Code promotion and data flow

The power of the ServiceNow platform comes not only from its out-of-the-box configuration but also from the ability to rapidly configure new business applications and processes. Remember that after your initial go-live, it is not possible to clone your configuration to production, as it would overwrite your data, so a different approach is required. ServiceNow provides multiple options for developers of these new capabilities, which allow them to move code from the development environment to testing and, later, production. There are two primary methods for the promotion of code between environments: update sets and the application repository (also known as app repo). In this section, we’ll cover both and help you decide which is the most appropriate for your deployment.

Update sets

Update sets were the original mechanism for moving configurations between ServiceNow instances and remain the most popular and well-supported even today. The full...