Migrating Tables from One Service Now Instance to Another

Introduction

Precision Bridge Provides Templates to allow users to migrate global tables and fields to a new Service Now instance. This is generally used where customisations have been made on the source server and these need to be replicated on the target. A further project exists to migrate the UI objects relating to the tables, such as the views and forms.

NOTE: These templates are intended to be used to migrate tables and fields in the GLOBAL scope only. To migrate scoped applications, refer to this article.

Selecting the Tables and Fields to Migrate

Note that:

• Only custom tables (u_) and all their fields will be migrated to the target server using any of the options below.
• For OTB tables, only custom fields (u_)  will be migrated to the target server using any of the options below.
• This project cannot be used to migrate scoped application objects. To migrate scoped applications use the Precision Bridge Application Migration templates.

All templates provide the following options to restrict the tables and fields that get migrated to the target server. These are implemented using the Project Variables described below:

Project Variable	Type	Notes
ALL_TABLES	Boolean	If set to TRUE, all the global scoped tables on the source server will be migrated to target. If an OTB table already exists it will be updated, with any missing custom (u_ prefixed) fields added. Fields will never be deleted from target tables. Use with Caution
ALL_CUSTOM_TABLES	Boolean	If set to TRUE, all the custom global scoped tables (prefixed u_) on the source server will be migrated to the target. Again, if the table already exists, any additional fields will be added. Note that this option will not add custom fields that exist on source OTB tables - only custom tables will be created/updated.
UPDATE_OTB_FIELDS	Boolean	If set to TRUE, all fields on the tables specified will be updated. Note that this cannot be used for record creation.
TABLE1_NAME TABLE2_NAME etc	String	These optional fields can be used to explicitly specify which tables to migrate. They can be used in conjunction with the ALL_CUSTOM_TABLES option to specify the OTB tables where custom fields exist and must be migrated. For OTB tables, only the custom fields (prefixed u_) will be migrated.

Optional: Migrate the Form and UI Objects

For custom tables, you can use the Forms and UI template to migrate the form(s) and view(s) associated with this table. This project should be used with caution with OTB tables, particularly if the source and target forms are different OTB (possibly due to having different Service Now Versions). It is highly recommended to only migrate forms that have been customised, and to delete all OTB sections for these forms on the target server before migrating the new sections (and section elements) from the source server. If the deletion is not performed first, it is highly likely that duplicate sections and elements will be created for the existing forms.

Troubleshooting

Unable to open records after migrating custom fields for a table

One possible cause of this issue is that a custom reference field on the table references a table that was not migrated. The solution is to make sure that all referenced custom tables are migrated, and that following migration, the reference value for all reference fields is correctly populated.

Duplicate fields showing on forms following migration of Forms and UI

If additional sections and/or elements (fields) are added to an OTB source form, the ordering is changed and Precision Bridge is unable to key map the sections and elements successfully to the same OTB sections/elements on the target form. This can lead to duplicates.

It is therefore recommended that:

• Only migrate forms that you know to have been customised - do not attempt to migrate all forms on the server.
• If a form has been customised, manually delete the OTB sections (and section elements) for the target form before migrating the source form.