ServiceNow Application Development

Transform the way you build apps for enterprises

Sagar Gupta

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

ServiceNow Application Development

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

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First published: September 2017

Production reference: 1210917

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham

B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78712-871-2

www.packtpub.com

Credits

About the Author

Sagar Gupta is the chief software architect and founder of Eworks Services Pvt. Ltd., central India's first ISO 27001-certified firm.

He leads a team of 50+ ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, AEM, Cloud, and BigData experts. He started his career building custom enterprise and service management applications in 2003 and has been working on the ServiceNow platform since the past 7 years. He has in-depth knowledge of the platform ranging from ITSM and ITOM to GRC, Security Operations, HR, Field Service, and IT Business Management.

Over the past several years, he has consulted numerous companies and conducted over 200 training sessions for Fortune 500 organizations such as GE, Dell, NetApp, IBM, Cognizant, Sapient, HCL, and EMC2.

He is also the lead engineer in the SnowEditor project and currently devotes most of his time helping companies improve their IT service delivery, modernize ITSM, automate processes, and build cloud-native applications on ServiceNow.

About the Reviewer

Manoj Jain is a technical architect and has over 10 years of IT experience. He has immense knowledge of ITSM processes and platforms, such as ServiceNow and BMC Remedy.

He is certified in ITIL V3 Foundation and ServiceNow System Administrator. He has conducted over 50 training in past 7 years in ITIL, BMC Remedy and ServiceNow for clients such as GE, Cognizant, CSS Corp, and Persistent.

During his career, he has consulted more than 100 clients to implement better ITSM solutions using ServiceNow and BMC Remedy. He is currently focused on helping companies create better custom applications on cloud platforms such as ServiceNow.

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Table of Contents

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

Introduction to ServiceNow

Creating a developer account

Requesting a new ServiceNow instance

Logging in to your instance

Understanding the ServiceNow platform user interface

Components of the user interface

System settings

Navigating through applications

Module UIs

Form UIs

Related List UI

Dot-walking

Service Management applications

ServiceNow application architecture

Single architecture

Shared resources

Single data model

Advanced High Availability architecture

Summary

User Administration

Creating a new user

Things to consider when creating a user

Creating a new group

Creating a new role

Associating a user to one or more groups

Assigning a role to a group

Best practices for managing groups

Task assignments

Approvals

Security

E-mail notifications

Impersonating a user

Companies, locations, and departments

Adding a department

Associating a user with a department

Managing user sessions

Terminating sessions of a logged in user

Locking out a user

Marking a user as inactive

Summary

Data Management

Database structure

Key table-management modules

Tables & Columns

Schema map

Tables

Columns and rows

Dictionary

Creating a table

Adding columns to table

Modifying column properties

Task table

Extending the Task table

Configuration management table

Extending the configuration table

Summary

Application Scopes

Application architecture

Structure of an application

Application scope

Private application scope

Global scope

Application versions

Application tables

Application dependencies

Application files

Fix scripts

ServiceNow applications

Application picker

Creating a new application

Creating application artifacts

Accessing information in different scopes

All application scopes

This application scope only

Summary

Modules, Forms, and Views

Creating a new module

Using Studio

Different module link types

New records

Running a report

Homepages

Portal pages

Change layout

Add content

Homepage modules

Separators

Managing module order

Summary

Introduction to ServiceNow Scripting

Different script types

Client-side scripts

Server-side scripts

Execution order of scripts

Client-side Glide API

GlideForm

GlideUser

GlideMenu

GlideList2

GlideDialogWindow

Using the GlideDialogWindow class

GlideAjax

Server-side Glide API

GlideRecord

addQuery

Available query operators

addNullQuery

addNotNullQuery

Applying multiple queries

Applying an OR query

Iterating over query records

GlideSystem

getCurrentScopeName()

log()

logError()

logWarning()

nil()

now()

print()

addInfoMessage()

addErrorMessage()

isInteractive()

isLoggedIn()

getUserID()

getUserName()

getUserNameByUserID()

eventQueue()

Scripting in scoped applications

Summary

Client-Side Scripting

Client scripts

onLoad client scripts

onChange client scripts

onSubmit client scripts

UI policies

UI scripts

Disabling client-side scripts

Creating a scope UI script

Summary

Server-Side Scripting

Business rules

Checking the booking requests by the same caller

When to execute business rules

Preventing recursive business rule execution

The scope problem

Script includes

UI actions

Summary

Jelly Scripting

Jelly scripts

Namespaces and phases

Jelly tags

j:if tag

j:choose, j:when, and j:otherwise

j:set

The j:set_if tag

The j:while tag

Glide tags

g:evaluate

g:breakpoint

g:macro_invoke

g:ui_form

g:ui_input_field and g:checkbox

g:dialog_buttons_ok_cancel

g:ui_reference

g:insert

g:inline

g:function and g:call

Special characters in Jelly

Ampersand--&

AND--&&

LESS THAN--<

Whitespace

Space

UI pages

Processing script

UI macros

UI formatters

Summary

Events and Notifications

Events

Registering events

Using a business rule to trigger events

Checking event logs

Script actions

Notifications

Testing notifications

Previewing notifications

Forward outgoing e-mails

Updating a travel-booking request

Summary

Workflow Development

Workflow basics

Using workflow editor

Workflow actions menu

Workflow development state

Workflow properties

Workflow transitions and activity exit conditions

Adding exit conditions

Adding activities to a workflow

Removing an activity from a workflow

Validating a workflow

Workflow activities

Approval and rollback activities

Condition workflow activities

Workflow notification activities

Subflow activity

Task activities

Timer activity

Utility workflow activities

REST calls using a workflow

Defining a REST endpoint

Making a REST request using a workflow

Summary

Debugging in ServiceNow

Syntax editor

Context-sensitive help

Syntax editor keyboard shortcuts

Scripting assistance

Period (.) key

Open parenthesis

Toggle full screen mode

Start search

Find next

Find previous

Replace

Replace all

Syntax editor macros

Available macros

Creating a custom macro

Script syntax error checking

Script Debugger

Launching Script Debugger

Script Debugger interface

Parts of Script Debugger

Debugging code

JavaScript Log

JavaScript Log window interface

Using jslog()

Difference between console.log() and jslog()

Field Watcher

Summary

Advanced Database Features

Relationships

Creating a new relationship

Configuring forms to show related lists

Modifying the list control options

Dictionary override

Database indexing

Full-text search

Table auditing

Excluding a field from being audited

Restoring deleted records

Limitations of the undelete feature

Database rotation

Data archiving

Creating an archive rule

Creating a destroy rule

Summary

Job Scheduling and Data Export-Import

Scheduled script execution

Exporting data

Form export

List export

Direct URL access

sysparam_view

sysparm_query

sysparm_record_count

sysparm_order_by

Building queries using a list of records filters

Export limits

Importing data using Import Sets

Importing data using CSV

Import set table

Checking the import log

Creating the transform map

Changing Field Map properties

Scripting to override field values

Transform map scripts

Running the transform

Monitoring transform progress

Summary

Preface

ServiceNow Application Development will focus on in-depth application development from designing forms to write business rules and client scripts to designing workflows on the world’s fastest growing enterprise cloud platform. Global organizations such as GE, NASA, Intel, and Dell EMC are using the ServiceNow platform to quickly build enterprise-ready custom applications that run on the cloud. GE Capital, the financing arm of GE, delivers financial, intellectual, and human capital to its customers, around the world and to meet growing challenges they used ServiceNow to build a new cloud-ready Risk Vulnerability Assessment Tool (RVAT) in only six weeks. This developer-focused book will serve as a road map for you and your team on how to build cloud-ready applications, manage data in single system of record, build standard-based applications, and win customers' and IT users' satisfaction.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to ServiceNow, will help the reader get started with ServiceNow and gain access to a free developer instance from ServiceNow Developer Portal. The chapter is focused on getting the reader used to the platform and the basics of ServiceNow, such as UI, Login process, and some out-of-the box applications and features. The chapter will also help the reader brush up their knowledge about how ServiceNow is used within organizations.

Chapter 2, User Administration, explains how to create new users and associate them to a group. You will also learn how to assign roles to groups and users. Further, you will learn how to impersonate a user to test if our newly created users have access to correct applications and modules.

Chapter 3, Data Management, explains that managing tables and columns is one of the most common job administrators and developers have to perform when working on the ServiceNow platform. ServiceNow platform features various modules that can be used to create and manage tables and columns. In this chapter, you will learn how to create a new table from scratch, extend existing table and add fields (or columns) to new or existing tables. You will also understand the structure of existing tables such as task and cmdb.

Chapter 4, Application Scopes, explains that, when developing applications on the ServiceNow platform, developers need to take special care about the application scope they are working on. Applications help administrators and developers to combine different modules and features to deliver a relevant set of functionality. ServiceNow allows developers and administrators simple means to create and manage applications. In this chapter, you will learn how to create new applications. You will learn about the relationship between applications and scopes. You will also learn how to use applications to associate relevant information and access data from other applications.

Chapter 5, Modules, Forms, and Views, explains that ServiceNow platform easy-to-use features that allow administrators to create modules, and customize form and views. In this chapter, you will learn how to create different type of modules, customize the form layout, and quickly add new form fields to the table. You will also learn about various form field element types available in the platform including the reference field, journal field, date field and choice list. Furthermore, you will learn how to use form views to present same record in different manner to end-users based on their role.

Chapter 6, Introduction to ServiceNow Scripting, ServiceNow platform offers various scripting options to developers. This chapter, you will learn about different type of scripting options available in ServiceNow platform. You will learn about difference between server-side and client-side scripts. Furthermore, you will also learn how scripting works in scoped applications and get introduced to client-side and server-sideGlide APIs.

Chapter 7, Client-Side Scripting, will help you to learn how to create client-side scripts and what are the different ways to execute the client-side code. The readers will learn how to make use of the client-side Glide API and some of the most widely used functions available. You will learn how to create client scripts, UI policy, and UI script.

Chapter 8, Server-side Scripting, explains that server-side scripts and APIs can be employed to enhance server-side data processing and integration with different systems. Server-side scripts can also be used to perform database operations and perform large scripted imports. This chapter will help you learn how to create server-side scripts, and when and where the server side scripts comes in the scene when working with ServiceNow applications. The chapter will help you understand how to make use of the server-side Glide API and server-side artifacts like Business Rules, script-include, and data policy.

Chapter 9, Jelly Scripting, explains that in ServiceNow platform, Apache’s Jelly syntax is used to render forms and UI pages. Jelly is Java and XML-based scripting and a transformation engine used to turn XML into executable code. The output is usually HTML and JavaScript code that is used by the browser to render elements on a page. This chapter will help you learn how to create UI pages, UI macros and formatters. You will learn how to make use of Jelly scripts to enhance our UIs and create custom controls and application property page.

Chapter 10, Events and Notifications, explains that in ServiceNow, Events are used to monitor changes or events by event handlers just like in any other programming language. Events in the queue are consumed by script actions or notifications, which in turn execute scripts or trigger notifications. Notification on the other hand, is an approach to send out e-mail to the end-users or external end-points. Any form or script sending out an email relies on the Notification feature of the platform. This chapter will help you learn how to trigger events when data changes and send out e-mail based on events.

Chapter 11, Workflow Development, explains that the ServiceNow offers a web based visual workflow designer known as Workflow Editor. A workflow is made up of activities and always consists of begin and end activities that marks the start and end of the workflow. This chapter will help you learn how to use many of the different available standard workflow activities including the REST activity and how to design, run and test your own workflow.

Chapter 12, Debugging in ServiceNow, explains that within ServiceNow you write both server-side and client-side code. The ways to troubleshoot them more or less remain same but the approach differs. This chapter will cover many different troubleshooting and debugging techniques available within the platform. The chapter will help you how to use many features to debug and troubleshoot scripts in ServiceNow platform and cover various topics such as Syntax editor, launching and using the Script debugger, JavaScript log and Field watcher.

Chapter 13, Advanced Database Features, ServiceNow platform offers many features to improve the performance and overall functionalities of ServiceNow applications. This chapter will cover features like relationships, indexing, full-text search, and overriding field properties. You will also learn features such as enabling auditing, restoring deleted records and Table rotation and data archiving.

Chapter 14, Job Scheduling and Data Export-Import, explains that as a developer you will always to be tasked to ensure data from various external systems can be brought into the platform with ease and this may require you to create scripted controls that can perform pre- and post-processing of the imported data. This chapter includes some of advanced development and administrative tasks that a developer must be aware of like scheduled script execution (SSE), and data export and import. More specifically, you will help how to schedule a script to run in the background, export data, import data using import sets, configure transform maps and use scripts to process imported data.

What you need for this book

As ServiceNow is a cloud-based SaaS application, it can be accessed using most standard browsers. These are browsers that are supported by the UI16 of the ServiceNow application:

Chrome

Version: Latest public release

Firefox

Version: Latest public release

Internet Explorer

Version: 9 and above

Microsoft Edge

Version: Latest public release

Apple Safari

Version: 9.1 and above

There are some limitations when using Internet Explorer to access ServiceNow, including the following:

Compatibility mode is not supported

Setting security to High using Internet Options | Security tab is not supported and will make some ServiceNow applications and features inaccessible

Internet Explorer 11 may face memory leak issues especially in Windows 7

Notifications in Connect are only available in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Internet Explorer doesn’t support notification feature.

Cookies must be enabled for the login feature to work. If you disable cookies, you will not be able to log in to the instance.

Who this book is for

This book is indented for anyone who wants to learn how to develop software on the world's fastest growing enterprise cloud platform. Developers and administrator, who are already working on ServiceNow, can also use this book to brush up their knowledge of key development features.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: The g_user global object can be used to retrieve user session information in client scripts.

A block of code is set as follows:

function DemoCallBack(response) {

//javascript code

var answer = response.responseXML.documentElement.getAttribute(answer); 

console.log(answer);

}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Navigate to the bottom of the page and click on the New button in the Database Indexes related list.

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is