ServiceNow Developer Blog

GlideRecord vs GlideRecordSecure

Fri, 21 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

This is a guest post from one of ServiceNow’s internal software engineers, Brittany Navin. Brittany is currently working on App Engine Studio. In the past, Brittany has worked on Guided Application Creator, Studio, and Mobile Studio. b

GlideRecord vs GlideRecordSecure

There’s a deep, dark secret lurking within the ServiceNow scripting library: GlideRecordSecure. GlideRecordSecure is like a not-so-evil twin to GlideRecord but with added functionality. One of the most common questions that I receive from my colleagues and ServiceNow Developers alike is “What’s the difference between GlideRecord and GlideRecordSecure?” In this blog post I’m going to take you down a exploratory journey to understand the differences between, how to use, and when to use the GlideRecord and GlideRecordSecure APIs to query data from your ServiceNow instance.

Preface

Before jumping into this post, it’s important to understand application and table/data access controls. There’s a great course about Securing Applications that will teach you all about this concept. Once you understand (or if you already know about) access controls within ServiceNow, read on!

GlideRecord

First, let’s jump go into a little background about GlideRecord. If you’re familiar with GlideRecord, you can skip this section. If you’re new to ServiceNow development, read on!

GlideRecord is a class used to interact with your ServiceNow instance’s database from inside of a script. This GlideRecord class provides many helpful API methods to retrieve, update, create or delete records stored in your ServiceNow instance. If you’ve ever:

Done a Course on the ServiceNow Developer site
Completed a Learning Plan on the ServiceNow Developer site
Customized your ServiceNow instance in any way

… then you’ve probably created/modified/viewed a script that utilizes the GlideRecord API. b On the “server side” (like in a Business Rule), the GlideRecord API can only be ran from scripts within global or scoped applications. On the “client side” (like in a Client Script), the GlideRecord API can only be ran from scripts within global applications. Going off of that, there is one important caveat worth mentioning: you can utilize GlideRecord in a “client-side” script (ServiceNow won’t restrict you from doing that), but it generates a slow Ajax request in the browser. This request can take a long time and transfer a lot of data unnecessarily, so use it wisely and sparingly.

If you have no idea what global or scoped applications are, no sweat - there’s docs for that!

If you want ensure a user has proper access to the data you’re querying on using GlideRecord, you must manually perform all access checks in your scripts (using the canRead(), canWrite(), canDelete() and canCreate() functions).

GlideRecordSecure

If you’ve ever navigated to the GlideRecord API docs you’ve probably missed the one single sentence about GlideRecordSecure at the very top of the page: For information on a class that performs the same functions as GlideRecord and enforces ACLs,see Using GlideRecordSecure.

That’s just it! GlideRecordSecure is a close sibling of GlideRecord, except that GlideRecordSecure will automatically enforce ACLs, where as GlideRecord requires additional method calls to validate access. If you need to ensure that a user has read/write/delete access to data in a script, GlideRecordSecure should be your go-to!

To drive home the difference between the two ways of querying data using GlideRecord and GlideRecordSecure, check out the following examples. In both cases, I’m checking that the user has access to read a record in my “Cat Data” table before adding it to an array and returning the array in the function. If there is an access control present that disallows the user to read specific cat data records, it’s possible that the user won’t get back any cat data (or they will get back a restricted amount of data).

GlideRecord Query with Access Check

var catSysIds = getCatSysIds();

function getCatSysIds() {
    var cats = [];

    var catData = new GlideRecord("x_abc_britt_app.cat_data");
    catData.query();

    while (catData.next()) {
        if (!catData.canRead()) {
            continue;
        }
        cats.push(catData.getUniqueValue());
    }

    return cats;
}

GlideRecordSecure Query (Access Check Built In)

var catSysIds = getCatSysIds();

function getCatSysIds() {
    var cats = [];

    var catData = new GlideRecord("x_abc_britt_app.cat_data");
    catData.query();

    while (catData.next()) {
        cats.push(catData.getUniqueValue());
    }

    return cats;
}

Using GlideRecordSecure to query data with built in access checks is as simple as that! With this class and associated API, you can have confidence that your data is, well, secure!

When utilizing this class and associated API within scripts, the same rules as GlideRecord apply. On the “server side” (like in a Business Rule), the GlideRecordSecure API can only be run from scripts within global or scoped applications. On the “client side” (like in a Client Script), the GlideRecord API can only be run from scripts within global applications.

For more information and examples, please see Using GlideRecordSecure.

TL;DR

To summarize, if you need to enforce ACLs when querying data in your ServiceNow scripts, use the GlideRecordSecure API. If you choose to (only if you must) execute a query in a script without respect of ACLs, use GlideRecord. If neither case applies or you are unsure, stick with using GlideRecordSecure.

I look forward to another post soon (hopefully next time about App Engine Studio’s Templates)!

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Creatorcon Hackathon 2021 Winners

Tue, 18 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

We hope everyone has been enjoying the Knowledge Digital Experience this year. The Hackathon winners were just announced via the video session on the knowledge experience platform. The corporate ServiceNow Blog also has a featured post outlining the winners!

The Hackathon team and I had a fantastic weekend helping answer questions in zoom Guru help hours all through the 24 hours! When not helping directly, we were live streaming, and watching live streams. Two teams live-streamed the WHOLE app building process, one of them even did their pitch video live!

The best part was reading all the application descriptions and watching their Pitch videos. The judges furiously had to complete three rounds of judging and record the session announcing the winners in less than 72 hours from the end of the hackathon. You can share in this fun but reviewing the applications below!!

We look forward to you joining us in future Hackathons!

Grand Prize Winner & Targeted Award: Best Mobile Experience app

**Virtual University - Team Hakuna Matata

Virtual University Application helps educational institutions to digitally transform by automating manual process , providing amazing user experience for management , professors and students , provide insights that helps management to track success and make good decisions.

Finalist & Targeted Award: Best Now Experience app

Obsequio - Team Devs Without Hats

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published bTo Err Is Humanb, which reported that between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths per year were attributable to medical errors, costing approximately $17 billion to $29 billion. In 2004, the World Health Organization began supporting dialogue among health leaders, consumers, and health ministers to discuss patient safety. According to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality, there are eight common root causes of medical errors: Communication problems, Inadequate information flow, Human problems, Patient-related issues, Organizational transfer of Knowledge, Staffing patterns and workflow, Technical failures, and Inadequate policies. Researchers are currently looking for ways to reduce medical errors. However, few of them are addressing the root cause of medical errors, nor having measurements defined to evaluate the improvement effort b eliminating the root cause of medical errors by applying a permanent fix.

Finalist & Targeted Award: Best app started from AES

OBS Overlays with App Engine Studio - Team PhilGoesDeep

Making the world of streaming work better for streamers! Enhance your Live Stream with Now Experience, using ServiceNow to help manage your stream and enable live viewer interaction from any device, anywhere in the world!

Finalist

SentimentNow - Team Arnav Solo

The purpose of the application is to make overall service management a more customer centric experience. The app allows for additional insights into how customer see an incident and an agent supports an incident. The time lapsed in receiving the feedback from the caller via a survey combatively adds to the overall time and adds a delay in which an agent/vendor/supplier could have transformed his service management and easily exceeded contractual obligations. In the grand scheme of things where enterprises work with CSM, HRSD, chat bots, etc. this app within ITSM is at the magnitude of a POC. There will be a dollar cost for subscribing to Machine Learning. It will be well worth it the moment a pattern is observed b a disgruntled caller who is quick to escalate, an agent/ebonding that is missing out on reading comments, a CI/category that needs an overhaul in the ways of working due to lack of knowledge. With this app Service Management will work at LightSpeed!

Targeted Award: Most compelling IntegrationHub

RAID (Request Automated In-office Delivery) - Team Scrantonicity

What is the purpose of the product for the business? Yes probably to make $ but speak to monetization, pricing strategy(s). Some products are about driving customer counts, some are competition blockers.

Targeted Award: Best use of Now Intelligence

Virtua Agent- Stretching your enterprise chatbot to its limits! - TeamServiceNow’s Gaming Division

“Every year, my goal during the hackathon isn’t to simply use ServiceNow’s tools to create a business application, but rather, take those same ServiceNow tools and stretch them to their limits so that we can imagine new applications that are only limited by our creativity.

This year’s tool is Virtual Agent. Virtual Agent as most people recognize it is an Enterprise chatbot with a great user interface for designing dialog trees. But with some thinking-outside-of-the-box, why can’t Virtual Agent also be used for communication with other users? for group finding and role assignment? for self-moderating social Q&A?

Using only in-platform tools, this app demonstrates these “outside-the-box” applications via the simulation of a Virtual Agent being a game show host for all its participants! The game works too! Grab a few others (for the best experience) and head over to https://hackathon026.service-now.com/$sn-va-web-client-app.do

Contenders!

Back2School - Team Alpha Monksters

What if we tell you that your day-to-day role as a student/teacher/parent would become much easier to manage by just a few configuration adjustments via cloud-based platform utilizing Mobile UI/Web Page UI as well a Chat UI? Furthermore, imagine leveraging this for universities with affiliated colleges through platform domain separation? Why stop there? Perhaps make it available for trainings in Corporate Industry?

ShipmentNow - Team Volteoans

ShipmentNow is a digital shipping management solution built on ServiceNow to make your enterprise shipment booking, tendering, tracking easier and efficient with simple configuration and automation.

SPORTal - Team Les 3 FrC(res

SPORTal brings people together: Be Healthy, Be Social Pick your sport & participate in the events that suit you best.

LMS Now - Team AECON

This application will bridge the gap between HRs and employees by digitizing the leave tracker system - Will reduce management efforts. increase team productivity - Integrable application will ensure greater visibility towards organization KPIs, better project planning by the Project management department Cost management by payroll and invoicing departments wrt billable hours and non-billable hours IT department can take this as a feeder into the on-call scheduler and critical/priority task assignments

Extended User Profile - Team KMD - TalentLab

“Extended User Profile is a response to the lack of interaction at the workplace due to the worldwide shift to remote work. As colleagues hide behind their computer screens, they do not form close bonds with one another, which can lead to decreased motivation, worse results and low overall incentive.

The introduction of Extended User Profile - highly customizable, interactive user profiles - can be a starting point towards better employee interactions, increased workplace visibility and company-wide initiatives. As a result, employees get to express themselves freely and proactively reach out to other colleagues that share their backgrounds and interests. Other functions include social media integration, visual effects, nicknames, and more.

Educator 3000 - Team CG Squad

Educator 3000 brings the power of the Now Platform to solving the issue of education during COVID-19. Students, Teachers, classes, courses, school work, and grades can now be managed and automated using the Now Platform giving the students and teacher the space to focus on what really matters.

WantedApp - Team Auranx

WantedApp makes the recruitment process easier by making all the different steps accessible from one tool (technical tests, HR meetings, etc.)

LevelUp! - Team Wampa SNOW Beasts

ServiceNow Voice - Team Nuvolo

“We are building a Smart Vernacular Video/Audio Conference Platform using ServiceNow Agents and UI form builder & Mobile Platform. It enable users too have conversation in any respective language & translate all Audio & text conversation on the fly.

This will help users to have cross border support without worrying about language as a barrier. For the current business use case we will be implementing this solution to the health care domain, where information and knowledge can be shared across borders in real time. Doctors and Researchers can create their ServiceNow pages using UI builder, then they will be able to schedule a web conference call, where ServiceNow Agents api can help them to translate their voice on the fly.”

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Knowledge 2021 Look Back and Look Ahead

Fri, 14 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

HAPPY KNOWLEDGE 2021

Now that we’re halfway through Knowledge and CreatorCon 2021 lets look back on our favorite sessions from the first week and look forward to what’s happening next week.

Last Week

So what happened this past week?

It was fun following the #Know21Games hashtag and seeing the people participating in our social contests this past week. I especially enjoyed some of the creativity I saw from people using the Knowledge 2021 Photobooth. You can follow @Know365 on Twitter for the latest.

Sessions

There were a LOT of great labs a breakouts available this week. Chuck hosted live jeopardy ServiceNow-themed gameshows in 3 different timezones (watch for the on-demand sessions coming soon).

There were some great keynotes, especially the main keynote and Creator Workflows keynote.

Of particular note were the great Citizen Development Sessions especially Citizen Developer Program - they can have their cake and eat it too. The cake is NOT a lie! And be sure to catch the Builder Track (CCL1075-1082) for some hands-on experience with some of our favorite low-code capabilities.

Next Week

Continue following the social contests and make your conference badge in the photobooth.

If you haven’t already, check out the Developer MVP Sessions.

The Annual special CreatorCon Live Coding Happy Hour will be streamed to the knowledge session and YouTube.

Also, don’t miss the Hackathon finale, where you’ll find out who made the finals, and who won the CreatorCon Hackathon 2021!

Lastly, don’t miss the 4 hour Chuck sings Karaoke for charity event at the end of the conference next week. Lets make him sing for 4 hours!

Webd love to hear your learnings, questions, and excitement throughout Knowledge at our official event hashtag: #Know21.

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Podcast: Break Point - A conversation with Sarah Toulson

Wed, 12 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Sarah Toulson is a ServiceNow Developer at Glidefast, mother of two, and has made the transition from a non-IT career. Join me for an interesting discussion with Sarah on this episode of Break Point.

Topics

00:00 Welcome and introduction
03:35 Challenges of transitioning from a non-IT career
05:44 Where Sarah sees herself in the future
09:05 Example challenges of goverments
11:56 Design is not an after B thought
16:37 User centric design
22:53 Sarah’s sons
25:30 Selfie at DragonCon
28:15 One thing Sarah would change in the platform
31:48 Words of advice for someone getting started
32:43 Contact info
33:08 Outro

Links

Check out the other ServiceNow podcasts.

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Creatorcon Hackathon 2021 Reminder

Mon, 03 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

The CreatorCon 2021 Hackathon is this weekend!

Go make sure you have registered and joined/created a team today.

What is the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon?

CreatorCon Hackathon is a weekend-long event to rapidly prototype ideas using the Now Platform App Engine. You get to build apps and solutions on the latest release of the Now Platform with support from ServiceNow experts. The goal is for participants to take an idea, make a plan, and then turn bring it into reality.

Details

The event will run from 11 AM EDT on this Saturday, May 8 to 10:59 AM EDT on Sunday May 9 and will be kicked off with a special edition Live Coding Happy Hour at 10 AM EDT.

Here’s how you can get involved:

Register for Knowledge 2021.
Add to your list the Hackathon Session
Create or join a team.
Subscribe to the CreatorCon Hackathon Community Forum to ask questions and get updates about the hackathon. You can also use this forum to look for a team or team members.

For more information including FAQs visit the CreatorCon Hackathon 2021 page.

Let us know at the CreatorCon Hackathon Community Forum if you have any questions, happy hacking!

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Building an app in 2007 - Live Coding Happy Hour for 2021-04-30

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Take a trip in a time machine as Chuck, Brad, and Andrew try to use a ServiceNow instance from March 2007 to build a basic app with an approval. Join us to see some familiar sights and some challenges we had “back in the day”. Crack a beverage and come join us!

Topics

00:00 Start
02:23 Welcome, introductions, objective
07:51 Screen share started
11:14 Creating a table
12:43 Creating some fields and form layout
18:04 Activity history
25:05 A look at the dictionary to add a state field and choices
33:42 The client script editor
35:05 Creating a business rule
39:51 System logs
43:26 Dot walked fields
43:45 Creating a UI action
48:15 Autonumbering
58:10 Final announcements and ratings

Links

About: Live Coding Happy Hour is a weekly show provided by the ServiceNow Developer Program. Each week join as the Developer Advocate team along with guests work on a developing and enhancing real applications with unscripted and unprepared examples. See how experts at ServiceNow problem solve and learn new parts of the Now Platform.

Credits: Hosts: Chuck Tomasi, Brad Tilton, Andrew Barnes

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Developer MVP Sessions at CreatorCon 2021

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

This is a guest post from one of our Developer MVPs, Nia McCash

It’s that time of year again! Knowledge and CreatorCon 2021 presents so many sessions to level-up your ServiceNow skills. If you’re a little overwhelmed with the plethora of choices, here is a highlight of sessions sure to be a hit - all by our Developer MVPs.

Developer MVP Sessions at CreatorCon 2021

A fail-safe approach for implementing ITOM health [CCB1170-K21] By Ashutosh Munot & Dhruv Gupta

This session will facilitate the Do’s and Don’t’s of ITOM Health implementation. We have learned it the hard way but now you don’t need to do it that way. We will ensure that you get what your clients need you to have to provide a better return on investment.

Catalog builder - Quebec [CCB1207-K21] By Jace Benson & Aashish Atrey

In today’s post-pandemic world, the Service Catalog is one of the most common ways your employees and customers request services from your business. The biggest challenge is to get proper requirement gathering and then build it. If actual requirements are missing then the purpose of using the Catalog item gets failed. How do you manage to get proper requirements without any overhead? In this session, you will experience the new UX of Catalog creation, you will learn Catalog item template creation and from template to create Catalog item effectively capturing every single detail in the template. Takeaways: The totally new user experience of Catalog Builder Creation of catalog templates, Creation of catalog items from templates.

Citizen developer program - ‘They CAN have their cake and eat it too’ [CCB1191-K21] By Paige Duffey

Empower your business users to self-serve development. In this session to learn how Novant Health has implemented and maintained a Citizen Developer program, leading to increased output. Find out how to move development closer to the requestor while ensuring a stable environment. Learn how to scale Application development across the organization and safely grow embedded developers while protecting your environment.

Enhance self service with Virtual Agent and IntegrationHub [CCB1232-21] By Alikutty Abdulrazak

Password resets contribute to one of the major shares of calls received by service desks. Converting these calls into a self-service activity improves the user experience greatly apart from the related efforts and cost savings. With the help of a virtual agent powered by Integration Hub and NLU, the session intends to demonstrate a self-service feature to reset user passwords in Active Directory from a publicly accessible topic. The session will explore Action controls in virtual agent which is a new feature added in Quebec and will be used to directly access the AD and Twilio spokes from the designer.

Enhance your catalog items with contextual popups! [CCB1226-K21] By Kieran Anson

When you wish to grab a user’s attention within your service portal catalog item, you’ve likely gone down the route of using alerts and confirm dialogs. Although functional they don’t follow your Service Portal design principle and usually lead to a poor user experience. Leave the browser-based prompts in the past and learn the power of the spModal class for creating simple popups, dialogs, and confirmation modals with your catalog client scripts. - Create an alert modal to inform a user of an incorrect action - Leverage a modal window for a Terms and Conditions (Ts & Cs) prompt - Template your modal scripts to easily empower non-script savvy folk.

I built a thing - Automatically generating ATF tests for service catalog [CCB1172-K21] By Paul Morris

In today’s post-pandemic world, the Service Catalogue is one of the most common ways your employees and customers request services from your business. There has never been more demand on administrators for new Catalog Items, and it has never been more important to keep them bug-free, as requesting in person may not be possible. How do you manage the testing overhead while maintaining a high level of throughput? In this session, you will learn how to quickly create ATF Tests for your Service Catalogue with the aid of a custom-built ATF recording application to minimize defects and maximize throughput. Takeaways Use the NowPlatform to automate manual processes App Engine is not just for Custom Apps Creating Tests takes less time than you think.

I built a zero latency search engine in ServiceNow [CCB1174-K21] By Anders Figenschow

What do you do if you are not 100% happy with a feature? You can either live with it, or you can do something about it. In this no-code / low-code world, it is easy to forget how much there is to gain if you pull up your sleeves and pro-code your way out of your problems. In this session, you will learn how search engines work in general, and see how a search engine built from scratch can supplement the out-of-box search, and deliver an improved experience for the end-user. Takeaways The Now Platform allows you to build just about anything Creating from scratch is a great learning experience Search can be used for much more than just finding things.

Meetup: Software Asset Management - Implementation Best Practices By Alikutty Abdulrazak

May 18 @ 8:00 am 1h ServiceNow Software Asset Management is being adopted by several customers to manage their software lifecycle process. SAM enables tracking, evaluation and management of software licenses rights, compliance and optimization. The session would cover on best practices that you need to consider before implementing any SAM project.

Self-service catalog management: Scale form creation to citizen developers [SES1358-K21] By Ashutosh Munot

NN Group spent almost two days of work per week creating catalog forms instead of focusing on more important priorities and innovations that would serve the business. In response, NN Group quickly created a Self-Service Catalog Management app (SSCAM) using App Engine. This app allows employees in the company to be trained and certified as citizen developers so they can:

Create their own catalog items linked to their services
Utilize already existing IntegrationHub integrations (spokes)
Create their own Scripted REST API /PowerShell integrations
Leverage fully guided tours training in ServiceNow with a certification program to validate attendee knowledge
Auto deploy functionality, so no bi-weekly release is needed

Join this session to learn how they were able to scale innovation with a citizen development approach.

Script includes: What are they and why should I care? [CCB1193-K21] By Eric Riemer

Script Includes are an extremely powerful tool. You can run Server code from Client scripts, write a function once to use over and over again, and more. Most beginner and even intermediate ServiceNow Developers don’t have a good grasp on what a Script Include is for. They don’t know when and why to use them. Key takeaways would be: Running Server-side code from Client scripts Re-usable functionality Things that are a good fit to be moved to a Script Include How to understand what oob scripts calling a Script Include is doing.

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UI Builder - List Components Tips and Tricks

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

In this week’s UI Builder Bytes, we’re going to take a closer look at the list components: List and List - Simple. These list components are among the more popular components in UI Builder, and I’ve seen similar questions a few times on the Now Experience community and in the sndevs slack around them. They’re questions that I also had when I first started working with UI Builder and the list components.

Right now, the two main questions I’m seeing around lists are how to do dynamic list filtering and how to refresh a list automatically from a script.

List Components

In the Quebec release, there are two different list components.

The List component gives you a full-featured Now Experience styled list that you may be familiar with from agent workspace. This list has all the things you’d expect from a fully-featured list like filtering, exporting, pagination, show matching, etc., and has a TON of properties that control which of those things you want to show. The list component is something you would definitely use in a workspace with fulfillers.
The List - Simple is more of a barebones version of the list component that is basically just showing a list of data that you can click into without filters, pagination, etc. I think this type of component is more suited to a portal where someone is consuming information and may just need to click into a list item for more details.

List Filtering

The filter in the list components works as you would expect from any filter in ServiceNow. You click Edit filter in the list component properties and get a modal with a filter against whatever table you’ve configured in the table property on the component.

The issue that I’ve run into is: what if you want something more dynamic like Active is true AND Parent is equal to a page parameter or client state parameter? The first time I saw this, I expected it to work like flow designer where I could use some data pills inside the filter. It’s still possible to make it dynamic, but instead, you need to provide that component’s filter property with an encoded query. You can do that either by binding a client state parameter or something else representing an encoded query to the filter property, or by using a script in the filter property to produce an encoded query. In the video below, I’ll show the second approach.

The script we used in this video was:

function evaluateProperty({api}) {
  return 'active=true^category=' + api.state.category;
}

List Refreshing

The other thing that I’ve run into is refreshing a list component programmatically instead of having to click the refresh button on the list component itself. The main use case I’ve seen for this is when you’ve created a record that goes in this list somewhere else on the page and you want to automatically refresh the list so it shows up. Basically, what you need to do is bind a client state parameter to the refresh property on the list component, and then set that parameter from a client script.

I’ll show that method in the video below:

The important line of code from this video is: api.setState('listRefreshed', {timestamp: Date.now()})

More Resources

Make sure to check out the previous posts in this UI Builder series, and stay tuned for more posts.

Have a UI Builder topic you’d like me to hit in a future post? Let me know on Twitter, LinkedIn, or sndevs.com slack (@btilton).

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Creator Toolbox - Managing Dev on ServiceNow Part 2

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

On this episode, join Andrew, Brad, and Chuck as they take a look at how to manage your development on the Now Platform and deploy code changes. Part 2 will explore source control and the application repository capabilities and when and how to leverage them.

Topics

00:00 Video start
01:38 Welcome, introductions, and announcements
07:03 Screenshare started and topic introduced
08:22 Importing an app from source control
11:00 Getting an app into source control
11:35 Branches and stashes
24:21 Creating a new app and linking to source control
29:40 Introducing the application repository
37:53 Reviewing the upgrade history
39:45 Exploring protection policies
42:42 Recommendations on source control vs app repo use
46:34 Exploring the CI/CD APIs
55:00 Extra special tip to avoid issues with cloning
57:30 Summary

Links

About: Creator Toolbox is a weekly show provided by the ServiceNow Developer Program. Each Tuesday, join the Developer Advocate team and guests as they showcase the platform tools you need to get your job done quickly. Join us each Tuesday at 8AM PT/11AM ET (save the last Tuesday of each month.)

Credits: Hosts: Chuck Tomasi, Andrew Barnes, Brad Tilton

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CreatorCon 2021 - Know Before You Go

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

The Developer Program team is really excited about what we have in store for developers at CreatorCon 21 this year!

Here’s everything that we think you as a builder or developer need to know about.

Labs

Starting on May 11th, we’ve got the ever-popular hands-on, on-demand, labs to guide you through all of our new and popular features. Everything from building your first application in minutes to simplifying integrations and authentication. You can do them at your own pace and on your own schedule! But be sure to sign up!

Breakouts

As always, we have plenty of great breakout sessions. You’ll hear from your peers as they talk about solutions they’ve built and how they did it. Take a look at the agenda, we’re sure there’s something that will catch your interest.

Live Content

We’ve tried to build in plenty of networking time into CreatorCon21 so you can get live, in-person interaction with other builders, developers, and architects attending this year. Share ideas, trade secrets, and show off your accomplishments.

Ask the Experts

Those of you with a Connect Pass, be sure to watch your agenda for Ask the Experts sessions to interact with session authors and speakers.

Live Coding Happy Hour and Build with Chuck

Also along the live theme, we’ve got a special episode of Live Coding Happy Hour with Andrew Barnes and Brad Tilton where they’ll build something unscripted on the platform. Witness the real development challenges they face and how they deal with them.

For the low-code audience, check out Build with Chuck where Chuck Tomasi takes you through the steps to build a low-code app in minutes. Chuck explains step-by-step as we go from spreadsheet to cross department workflow, proving that anyone can build an app!

Fun sessions: Jeopardy and Karaoke

We have a couple more really fun sessions for during the event you won’t want to miss!

First, Jeopardy is returning to CreatorCon. This is based on the popular TV game show where players answer trivia questions, only ours is using a ServiceNow Jeopardy app that Chuck created to run the game. We challenge you to test your ServiceNow developer knowledge against our ServiceNow experts in the US, EMEA, and Australia as they attempt to raise money for their favorite charity.

And we’ve got another charity event where Chuck will do his best to sing karaoke on May 20th for up to four hours! We’ll use another ServiceNow app Chuck wrote to manage the party. Join us to make requests, upvote other’s requests, chat live and more. It’s going to be a rockin’ party so come join your friends!

Evolution of ServiceNow Development Panel

We’re also really looking forward to the panel with some seriously experienced ServiceNow veterans where we’ll talk about how developing on the platform has changed (or not) since the early days. Be sure to put The Evolution of ServiceNow Development panel on your agenda.

Chuck will be joined by the lovely Jessi Graves and two names you might recognize from the demo data, David Loo and Bow Ruggeri, who also happen to be two of the company founders. I hope you’ll join us for what is sure to be a memorable discussion.

CreatorCon Hackathon

Of course, it wouldn’t be CreatorCon without a Hackathon. The 24-hour Hackathon event takes place on May 8th, and you can find more details on the CreatorCon Hackathon 2021 post. Then, Join Marcus Torres and Brad Tilton as they discuss what a hackathon is, why they are important, and what we look for in a winner. Hear about the finalists’ apps, how they were chosen, and which app will be crowned the 2021 CreatorCon Hackathon Winner on May 18th!

We hope to see you there!

As you can see, there is a lot going on during the two weeks of CreatorCon21 this year. For up to date news and updates on what’s going on with CreatorCon, follow our developer advocates on social media:

Andrew Barnes: Twitter | LinkedIn
Brad Tilton: Twitter | LinkedIn
Chuck Tomasi: Twitter | LinkedIn

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Glidequery - Complex Queries

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Using “or” and Complex Queries

Sometimes when filtering data we need to express when expressions A or B are true. When we add multiple where clauses to our query, it’s implied that they stand in an AND relation to each other. But what if we want one or the other? For this, we can simply call orWhere:

var numBigCompanies = new GlideQuery('core_company')
    .whereNotNull('parent')
    .orWhere('num_employees', '>', 5000)
    .count();

Here we count the number of companies that have a parent company or have more than 5000 employees. By simply changing where to orWhere we make it clear in plain English the two clauses should be or’d together.

There are a few rules when using orWhere (or its sibling functions orWhereNull and orWhereNotNull):

1. The first orWhere in a query must be preceded by a where, whereNull, or whereNotNull.
2. No where clauses can be used after an orWhere clause.

The first rule is to make the GlideQuery script more readable. It doesn’t make sense to say “orWhere” if we didn’t already state a prior where clause. It is often signals a mistake if somewhat begins their query with orWhere. The second rule means that all where clauses (and other related clauses) must be AND’d or OR’d, but you cannot have a combination of the two. So for example:

// WHERE priority = 1 AND urgency = 1 AND escalation = 3
new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('priority', 1)
    .where('urgency', 1)
    .where('escalation', 3)

// WHERE priority = 1 OR urgency = 1 OR escalation = 3
new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('priority', 1)
    .orWere('urgency', 1)
    .orWhere('escalation', 3)

// Ambiguous query: WHERE priority = 1 OR urgency = 2 AND escalation = 3
new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('priority', 1)
    .orWhere('urgency', 1)
    .where('escalation', 3)

The first two are queries are fine, but the third would throw an error. Why does GlideQuery have to be so rigid? Because GlideQuery isn’t entirely sure how you’re grouping the three where clauses and wants to avoid any mistakes. Should it be understood as

WHERE priority = 1 OR (urgency = 1 AND escalation = 3)

WHERE (priority = 1 OR urgency = 1) AND escalation = 3

???

How you group the filters changes the behavior of your application. There is some ambiguity in the query, and ambiguity is an opportunity for bugs. SQL and GlideRecord address this ambiguity by using operator precedence. In SQL, AND has precedence over OR, and so the parenthesis would wrap around the AND expression (the first example). However, GlideRecord gives OR precedence, doing the opposite (as in the second example). Having used SQL for years I assumed GlideRecord would behave the same way as SQL, but they’re different.

So does GlideQuery does give AND or OR precedence? Neither! In the spirit of Fail Fast, we ask the developer to explicitly group their filter expressions, and throw an Error if they don’t. But how do you group where clauses in GlideQuery, since you only allow AND or OR, but not both in a single GlideQuery? By nesting GlideQuery:

// WHERE (priority = 1 OR urgency = 1) AND escalation = 3
new GlideQuery('task')
    .where(new GlideQuery()
        .where('priority', 1)
        .orWhere('urgency', 1))
    .where('escalation', 3)

// WHERE priority = 1 OR (urgency = 1 AND escalation = 3)
new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('priority', 1)
    .orWhere(new GlideQuery()
        .where('urgency', 1)
        .where('escalation', 3))

The nested GlideQuery can be seen as a grouped set for where clauses. Another way to look at it is that nested GlideQueries passed to a where clause are conceptually placed within parenthesis. This makes it explicit how you want the clauses grouped together.

Note in the above examples that the nested GlideQueries have no table name passed to their constructors. Because its inside of another GlideQuery’s where clause, it assumes the parent’s table. However, you could pass “task” in the nested GlideQuery’s constructor, or a base table name if one exists (task has no base class). This allows us to reuse a GlideQuery within another GlideQuery, for example:

var pri1Tasks = new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('active', true)
    .where('priority', 1);

pri1Tasks
    .select('number')
    .forEach(function (task) { gs.info(task.number); });

// Note that incident is a subclass of task
new GlideQuery('incident')
    .where(pri1Tasks)
    .orWhere('incident_state', 1)
    .orderBy('severity')
    .select('number')
    .forEach(doSomething);

Because of some limitations of the platform the nested GlideQueries themselves cannot have nested GlideQueries.

new GlideQuery('task')
    .where('priority', 1)
    .orWhere(new GlideQuery()
        .where('impact', 1)
        .where(new GlideQuery() // Error: we can't nest this far in
            .where('active', true)
            .orWhere('urgency', 2)))

Conclusion

GlideQuery supports both filtering using AND and OR expressions. I personally find the syntax easier to reason about, and I hope you do too. GlideQuery can leverage other GlideQuery objects within where clauses, allowing for grouped sets of expressions.

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Creatorcon Hackathon 2021

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon

Announcing the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon

Join the CreatorCon Hackathon virtually. Teams of all types will go head-to-head in a weekend-long quest for fun, prizes, and glory. This is an excellent opportunity to showcase your skills and build apps that solve real business problems.

What is the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon?

Details

The event will run from 11 AM EDT on Saturday, May 8 to 10:59 AM EDT on Sunday May 9 and will be kicked off with a special edition Live Coding Happy Hour at 10 AM EDT.

Here’s how you can get involved:

Register for Knowledge 2021.
Add to your list the Hackathon Session
Create or join a team.
Subscribe to the CreatorCon Hackathon Community Forum to ask questions and get updates about the hackathon. You can also use this forum to look for a team or team members.

For more information including FAQs visit the CreatorCon Hackathon 2021 page.

Let us know at the CreatorCon Hackathon Community Forum if you have any questions, happy hacking!

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Creator Toolbox - Managing Dev on ServiceNow Part 1

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

On this episode, join Andrew, Brad, and Chuck as they take a look at how to manage your development on the Now Platform and deploy code changes. Part 1 will focus on the older methods of using Update Sets. Part 2 will explore how to raise the maturity level with source control and the application repository.

Topics

00:00 Start
01:36 Welcome, introductions, announcements
05:30 Topic introduction - update sets
08:47 Screen share started
09:44 Example stories and releases
11:08 Basic update set operations
15:07 Managing update sets
18:57 Introducing batching
22:20 What batching looks like in practice
32:08 Fixing bugs with update sets
35:40 Batching in test for release to prod
40:55 Bonus: Cloning and update sets
48:15 Q & A

Links

Credits: Hosts: Chuck Tomasi, Andrew Barnes, Brad Tilton

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Podcast: Break Point - Talking to Executives with Dan Bolena

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Developers need more than technical skills to have a successful career. Dan Bolena joins me for a discussion to understand the best way to communicate with executives. Join us for some fun examples and important tips you won’t want to miss!

Topics

00:00 Introductions
05:15 Topic overview
06:09 The first thing to know
09:28 Using visuals on slides
10:34 Bad example of a verbal status update
12:46 The problem-solution-value model
14:42 Better example of a verbal status update
15:57 Breakdown of the status example
17:01 The triangle
21:55 Relating this to written communications
24:43 An example email
28:12 Breakdown of the email
30:25 Summary
31:47 A challenge
32:55 Contact info
33:57 Closing

Links

Check out the other ServiceNow podcasts.

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CreatorCon Builder Track

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

CreatorCon 2021 is sporting an updated Builder Track ready to enable low-code developers! These eight hands-on, self-paced, on-demand lab exercises are easy to follow. They are specifically for:

System Admins looking to dip their toes in to the developer world.
Line of business users who can’t wait for IT to get to their projects and start transforming their corner of the organization.
New developers to the platform looking to accelerate the time to build apps.

If you are already an experienced ServiceNow developer, consider sharing these labs with your power users who can help off-load some of those departmental project requests and allow you to focus on the more complex stuff like integrations and scripted logic while they take care of adding fields, reports, and several other low-code tasks.

The Builder Track is made up of 8 labs hosted by ServiceNow experts. They’ll guide you though step-by-step instructions to demonstrate how easily and quickly you can start unlocking productivity and delivering great experiences.

The labs don’t need to be completed in this order, but I do recommend you start with CCL1075-K21 as it sets the context for the rest.

CCL1075-K21 – Build your first app in minutes

Sascha will show you how easy it is to go from spreadsheet to application in minutes with no code! Create a data model, build forms and lists, add a workflow! See how fast ServiceNow can unlock productivity in your organization!
CCL1076-K21 – Quickly add business logic to your app

Discover all the ways ServiceNow can provide business logic to turn a system of record into a workflow application without writing a single line of code. Lisa will share how you can improve an existing workflow, create a reusable subflow, and create a new workflow from scratch. Challenge exercises will show you how to prevent users from entering invalid data.
CCL1077 – Gain insights into your application

Join Will and learn to create several different kinds of reports and present them on a dashboard to gain insights into your data. Learn how quickly you can visualize your information to derive meaning from it and take action.
CCL1078 – Create a mobile experience for your app

Deliver the consumer-like mobile experience to your enterprise apps without writing any code. In this session, Yiran will be your guide to learn to use Mobile Studio to build a mobile application as an extension to an existing ServiceNow app. Your app will have access to geolocation, swipe actions, and other apps all without writing a single line of code!
CCL1079 – Add a chatbot to your application

In this session, Eros will help you explore how to create a chatbot and deliver an interactive conversation to your end-users. No coding skills required as you give users a simple way to create and update records as if they were chatting with a live age.
CCL1080 – Go beyond a single table application

Join Blake as she helps you learn when, why, and how to create additional related tables and access that data to build more complex applications. You will learn the fundamentals of data modeling, how to interact with data in related tables, and how to prevent users from selecting invalid data.
CCL1081 – Ensure functional quality in your application

In this session, Ajinkya is your guide as you explore the fundamentals of creating a no-code automated test for your application to ensure it meets functional requirements before deployment. Additionally, the same tests can be used to speed up upgrades!
CCL1082 – Give your app some finishing touches

Learn to polish your apps with several low-code features to take them to the next level with Chuck as your tutor. You’ll build features to make navigation easier, schedule repeated tasks, gather feedback with surveys, and create a guided tour to reduce training.

I hope you enjoy these labs and share them with your coworkers.

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UI Builder - Blog Comments Part 2 - Live Coding Happy Hour for 2021-04-16

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

On this episode, join Brad, Andrew, and special guest Lisa Holenstein as we finish configuring the nested comments component in the Blogging portal experience we started last week. Crack a beverage and come join us!

Topics

0:00
4:06 Intros
5:50 Drink Intro
8:35 Introduce Problem
12:40 Screenshare
19:09 Show all comments (unfiltered)
29:40 Posting comment refresh
32:00 Transform
34:40 Lisa helpful info about AES Templates
42:00 Increment Like Count in comment
49:20 Flow for increment
59:40 Summary
66:30 Drink Ratings

Links

Credits: Hosts: Brad Tilton, Lisa Holenstein, Andrew Barnes

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UI Builder - Client Scripting

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 14:00:00 -0400

This week in our UI Builder Bytes series we’re going to take a closer look at client scripting. We did touch on and do a quick demo around client scripting in the UI Builder - Client state parameters, Client Scripts, and Events post, but I wanted to look at it a little deeper and call out some of the more common methods and properties you might need to use.

How to trigger a client script

In order to trigger a client script you’ll need to add an event handler to an event in UI Builder that triggers your client script. That could be any number of things like a page ready event, button click event, list load event, and more. You’ll just need to find an event, click to add an event handler and find your client script in the list. This is one reason that your client script name should be informative and easily identifiable.

Client Script Includes

As a long-time ServiceNow developer when I hear the term script include I automatically think “server-side reusable script”, but in UI Builder only half of that is true. Client Script Includes [sys_ux_client_script_include] in UI Builder are reusable client-side scripts that can be called from any client script. As you scale your Now Experience UI Builder pages I think these client script includes will come in handy, and you should treat scripting in UI Builder like anywhere else on the platform where you make your scripts modular and reusable.

We’ll look at how you call these script includes in the next section.

Common Methods and Properties

Most of the client scripting methods and properties are documented in the developer site API documentation, but I want to call out some of the more common methods and properties that I’ve found helpful here, as there is a lot going on.

api.setState('<client_state_parameter_name>', Any value) - One of the most common things to do from a client script is to set a client state parameter value that you can then bind to a component or data resource property.
api.state.<client_state_parameter_name> - Access the value of a client state parameter.
api.context.props.<page_property_name> - Access the value of a required or optional page parameter.
api.context.session.<session_property_name> - Access available session properties like the logged in user’s sys_id, roles, timezone, etc.
api.data.<data_resource_id>.execute(<inputValuesObject>) - Triggers an execute operation on a data resource that mutates data, most commonly the create or update data resources. Each data resource expects the inputValuesObject to conform to the data resource’s input parameters.
api.data.<data_resource_id>.refresh() - Triggers a refresh operation for the specified non-mutating data resource instance. This method is asynchronous and emits an internal event to trigger the refresh of the specified data resource instance.
api.emit('<EVENT_NAME>', <payloadObject>) - Emits an event with the specified name and payload. Note that the event being emitted must be part of the associated page definition’s dispatched events list.
imports['<Client script include API Name>']() - Imports a client script include into your client script. Note that you also have to include it in the details page to the left of the script.

Example Demo

There’s nothing like seeing something in action, so here is a quick demo where I put a few of these common methods and properties into a client script and call it from an event.

Here is the script from the demo:

function handler({api, event, helpers, imports}) {
    const plantName = api.context.props.plantName;
    const userFirstName = api.context.session.user.firstName;
    const {getPlantName,isMyPlantHappy} = imports['x_85636_plant.Plants include']();
    const plantMsg = `Hello ${userFirstName}, ${isMyPlantHappy(plantName)}`;
    api.setState('plantStatusMsg', plantMsg);
}

More Resources

Make sure to check out the previous posts in this UI Builder series, and stay tuned for more posts.

Have a UI Builder topic you’d like me to hit in a future post? Let me know on Twitter, LinkedIn, or sndevs.com slack (@btilton).

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Podcast: Break Point - CreatorCon 2021 with Jason McKee

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Jason McKee, Director of Developer Evangelism joins me again to talk about all things CreatorCon 2021. We’ll look at what’s new, what’s interactive, what’s recorded, some fun sessions, and things you just don’t want to miss. Have a listen!

Topics

00:00 Welcome and introduction
03:02 What is CreatorCon
03:39 Some fun projects
05:08 The schedule of events
07:11 Live sessions
07:58 This year’s highlights
11:24 Evolution of ServiceNow Development Panel
13:54 Breakout sessions
14:46 More interactive sessions
16:11 Fun sessions
19:02 New features of the registration site
20:59 What is Jason looking forward to?
21:57 How to get in touch with Jason
22:15 Outro

Creator Toolbox - Report Calculations

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 11:00:00 -0400

On this episode, join Chuck Tomasi and Brad Tilton as they explore the reporting calculation feature introduced in Quebec to help reduce the need to create specific fields and scripted logic. Join us Tuesday April 13 8AM PT.

Topics

00:00 Start
01:20 Introductions
02:32 Topic introductions
05:15 Screenshare and requirements
06:13 Create a new pledge report
06:55 Introducing Configure Function Field
12:55 Creating a second function
14:33 Deactivating function fields and caution
18:59 Creating another function field on another report
24:08 Attempting multiple operations & dot-walking
32:05 Reviewing other functions
33:13 Required roles
33:55 Another look at true/false
36:43 Wrap up

Starting Your ServiceNow Development Journey

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Hear from ServiceNow Developer MVPs and learn how to jump-start your development journey! Take the first step at developer.servicenow.com, where you will find an ever-growing library of resources and tools such as a free PDI (Personal Developer Instance), API documentation, Learning Plans, and more.

This video features the following 2021 ServiceNow Developer MVPs:

Andrew Albury-Dor *Jarod Mundt *Travis Toulson

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ServiceNow Developer Blog

GlideRecord vs GlideRecordSecure

GlideRecord vs GlideRecordSecure

Preface

GlideRecord

GlideRecordSecure

TL;DR

Creatorcon Hackathon 2021 Winners

Grand Prize Winner & Targeted Award: Best Mobile Experience app

Finalist & Targeted Award: Best Now Experience app

Finalist & Targeted Award: Best app started from AES

Finalist

Targeted Award: Most compelling IntegrationHub

Targeted Award: Best use of Now Intelligence

Contenders!

Knowledge 2021 Look Back and Look Ahead

Last Week

Know21Games and Social

Sessions

Next Week

Podcast: Break Point - A conversation with Sarah Toulson

Topics

Links

Subscribe to Break Point

Creatorcon Hackathon 2021 Reminder

What is the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon?

Details

Building an app in 2007 - Live Coding Happy Hour for 2021-04-30

Topics

Links

Developer MVP Sessions at CreatorCon 2021

Developer MVP Sessions at CreatorCon 2021

UI Builder - List Components Tips and Tricks

List Components

List Filtering

List Refreshing

More Resources

Creator Toolbox - Managing Dev on ServiceNow Part 2

Topics

Links

CreatorCon 2021 - Know Before You Go

Labs

Breakouts

Live Content

Ask the Experts

Live Coding Happy Hour and Build with Chuck

Fun sessions: Jeopardy and Karaoke

Evolution of ServiceNow Development Panel

CreatorCon Hackathon

We hope to see you there!

Glidequery - Complex Queries

Conclusion

Creatorcon Hackathon 2021

Announcing the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon

What is the CreatorCon 2021 Virtual Hackathon?

Details

Creator Toolbox - Managing Dev on ServiceNow Part 1

Topics

Links

Podcast: Break Point - Talking to Executives with Dan Bolena

Topics

Links

Subscribe to Break Point

CreatorCon Builder Track

UI Builder - Blog Comments Part 2 - Live Coding Happy Hour for 2021-04-16

Topics

Links

UI Builder - Client Scripting

How to trigger a client script

Client Script Includes

Common Methods and Properties

Example Demo

More Resources

Podcast: Break Point - CreatorCon 2021 with Jason McKee

Topics

Links

Subscribe to Break Point

Creator Toolbox - Report Calculations

Topics

Links