Family Upgrades
Family upgrades used to be much larger. Since the introduction of the ServiceNow Store most of the new features are delievered as applications. This means that family upgrades are much smaller and easier to manage. However, there are still some things you need to do to prepare for a family upgrade.
These generally occur two times a year.
What is a Release Family?
A complete solution including new capabilities that customers can implement to add value to their organization. The release family also incorporates available fixes to existing functionality.
Transfer of Information (TOI) Videos
There's a load of videos on nowlearning that will inform you techncially what has changed. These videos are long but worth lookign into for each product suite you use.
Upgrade Checklist
ServiceNow has a list they provide but because they remove docs for 2 + versions ago here's my list of things to do before an upgrade.
Pre-Upgrade
Read the release notes and plan for the upgrade
Plan the tasks
Confirm which instances will be upgraded
Confirm the upgrade Family, patch and hotfix version
Confirm the upgrade dates (consider change freezes, holidays, etc.)
Confirm who will be the upgrade lead and backup
Set up a communication plan for the upgrade
Plan for nonprod
Inform the stakeholders and testers of the upgrade dates and expectations
Schedule the upgrade for non-production instance
Upgrade nonprod
Upgrade the non-production instance (note how long it takes)
Lead to review the skipped updates and delegate
Deal with skipped updates by reverting or merging them
Test the non-production instance
Send out communication to the stakeholders and testers
Confirm the stakeholders and testers have tested the non-production instance
Plan the prod
Inform the stakeholders and testers of the upgrade dates and expectations
Schedule the upgrade for production instance
Create a change request for the upgrade
Send out communication to the stakeholders and testers
Upgrade prod
Upgrade the production instance
Monitor the upgrade
Apply any update sets and post-upgrade fix scripts that you have.
Validate and test your instance
Communicate the upgrade is complete
Patches
Patches are similar to a feature release but the amount of work is much smaller.
There's three types of patches.
Functional
These seem to happen monthly.
What is a Functional Patch?
Supports existing functionality within the release family with a collection of problem fixes and generally does not include new features.
Security
What is a Security Patch?
Supports existing functionality within the release family with specific security fixes. These fixes are incrementally added to the patch version. For example, Quebec Patch 6a is a security patch that contains security fixes added to Quebec Patch 6. Similarly, Quebec Patch 6b contains the fixes in Quebec Patch 6a plus the new ones in Quebec Patch 6b. There are usually less than five fixes per security patch, but we reserve the right to include more fixes as required.
Hotfixes
What is a Hotfix?
Supports existing functionality within the release family with a targeted, specific problem fix. It may or may not include any previous fixes within the release family. It does not include new capabilities. For example, Quebec Patch 1 Hotfix 2 is part of the Quebec family.