PDI Best Practices: Exporting and Preserving Your App Data
Export Your ServiceNow PDI App to Git (So You Don’t Lose Work When PDIs Get Reclaimed)
Chris explains that ServiceNow PDIs and learning instances are great for development but are transient, can be reclaimed, and aren’t backed by a contract or true support, so you should review the terms of service and consider the build partner program for contracted vendor instances. He demonstrates how to move your app’s “source of truth” from a PDI into a Git repository using the ServiceNow SDK/CLI: create a scoped app, add metadata (a table/role), initialize a local project with the app’s sys_id, commit and push to GitHub, then build and deploy to set the needed reference on the sys_app record. He shows iterating via transform to pull changes, committing updates, deleting the app, cloning from Git, and redeploying to restore everything, noting SDK v4.4.0.0 supports global apps.
00:00 PDI Reality Check
00:37 Ownership and Terms
01:35 Why PDIs Disappear
02:00 Git as Source of Truth
03:25 Create a Test App
05:22 SDK Setup and Export
08:25 Push to GitHub
10:48 Deploy and Link Project
13:04 Transform and Track Changes
15:15 Restore After Reset
19:20 Wrap Up and Tips