properties. This is a table that is behind the scenes, and when modified, can completely change the UI/UX or configuration

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Jan 4, 2023

How To Create A REST Message With RESTMessageV2

How To Create A REST Message There is a time in every ServiceNow admins life when they want to start writing code and begin creating integrations with other systems. Maybe you need to integrate with

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Jan 4, 2023

How To Use Update Sets

What Is An Update Set? Update Sets are really the building blocks of ServiceNow. It is how customizations are bundled up, and transferred across ServiceNow instances. In ServiceNow, an update set is just a collection

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Jan 3, 2023

How To Delete A Record In ServiceNow

Deleting A Record This functionality is only available to ServiceNow admins, and when deleting records proceed with caution. If you delete records on tables that are not audited, you will never be able to retrieve

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Dec 13, 2022

Auto Close Incidents Last Updated More Than 5 Days Ago

How Long Should ServiceNow Incidents Be Open For? There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer here. It depends on a) the type of incident b) it’s impact to the business c) the context of the IT organization

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Dec 12, 2022

How To Make An API Call To ServiceNow With Python

Using Python With ServiceNow You can use Python to integrate directly with ServiceNow. So you can do things like create incidents, delete change requests, get all your SLA’s, etc. It should be known that you

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Dec 11, 2022

Understanding sys_id’s and Reference Fields

What is a sys_id? In ServiceNow, a sys_id is a unique identifier for a specific record within a table. It is automatically generated by the system and used to identify and reference the record within

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Dec 10, 2022

How To Hide A Field In ServiceNow

This is one of the first things that most admins come across. It’s a simple enough request. An end user comes out and says they need a certain field hidden, under certain circumstances. What’s the

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Dec 9, 2022

How To Use g_form.getReference() To Dot Walk In A Client Script

What is g_form.getReference(), Anyways? Need to get the value of a field on another table, but you’re in a client script? If you’ve got a reference field that points to that record where you need

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Dec 9, 2022

How To Solve The ‘Unique Key violation detected by database’ Error

What Is A Unique Key Violation? If you’ve developed in ServiceNow, you’ve likely found this error when looking at your system logs. We’ll cover some common scenarios where developers will find this error, and how

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Dec 9, 2022

How To Use GlideAggregate In ServiceNow – A Complete Guide

Many developers, even seasoned ones, don’t have a truly solid grasp on using GlideAggregate. Most developers will get something like gr.getRowCount(), to find a tables row count, which is usually fine to use, especially in

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Aug 31, 2022

How To Convert An Object To A String In ServiceNow – .toString()

There are different data types in ServiceNow, when using JavaScript. JavaScript is a “weakly” typed scripting language. Which means that when you declare a variable, you don’t have to define the data type of the

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Aug 19, 2022

The Difference Between gs.log() and gs.print()

ServiceNow Admins and Developers use logging statements all the time. When you’re in the development environment, you’re constantly throwing logs, to see what value is shown, when a certain action is taken. But do you

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Aug 18, 2022

How To Get a ServiceNow Personal Developer Instance (PDI)

The ability to create your own ServiceNow Personal Developer Instance (PDI), on any recent software family version, completely for free – is available to everyone. Even if you have access to your company or customer’s

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Aug 15, 2022

How To Get The Number Of Records/Rows In A GlideRecord Query With getRowCount()

There are many times in a ServiceNow Developer’s life where they simply need to know how many records are being returned in a GlideRecord query. Are we about to execute code against a 100 incidents,

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Jul 8, 2022

How To Clear The Cache in ServiceNow

Clearing the instance cache is a crucial component of being a ServiceNow Admin/Developer. If you don’t understand how and when to clear the cache, you might be wasting a lot of time chasing a customization

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Jun 27, 2022

ServiceNow – The List of All Tables (sys_db_object)

I have attempted to post all 3,954 tables that are out of box in every ServiceNow environment in this post, but it significantly decreases this webpages load time, to do so. So instead, you can

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Jun 23, 2022

How To Create A Table In ServiceNow

In ServiceNow, tables are the cornerstone of every application. At the end of the day, everything is a record in a table. All business rules, incidents, assets, scripts, widgets, etc – are all records in

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Jun 17, 2022

How Do Requests, Request Items and Catalog Tasks work?

The request engine in ServiceNow is often misunderstood. What is a request? What is a requested item? How are they different from incidents? These common questions are often never addressed and people are too afraid

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Jun 17, 2022

What Does HI Stand For in ServiceNow?

What is HI in ServiceNow? HI stands for Hosted ITIL. Many people have highly contested this question, with a lot of people supporting the idea that it stands for Hosted Instance. Having worked at ServiceNow,

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Jun 16, 2022

How To Clone A ServiceNow Instance

This is something that not enough ServiceNow Developers do, or do often enough. Cloning a ServiceNow instance essentially means that you’re copying one environment over another. You take one environment (Source) and you copy it

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May 13, 2022

Logging In Custom Apps – Don’t Use gs.log()

If you’re a ServiceNow Admin, you’re very familiar with the idea of using gs.log(). It’s an extremely common scripting practice to see what the output of a value is. We use this every day in

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Aug 25, 2021

How To Export To Excel, XML, CSV, JSON or PDF In ServiceNow

Exporting Data in ServiceNow As a ServiceNow Admin, I use this functionality daily. In ServiceNow, you can very easily export data from a form or list view, into multiple file formats including: CSV, XML, JSON,

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Aug 18, 2021

The ServiceNow Priority Matrix – Impact and Urgency

What Controls The Priority Of An Incident? Most people don’t realize how important the Priority of an incident is, or what it truly means. The priority of an incident is controlled by it’s impact and

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Aug 17, 2021

How To Create A User in ServiceNow

Create A New User Most organizations use Active Directory to perform user management. A proper Active Directory connection via LDAP allows for the source of truth for user data, to live outside of ServiceNow. If

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Aug 11, 2021

Restricting Access – ACL vs. Before Query Business Rule

How To Prohibit Access When most ServiceNow Admins think about granting or restricting access, the first thing that comes to mind is ACL (Access Control Rule) configuration. And usually, they would be correct. ACL’s are

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Aug 10, 2021

How To View Who Is Logged Into Your ServiceNow Environment

Who’s Logged Into Your Instance Based on the size of your company, you could have potentially thousands of end users in your ServiceNow environment at any given time. As a ServiceNow Admin, you can see

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Aug 9, 2021

Organize System Logs By Using A Source with gs.log()

Add A Source To gs.log(value, source) ServiceNow environments can create millions of system logs on a daily basis. And no one has time to manually sort through them. So unless your exporting this data to

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Jul 28, 2021

Use get() to get One or Many Records With GlideRecord

Use get() with ServiceNow

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Jul 28, 2021

5 Filter Navigator Tricks To Quickly Access Lists And Forms

Quickly Access Tables, Application Files And Forms There’s a lot of shorthand in ServiceNow that will save you a little bit of time every single day. When you’re performing a certain action a couple dozen

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Jul 28, 2021

How To Use addEncodedQuery() with GlideRecord in ServiceNow

What is addEncodedQuery() This is something that will end up saving you a lot of time and can make your GlideRecord queries a lot cleaner and shorter. Being a ServiceNow Admin is all about learning

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Jul 28, 2021

How To Set A Default Field Value in ServiceNow?

The Dictionary Entry Records & Default Values In ServiceNow, you can default field values to improve automation efforts in your environment. Every field on every table, is a Dictionary Entry in ServiceNow. When you’re looking

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Jul 20, 2021

How To Use addOrCondition() with GlideRecord

Want To Add An OR Condition To A GlideRecord Query? As an admin, you need to be comfortable with GlideRecord scripting on the server. The addOrCondition() is amazingly helpful and I use it on a

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Jul 20, 2021

How To Check The Software Family Version Of Any ServiceNow Environment

Want To Know What Software Version You’re On? ServiceNow names their software versions alphebetically, after major global cities. They started with Aspen, Berling, Calgary, Dublin, Eureka, etc. Actually, there were software family versions before this

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Jul 20, 2021

How To Impersonate A User in ServiceNow

Impersonating A User In ServiceNow ServiceNow Admins (and impersonators) can impersonate any end user in their environment, and it’s a really neat trick. There are countless reasons to impersonate an end user. Say an end user

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Jul 17, 2021

How To Manage Session Timeout System Properties in ServiceNow

How To Manage User Sessions ServiceNow allows ServiceNow admins the ability to automatically control the maximum amount of time users can be logged in for. This is really helpful if you’d like to make users

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Jul 17, 2021

ServiceNow – Understanding The Side Door with /side_door.do

ServiceNow’s Side Door This is a trick that all ServiceNow Admin’s should have an awareness of. If your company uses SSO or has plans to implement it in the future – you’ll need to understand

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Jul 16, 2021

How To Add A Button To The Incident Form

Adding A UI Action (Button) To Any Form In ServiceNow, admins can configure all aspects of a form. This includes fields, relationships between these fields, the UI of the form, and also – UI Actions.

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Jul 14, 2021

Don’t Create An Approval, If Task Is Assigned To Approver

Don’t Allow Approval To Be Created, If Task Is Assigned To That User How do we stop an approval from being created, if the associated task is assigned to that user? We don’t want people

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Jul 12, 2021

How To Delete (And Restore) Records With A Background Script

Deleting Multiple Records In ServiceNow, a background script is an admins best friend. It allows you to run scripts to directly interact with your database. This can be incredibly helpful and save you a tremendous

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Jul 6, 2021

ServiceNow Admin vs. ServiceNow Developer – What are the Differences?

ServiceNow Admin vs. ServiceNow Developer There’s a lot of confusion in the world of ServiceNow between an Admin and Developer. I will try to clear that up in this post. As someone who started out

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Jul 2, 2021

Only Send Approval Requests to Active Users

Creating An Approval This is something, that in my opinion, should be out of box functionality – but is not. But the benefit of a platform like ServiceNow is that it allows you to create

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Jul 1, 2021

How To Understand, Create and Reference System Properties in ServiceNow

What are System Properties? System properties in ServiceNow control thousands of specific options regarding the behavior and configuration of the platform. This is incredibly far ranging, but it includes modifying the color scheme, how long

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Jul 1, 2021

Prohibit An Insert or Update with setAbortAction(true)

When To Use setAbortAction() A common use case in ServiceNow for an Admin or Developer is to not allow a record to be inserted or updated, under certain conditions. This is where the method setAbortAction()

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Sourdough
Chrome Extension

Sourdough: ServiceNow Monitoring and Analytics

A Chrome extension for ServiceNow Admins and Developers with essential tools, analytics, graphs and monitoring features.

Instance HealthGraphs & ChartsAPI HealthDeveloper ToolsQuick SearchInstance Switcher
Add to Chrome

Free to install. Pro $5/month after a 14-day no-card trial.
Pro requires the ServiceNow admin role. Upgrade inside the extension.

Overview
Tasks
CMDB
API
Metrics
Monitor
Internals
Instance:sourdoughdev·Version:Yokohama
Instance StateONLINE
System StatusFully Operational
Session Timeout90 minutes
Logged-In Sessions2 (20 active)
Build Nameyokohama-12-18-2024_p1
IP Address10.159.128.43
Instance HealthHealth Score: 90%
🔥 5dSourdough (Chrome Plugin)Dark Mode