Managing Import Set Records in Large Migrations into ServiceNow

The best practice approach to migrating data into ServiceNow is to use an import set. Precision Bridge will generate the required import set tables and transform maps as a part of the migration process. The import set records are not, however, automatically deleted.

ServiceNow has an automated Cleanup tool that can be used to delete data from import set tables. It is recommended to run this following any large migrations to prevent the table sizes from becoming too large.

You can also define Auto Flush jobs in ServiceNow. These delete records in a given table once they reach a given age. This method can potentially be used to prevent specific import set tables from becoming too large.

It has been noted by some users, who have used Precision Bridge to migrate many millions of records over a relatively short period, that the cleanup tool is not effective when dealing with very large numbers of deletions. In this case, fix scripts had to be used to delete the data, which is generally far more performance efficient.

To avoid cleanup becoming an issue, the best practice is to run the cleanup tool after every large migration, rather than leaving this task until the end of the migration project.