Who this book is for

This book will be most useful to those who have a good grounding in web technologies and computer science but don’t know too much about ServiceNow. We discuss how ServiceNow implements common design patterns and technologies, enabling you to get a better understanding of how your instance works.

There is a great deal of functionality in ServiceNow, and it simply isn't possible to cram everything into a single book. ServiceNow has a comprehensive wiki and a popular community forum. The ServiceNow training department has a series of mixed-media courses to get you up to speed quickly. We aren't going to replicate those, especially the application-specific ones, but there will be some overlap.

There are several sources of documentation, which are frequently referred to throughout the book. The most common sources are the following:

• The product documentation covers the key features and capabilities of the ServiceNow platform and the available applications. It works on a how-to basis, giving you focused help to accomplish specific tasks. Access it at https://docs.servicenow.com/.
• The developer portal focuses on the needs of those using the platform building blocks. It importantly hosts the server and client APIs. Access it at https://developer.servicenow.com/.

Every ServiceNow system administrator needs to have at least a basic understanding of JavaScript. JavaScript underpins the ServiceNow foundations and hence is essential to fully master ServiceNow. An in-depth knowledge of all the intricacies of JavaScript is not needed, since many of the idioms and objects used are ServiceNow specific. Nonetheless, scripting is part of the product. A review of a good JavaScript manual may be helpful!

The book also assumes a working knowledge of basic web technologies, such as HTML and CSS, and standard concepts, such as databases and SQL.