15 Amazing ways to stand out as a SNOW Developer (April Fool’s Prank)
Read all of these instructions to the end before taking any actions.
Make all of your code really long, put it all in one giant business rule.
Further reading: “Scripting Technical Best Practices” by developer.servicenow.com
var GRis used by ServiceNow, so it is best practice!Further reading: “Just not gr - ServiceNow Best Practices with Best Beats (sound on!)” by Earl Duque, “KB0713029 - Best Practice: Why using ‘gr’ as a GlideRecord variable name in custom scripts is always a bad idea” by Now Support
Community, the Developer Site and every other online resource isn't worth your time. You should directly message your boss’s boss when you have any questions - that way you get the knowledge you need from the best place.
Further reading: “You belong in the ServiceNow community” by Maria Gabriela Ochoa Perez Waechter
Always use on before business rules to update records and don't forget to use
current.update()to get the best performance boost!Further reading: “Never use current.update in a Business Rule” by Göran WitchDoctor Lundqvist
Always use the Default update set - It's there for a reason!
Further reading: “Update Set Best Practices” by ServiceNow Scholar, “Discussion - Update sets - Some useful tips and best practices” by Baggies
Don't ask for help if you're stuck. You need to figure things out on your own, you don't want to be a burden to your team. They'll get annoyed with you and think you're bad at your job. You should know everything by now, googling isn't a good thing to do and it makes you look bad. You should really have it all memorized by now.
Further reading: “Community!” by Paige Duffey, “10+ Tips for writing a quality community question” by Kieran Anson
If you make a mistake don't tell anyone. EVER. Just hide it and hope no one notices. It’ll go away after a while, right?
Further reading: “It’s okay to make mistakes” by Todd Parr, “6 Reasons Why It’s Okay to Make Mistakes” by Lonnie McFadden
ServiceNow is a low code solution but you can write all the code you want - also make sure to add any columns and extend any tables you need to get the job done! The more extended tables the better. (Bonus tip: Be sure to extend sys_user for every scoped application you create! Bonus points if you extend sys_metadata or any of the sys_audit or history tables.)
Further reading: “Configuration vs Customization: Which Is It?” by Travis Toulson, “Extending sys_user - Don’t do it!” by Nia McCash
Don't ask your stakeholders questions about what they submit as requirements. It will make you look bad and make them think you think they're dumb. Say yes to everything! No matter what.
Further reading: “10 Steps To Successful Requirements Gathering” by Jordan Hirsch
Always test your work as Administrator. This makes sure that everything works and you can get it off to QA with no issues!
Further reading: “10 things Testers should NOT do” by Micheal Schoonbaert
Make sure emails are enabled in your sub prod environment for better testing.
Further reading: “KB0725822 - Non production instances have the capability of sending emails” by Now Support
Global UI Scripts are the way to go!
Further reading: “Don’t use Global UI Scripts because they run everywhere and can potentially cause major issues” by Maria Gabriela Ochoa Perez Waechter
Make all of your changes in Production - It gets the changes to the customers faster and will make you look good!
Further reading: “Creating, testing, and moving customizations” by ServiceNow, “ServiceNow application repository” by ServiceNow
Save all passwords for your service/integration accounts as comments in scripts. Commenting them out using
//will make them unable to be seen once deployed to prod.Further reading: “Security best practices” by ServiceNow
BONUS TIP: Need to integrate with a remote system? Look at inbound email actions to easily move data into ServiceNow!
Further reading: “What is robotic process automation (RPA)?” by Creator Workflows
Go back, re-read everything, and
DONT DO IT!!!!
Click on each link to find out why.
Happy April Fool's!
For an actual list of tips for ServiceNow developers, check out Jenny’s article “Top Ten Tips for ServiceNow Developers”.
Also thank you very much to Carleen Carter for helping me get together the resources linked above!
(and don’t call it SNOW.)
