Application Development - Best Practice #1 - Work in a scope

[Christopher_Mal]

There are so many overloaded terms within ServiceNow, and I want to clear up the two major use cases for using a scoped application in ServiceNow.   Personally, I like to think of a scoped application as a container and not an application at all.   Sure the files within that container can be an application and solve a particular business need, but they don't necessarily have to be.   That container can also include additive changes you make to Out-of-Box (OOB) files.

A scope (container) should be used for the following use cases:

• To create an application with a specific business purpose.   For example, you may create the next best SaaS invoice management system with ServiceNow and contain all the files necessary to make your application work within a scope.
• To collect changes made to the system that you initially didn't create.   For example, you may integrate Jira with your incident management table (create new   sections, fields, business rules, workflow, etc.) on the   OOB incident table and collect those additive changes within a scoped container.

This brings me to my first best practice when doing application development (or any development within ServiceNow).   Create and collect additive changes within a scope.   Make it the rule to work within a scope and the exception to work in the global scope.

There are several benefits in doing this:

• Take advantage of the sandbox and quotas
• Instance upgrades are easier
• It is easier to uninstall and install changes
• You don't have to work with update sets
• Better security and programming model
• It is easier to prevent unwanted changes
• More visibility into what changed
• Can take advantage of delegated development
• Can use Studio and GIT
• Create changes that will not break everything else running on the platform

Yes, I know that changing the way we do things is not without some growing pains, but we are far enough in this scope journey as a company to HIGHLY recommend it as a best practice.   The restrictions we have to work under in this new model have great trade-offs.