4 Ways to Publish a ServiceNow Application

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Did you know there is more than one way to publish a scoped application? There are at least 4 methods that I know of, so let’s unpack them!

As a quick re-cap, scoped applications are ways to bundle configurations to ServiceNow, into a protected application scope. They can then be deployed to other instances outside of the one they are developed in via a Publish to create a new version and then a deploy.

#1 Native Studio UI

The most common way that everyone does it - through the native UI in studio.

#2 Using a Script

The undocumented mechanism to install a scoped app would be through a script.

publish: function(appID,version,devNotes){
	var trackerID;
	try { //run install command
		var progress_name = "Upload to the App Repository";
		var worker = new GlideScriptedHierarchicalWorker();
		worker.setProgressName(progress_name);
		worker.setBackground(true);
		worker.setCannotCancel(true);
		worker.setScriptIncludeName("sn_appauthor.ScopedAppUploaderAJAX");
		worker.setScriptIncludeMethod("start");
		var g_req = new GlobalRequest();
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_sys_id',appID);
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_version',version);
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_dev_notes',devNotes);
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_username', gs.getUserName());
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_password', '');
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_publish_to_store', 'false');
		g_req.setPreference('sysparm_target_upload_URL', '');
		worker.putConstructorArg('g_request',g_req);
			
		worker.start();
		trackerID = worker.getProgressID();
	} catch (err) {
		gs.error("Encountered error installing scoped app " + appID + ".\nError: " + err.message, this.type);
	}
	return trackerID;
},
var GlobalRequest = Class.create();
GlobalRequest.prototype = {
    initialize: function() {
		this.parms = {};
    },
	setPreference: function(key, value){
		this.parms[key] = value;
	},
	getParameter: function(key){
		return this.parms[key];
	},
    type: 'GlobalRequest'
};

#3 Update Sets

While it is officially documented, I feel like many people don’t know about this feature. You can publish a scoped app to an update set, which captures all the changes. Also a key benefit to using this method is that whichever instance you install the update set into, you can then open the app up in studio there.

#4 Using the CI/CD Spoke / API

For several releases now, ServiceNow offers a spoke and API for being able to publish an application.
Spoke Actions

  • Publish Application With ID

  • Publish Application With Scope

API: POST /sn_cicd/app_repo/publish

Publishes the specified application and all of its artifacts to the application repository.