To succeed as a ServiceNow Architect, System Administrator or Developer, you are required to understand and apply sound and sustainable design principles on the NOW Platform. These are essential habits to learn yourself to be among the most effective ServiceNow Admins in the industry.

This blog post helps you reap these benefits:

• Strengthened system integrity

• Improved platform user satisfaction

• Increased business value realization potential

1 | Configure rather than customize

Whenever demands arise for new features or enhancements, don't step in the classic pitfall of customizing functionality in your instance before you are sure the NOW platform isn't supporting what your business requires of it.

Staying in alignment with ServiceNow's main branch ensures simple upgrades and easy system administration.

2 | Automate when possible

During deployments of new applications on the NOW platform and the potential requirements for data and administrative maintenance, make sure to identify candidates for automation. Keeping a tight ship is no challenge using seamless no/low-code automation with, i.e., Flows, Schedules Jobs, and Business Rules. 

3 | Conditionalize never hard-code IDs

The intuitive drag and drop interface of the Now platform allows for easy creation of applications and automation of workflows, often without any coding, replacing manual procedures that result in fragmented spreadsheets and emails where both control and overview are easily lost. 

4 | Take a Security-by-Design attitude

Manage platform access, user administration, and general security posture of your NOW platform in such a way that whenever possible, you configure according to the principle of least privilege, separation of duties, and generally aiming to minimize vulnerable surface areas of your publicly reachable solution or feature.

5 | Stick to an Update Set migration procedure

Build, associate, and migrate your Update Sets smartly to ensure Update Set integrity and minimize errors or Preview Problems when committing your Customer Updates during migration.

6 |Place ServiceNow under Change Control

Production deployments should be under change control and as with your other production environments in your IT infrastructure.

7 | Plan your Upgrades

Bi-yearly feature releases with new applications and lots of new and enhanced features are yours to deploy, but it pays off to be proactive and prepare in advance. Study the coming releases and schedule your upgrades.uild, associate, and migrate your Update Sets smartly to ensure Update Set integrity and minimize errors or Preview Problems when committing your Customer Updates during migration.

Thank you for reading our blog post. Please check out our other blog posts helping you advance your career in ServiceNow architecture, development and administration.