This article has been written for ServiceNow Citizen Developers, Embedded Developers and Process Owners of the HR Shared Services across campus. It contains management standards, guiding principles and best practices governing the NC State ServiceNow Application Development.
Embedded developers are the developers within University HR who have achieved certification in at least one of the following:
These certifications prepare the embedded developer to work in Studio and ServiceNow's Integrated Development Environment (IDE). In Studio, developers can lay out forms, create business logic, add or configure fields for tables, or create and edit application files. Studio is used for more complex items that require the developer to advanced programming skills to build unique code in addition to less complex configurations.
With the required certifications, the embedded developers can request administrative access using the ServiceNow Access catalog item.
A Citizen Developer is an individual at NC State who creates and develops applications or solutions using the ServiceNow platform without formal coding or technical expertise. These individuals typically have a deep understanding of their organization's business processes and requirements but may not possess advanced programming skills.
Citizen Developers leverage the low-code or no-code capabilities of the ServiceNow platform, such as Catalog Builder, to design and configure applications, workflows, forms and other components to meet their organization's specific needs.
While Citizen Developers do not require extensive coding skills, they do need to have a solid understanding of their organization's processes, data structures and governance policies. We recommend that the NC State Citizen Developers take advantage of online self-paced training.
To access Citizen Developer Training please set up an account with ServiceNow:
Once logged in, search for "ServiceNow Citizen Developer Learning Path."
Citizen developers can request access using the ServiceNow Access catalog item and choose the option for "other." State in the request that you need the Citizen Developer role.
The Citizen Developer needs to plan and identify which HR Catalog Template to be selected based on the best fit of this form in the HR Catalog. When Citizen Developer uses Catalog Builder, a new update set will be created prefix "CB" followed by the date and the record producer name and this will update set will be set to complete the when Catalog Builder form is published. Whenever there is a change to the form, a new update set will be created.
One of the first major decisions to make when creating an application is: Should the application be in a private scope or a global scope?
Applications in the global scope are like shared resources that any application developer can modify. Global scope applications do not have a unique namespace identifier included in their application artifact names, but they can have their own application access permissions. Typically, only applications provided by ServiceNow are in the global scope, however all custom applications created before application scope was implemented are also in the global scope.
Application scoping protects applications by identifying and restricting access to application files and data. By default, all custom applications have a private scope that uniquely identifies them and their associated artifacts with a namespace identifier. The application scope prevents naming conflicts and allows the contextual development environment to determine what changes, if any, are permitted.
This section is intended for both Embedded Developer and Citizen Developer.
For HRSD, all the items created should be under the Scoped Application "Employee Core Center" or "Human Resource: Core". Applications in a private application scope restrict access to their application artifacts so only application artifacts in the same scope have full access to create, modify, remove, or run application data. Scoped applications can use source control integration and citizen development.
This is very important for the citizen developer to select the application scope before they work on creating the HRSD forms. It is recommended to keep "Employee Core Center" as default application when developing HRSD forms in order to maintain the standard across all the new forms created and maintained within the Human Resource Catalog.
NC State has categorized the HR Services in to multiple Center of Excellence (COEs) as below:
These HR Services are currently utilizing the four categories Benefits, Employment, General and HR Systems in the Employee Center Portal.
| Tools |
Core Developer |
Embedded Developer |
Citizen Developer |
| ServiceNow Studio: Design forms, workflows, business rules and other application components using drag-and-drop functionality, code editing, and debugging capabilities. | X | X | |
| UI Policy and Client Scripts: Advances client side logic using JavaScript code to dynamically change field attributes, perform field validations or customize user interface. | X | X | |
| Script Includes: Incorporate custom logic, data retrieval, or complex calculations to enhance the functionality and behavior of the catalog item. | X | X | |
| Java Script and Glide API: Server side scripts for complex data operations. Implement complex logic, calculations, or data manipulations specific to the catalog item's requirements. | X | X | |
| Business Rule Builder: Advanced scripting techniques within business rules. | X | X | |
| Catalog Designer: Used to build catalog items, create catalog items, define the associated variables, configure item descriptions and set up the approval processes. They can also determine the fulfillment workflows, notifications and user permissions for each catalog item. | X | ||
| Catalog Builder: Create and manage catalog items, define variables, set up pricing and configuring basic item details. | X | X | X |
Please reference the OIT ServiceNow Platform Standards Guide for more information on
The following are application development stages:
Understand the business requirement and the steps involved for the development. Create a Agile story to capture those requirement in acceptance criteria and assign the story to the citizen developer or embedded developer.
For citizen developer if the HR forms required any complex workflow logic or scripting, then create a new story detailing the technical requirement needed to complete the development to the ServiceNow team and tag to the parent agile story in the related record.
The Developer needs to plan and identify which HR Catalog Template to be selected based on the best fit of this form in the HR Catalog as each template belongs to each HR COE table.
Please note, these templates are only available in the Development instance.
Developers needs to ensure the updates are captured in the right application and update set.
The Developer is responsible for the overall test plan and will conduct testing whenever changes are made to the ServiceNow HRSD application to validate applications being developed to meet the business requirements and as per the specifications defined in user development stories.
View the ServiceNow testing best practices for guidance.
Before releasing your changes to a test group beyond the developers, ensure your test group has been assigned the correct roles to access the application or module affected by the changes. This is especially important when introducing new features or permissions never before seen by your test group.
The OIT ServiceNow Platform Administration team conducts a "Peer Review" meeting which happens on Wednesday and Friday every week to discuss facilitate the release and deploy process.
Developers are required to attend this meeting to brief their work so that it can be moved across instances.
Refer to NC State ServiceNow Platform Standards Guide for platform related references.
At this time, only OIT Platform Support and Administration team have deployment permissions in development. Developers will leverage the peer review process to deploy changes across environment2.
This table includes the roles relevant to HR Service Delivery application and the users who have this access across the NC State ServiceNow instances.
| Role | Description | Assigned To |
| Technical Product Owner - HRSD |
Accountable for over the technical governance and is involved in all governance components. Primary liaison to the HR business partner |
Ryan Bernarduci (rjbernar@ncsu.edu) |
| Embedded Developers | Developers who are responsible for all the HR Service Delivery items. These users are mainly the Subject Matter Expert of the HR processes and delivery and have knowledge on the application development. | Ryan Bernarduci (rjbernar@ncsu.edu) |
| Citizen Developers |
Business users who have minimum knowledge on the ServiceNow application development but have a strong understanding of the business process. |
|
| HRSD Application Development and Support | ServiceNow lead developers from the HRSD support team who are experienced in application development and support. |
Indira Harikumar (Primary) |
| Roles | Responsibilities |
| HR Administrator |
|
| Embedded Developer [admin] |
|
|
Citizen Developer Custom |
|
| Impersonator |
|