TechNow Ep 79 | Simplify your next upgrade

[Chuck Tomasi]

Join the TechNow team and their very special guest, Jivanjot Kaur, Sr. Product Manager for upgrades at ServiceNow, as she takes you on a deep dive in to the game changing capabilities to help you upgrade and fast track your digital initiatives. We'll look at the new Upgrade Center and Automated Test Framework.

Originally aired: September 15, 2020 8:00 AM PT

Featured Experts

Jivanjot Kaur is Senior Product Manager at ServiceNow. She joined ServiceNow in 2014 and has served in the engineering organization as a developer for more than 4 years before moving onto Product Management. Her experience building and delivering numerous features and applications has helped her build expertise on the platform. She is now the Product Manager for ATF and Upgrades, and aims to further enhance the upgrades and automation testing experience for ServiceNow customers.

Chuck Tomasi is a Sr. Developer Evangelist for ServiceNow. He is a computer science major with over 35 years of IT experience. As a former ServiceNow customer, Chuck won the first Innovation of the Year Award at Knowledge 10. Since joining ServiceNow in 2010 as a Technical Consultant, he has done many large scale ITSM implementations and custom applications, acted as an adjunct instructor for Education Services, created and lead the Technical Best Practices program, makes appearances on Live Coding Happy Hour, created dozens of fit for purpose custom applications, and co-hosts the ServiceNow series "TechNow".

Kreg Steppe is a Training and Certification Program Manager within ServiceNow developing and supporting cloud training infrastructure. He specializes in developing integration solutions, automating repeatable processes and Cloud Management in ITOM. Kreg's prior experience includes operating his own ISP, developing web applications in PHP, network integration, managing network support, Application Development on cloud based networks, DNS and email server maintenance. He is a Linux enthusiast and enjoys Photography.

Jeremy Duncan is a Platform Architect on the Innovation team at ServiceNow. Jeremy is an Enterprise Architect with over 16 years of IT and Service Management experience. His experience and certifications span across retail and manufacturing with focuses on hardware, software, and information security specialties. He has done many implementations in both the Enterprise Federal and Commercial spaces since 2011 and brings a breadth of platform knowledge that aids him in sound architectural decisions. He achieved his B.B.A. at MTSU and majored in Information Systems. He spends his free time fighting crime as a volunteer certified police officer in North Nashville since 2012 and enjoys family time, camping, with his wife and kids!

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Links Mentioned

• ServiceNow Documentation
• ServiceNow Community
• Developer Portal
• TechNow Episode List

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Questions and Answers

We currently use ServiceNow on premises. Will the Upgrade Center be available to us once we go to Paris?

-- Alex Hellstrom

Yes

-- Chuck Tomasi

Is Jumpstart service available now?

-- Satish Jipster

Yes

-- Chuck Tomasi

Is this available for Monthly Patching within a family?

-- Amit Mallav

Yes, once you upgrade to Paris, it will report available "in family" upgrades as well.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Can we also see health scan results

-- Jay Uttanoor

It's on the roadmap

-- Jay Uttanoor

HI All, Our company is planning to upgrade from NewYork to Paris. Could we get the new features, changed and deceased modules or so in Paris.

-- Prasanna kolla

You definitely can upgrade from New York to Paris. Not sure what you mean by changed and deceased modules. Upgrade Center is available in Paris. Hence the name of today's episode "Simplify your next upgrade" :)

-- Chuck Tomasi

Does this work for Onprem customers?

-- David Parks

Yes

-- Chuck Tomasi

how is skip processing automatically carried forward to higher instances? Is that through an update set?

-- Matt Kean

Yes

-- Chuck Tomasi

when can we upgrade to paris

-- Paul Hegel

September 16, 2020

-- Kreg Steppe

Can we also get the upgrade duration as prediction while we are previewing ?

-- Ajay Thokala

When you schedule an upgrade for an instance, an estimated Upgrade Duration is calculated and shown in Scheduled Upgrade card in Upgrade Preview and Upgrade Monitor. It's subject to the condition that at least one of your other instances has already undergone the upgrade from current to the version the instnace is scheduled to upgrade to.

-- Ajay Thokala

Can we see healtscan results as well

-- Jay Uttanoor

It's on the roadmap

-- JIvanjot Kaur

upgrades have been great and this will make things easier but how do we know what skipped updates we bypassed in the past that may be referenced in the lastest updates or skipped updates

-- John Davidson

When you view a skip in VTB, you can see its previous resolution information. The old skip resolutions decisions will start getting captured from Paris onwards, so you will be able to see resolution history in your next upgrade.

-- John Davidson

Is the upgrade centre free or paid?

-- Mike Toms

It comes free with the platform.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Can we request jumpstart for Paris upgrade?

-- Aayushi Agrawal

“JumpStart your Upgrade” is a Customer Outcomes offering by invitation only. They hand-hold a customer through the upgrade process and teach them best practices. This initiative is led by Paul Voorn, we can reach out to him for any comments he'd like to add.

-- Aayushi Agrawal

what about your BR or Script includes used in the previous version ?

-- Stef Roucou-David

Sorry, I didn't understand the scope of the question. If you like, please elaborate in the comments below.

-- Chuck Tomasi

FedRAMP Paris release date?

-- Sundeep Kainth

I am not aware of FedRAMP release dates

-- Sundeep Kainth

When you say they're carried forward, do you mean for the next upgrade on the same instance or for upgrading other instances?

-- Adam Celli

For upgrading other instances. When you make your decisions and changes to skip records, those are recorded in the update set so when you get to prod, it already knows what you decided about those skip records.

-- Chuck Tomasi

How are those skip decisions carried from one instance to the next?

-- Michael Pontbriand

Update sets

-- Chuck Tomasi

Do you create an update set before starting?

-- Jana Brooke

Yes.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Can we access this upgrade center dashboard from a New York / Orlando instance before upgrading to Paris?

-- Somveer Karhana

No. This is a new feature in Paris. Hence the name of the title "Simplify your next upgrade" :)

-- Chuck Tomasi

As its part of Paris so do we have confirmed GA date for Paris release?

-- Yayati Vaidya

September 16, 2020

-- Chuck Tomasi

How this compares with the Jumpstart your upgrade?

-- Alberto Bigio

Hopefully she answered your question (around the 10 minute mark.)

-- Chuck Tomasi

Can you include ATF tests and results in the upgrade preview?

-- Christopher Martineau

It's on the roadmap

-- Chuck Tomasi

will there be a recording available for later view

-- Niki Zezulka

Yes, the recording is available on YouTube in this article.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Does the Upgrade Center assessment need to be run only on Prod or non-prods?

-- Amit Mallav

For completeness, you would want to run it on each instance as you may have different changed in sub prod than prod.

-- Chuck Tomasi

once we are done with skip logs in one instance can we capture in update set and use the update set in another instance instead of going to all the skip logs?

-- sirish midde

Yes, in Paris the meta data is captured to the update sets and can be moved with the changes you made so you don't have to address skip logs again in prod.

-- Chuck Tomasi

How much time does the assessment take on average?

-- Amit Mallav

Not sure what they meant by 'assessment' per se; I am assuming it means Preview. For a moderately customized instance, a Preview for a different family release might take a approximatey 5 minutes to generate.

-- Amit Mallav

Can you explain in more detail on how the upgrade between instances works?

-- Jeffrey Kucaj

That's a fairly big topic, and available on the Success Center (https://servicenow.com/success). Suffice it to say, upgrade your sub prod instances, test, then upgrade prod. Remediate any findings in the upgrade as necessary (e.g. skipped records.)

-- Chuck Tomasi

Whats Chuck's favorite new feature in Paris?

-- Nathan Okh

SSO from OpenID providers.

-- Chuck Tomasi