General planning for instance setup
 | Best Practice #1: Become familiar with ServiceNow features.
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Being familiar with the ServiceNow product allows you to leverage its built-in features to accomplish what you need with minimal development effort. ServiceNow is a powerful system in which different processes share the same source data. This is called a single source of record. Because of this, no integration is required for many functions. You can learn about system features by accessing our resources:
- Get Started in Product Documentation – Functions are described within the context of business processes.
- NOWsupport YouTube channel – Search for demo or getting started to list application overview videos.
| Best Practice #2: Leverage all sources of information about the ServiceNow platform.
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In addition to Product Documentation and YouTube videos, our Community, Knowledge user conference, and Knowledge Base in HI provide helpful information:
- The ServiceNow Community is where ServiceNow administrators and users interact and share knowledge about the platform. Here, you can get answers to specific questions.
- The annual Knowledge user conference is the largest gathering of IT professionals using cloud services for enterprise service management. Information about this conference is also available on the ServiceNow corporate website, ServiceNow.com.
- The HI Knowledge Base primarily contains troubleshooting information and links to additional resources. It is organized by topics and categories, but you can also search by keyword.
 | Note: Only official sources of information — such as our Product Documentation and Knowledge Base articles — are supported by ServiceNow. Tips provided in the Community and on non-ServiceNow websites may be helpful, but ServiceNow Support does not necessarily sanction the solutions found. |
| Best Practice #3: Leverage rapid prototyping.
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Rapid prototyping can be useful in defining user requirements and determining what inputs are needed to drive the outputs. You can create new functions and applications, collect user feedback, and make changes quickly and easily. Then — when the prototype is developed and tested — you can focus on building the business logic to drive the business process. During rapid prototyping projects, make sure there is constant communication in daily standup meetings among developers, administrators, and process owners. This ensures that development progresses smoothly and the final product meets users’ needs.
| Best Practice #4: Use different color schemes for each instance. |
Using different color schemes for each instance makes it obvious which instance users are working in and prevents accidental changes to the wrong environment. ServiceNow Product Documentation explains how to customize the user interface appearance and provides a link to cascading style sheet — or CSS — color names.
| Best Practice #5: Document your procedure for migrating data. |
Because the people who migrate changes from development to test to production may not be the same people who implemented the changes, it is important to document your procedure for migrating data. To ensure that the migration goes smoothly, identify which update sets need to be retrieved, verified, previewed, and committed, and their order.
| Best Practice #6: Know when to create or modify objects on the system.
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To ensure easy customer configuration, it is important to know when to modify base system objects and when to create new ones. When you make changes to the system, make sure to document these modifications.