Enhance Your ServiceNow Documentation

Overview

We have all been there. You work for three months building a new implementation in ServiceNow, and then the time comes for documentation. What new functionality did you build? What updates did you make to the system? Where can I find these updates? Yes, they are all listed in your Update Sets; however, it’s not very organized and listed under a single pane of glass…until now.

RapDev has built a simple tool to easily organize and print all your updates on a portal page to copy and paste into your documentation. Our widget takes all the updates listed for a single or multiple update sets and organizes them by Type (i.e., Business Rules, Script Includes, UI Actions, Client Scripts, etc..). In addition, there is an attempt to build a hyperlink to the update where applicable so users can navigate to these updates from within the documentation.

When printing for multiple Update Sets, you can choose to consolidate all updates into a single list or show an organized list of updates within each selected Update Set while also printing out the Name and Description of each Update Set.

Currently, we are only printing out Updates where the Action is ‘INSERT_OR_UPDATE’ and ignoring ‘DELETE’ updates. New features will be released as we progress, and we plan to submit recent blog posts per significant release to keep you updated with the latest features.

Example of Updates Per Update Set List

Example of Consolidated List

How to Print Updates

Load our Update Set into your instance

• Head to our Repo and download the latest version of the Update Set Printer.
• Load the XML into your Dev instance.
• Run Preview and Commit the Update Set.

Print Update Sets from the List view

• Navigate to the Local Update Sets (sys_update_set) table.
• Select the Update Sets you want to print.
• Select ‘Print’ from the drop-down of List actions.
• A pop-up will ask you if you want to consolidate Updates or list all updates by Update Set.
• Once you click ‘OK’ or ‘Cancel’, you will be directed to the portal page with your updates listed in an organized fashion.

Print Update Sets from the form view

• Navigate to the Local Update Sets (sys_update set) table.
• Click on the Update Set you want to print.
• If a description does not exist, please add one for the selected Update Set.
• Click the ‘Print’ UI Action.
• If a description is absent, an error message will appear asking you to add a Description.
• If no error is displayed, you will then be directed to the portal page with your updates listed in an organized fashion.

Please feel free to use this code as a starting point and customize the functionality as you see fit. If you would like to see a specific enhancement, please get in touch with us at now@rapdev.io.