It is a best practice to scrub your update sets prior to moving them to Test or Production. ServiceNow recommends keeping the number of changes in an update set to below 100. This is about the outside maximum I advise as well. Beyond that it becomes difficult to validate that all of the changes present are really ones you want to have in the instances you will be promoting to. However, the method I am describing here could be used on any size of Update Set. You could use the method of creating several small update sets and then merging them when you are done with your changes, and have vetted all the records.

The Method:

I found that rearranging the Customer Update list view in my Update Set form, and adding an out-of-the-box Comment field really helps in this process.

Steps:

1. Open up any Update Set.
2. Right-Click on the Customer Updates fields header to bring up the context menu.
3. Click on List Layout.

4. Add and remove the fields until you have the following:

Update Set

Type

Target Name

Table

Action

Comments

Updated

Updated by

5. Click the Save button. Your Customer Updates list view should look something like this:

Initially the comment will be blank. Examine each change and determine if it is valid or not. If it is then fill in the comment field. I tend to group mine according to the general change they are related to. This allows me to do a mass update of records from the list view to fill in several at a time. Leave blank any that you don't want included. When you have completed examining all the records in the list then you can filter for only the comments that are blank.

Now the controversial part: Do we delete those records that have blank comments or what?

I have a serious aversion to deletion. Although it is tedious I go into every blank-comment record and change the update set field to Default.

This moves the blank-comment change record from your update set to the default update set. If you find later that the change was important you can always move it back using the same method.

This walking down and validating each record is a great method of ensuring that your update set contains only those changes desired to be moved, and that nothing bad, ugly, or undesirable ends up in your other instances! The comment need not be anything really earth-shattering; simply just an indicator as to what the change is associated with.

Even though this appears to be slog-work; don't blow it off! This has saved me multiple times and the process should be one you adopt for your development process!

Of interest; the more I have done this process the faster it becomes. I have gotten so that certain patterns grab my eye and make it easier to spot changes I don't want shipped.

Some useful Update Set wiki references:

Getting Started with Update Sets

Using Update Sets

Update Set Best Practices

Transferring Update Sets

System Update Sets

Steven Bell

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