What is Release Testing Preview (RTP)?

• Release Testing Preview begins at least 60 days prior to Market Launch and will end at Market Launch, also referred to as "General Availability" or "GA"
• Release Testing Preview begins before Early Availability and offers the opportunity to upgrade sub-production environments to the RTP pre-release build
• Customers will have access to full support and release documentation at the start of Release Testing Preview

Who Should Participate?

• All existing customers (excluding self-hosted instances and customer accounts that require FedRAMP certification) and select Partners are invited to participate in Release Testing Preview, with ideal candidates being:
  
  • Customers who are eager to take advantage of testing new features in their sub-production environment
  • Customers who need extra time to upgrade or who would like to perform early testing
  • Customers who are willing to engage and report issues/feedback promptly
  • Customers who want to be among the first who are knowledgeable about the new release
  • Partners are selected for RTP through their participation in the Technology Partner Program or Partner Testing Program

How Can I Participate?

• Customers may self-nominate their ServiceNow account via the HI Service Catalog item "Release Testing Preview and Early Availability Signup"
• Upon successful self-nomination, the Customer will receive a confirmation email

How Does it Work?

• Eligible customers (excluding self-hosted instances and customer accounts that require FedRAMP certification) self-nominate for RTP via the HI Service Catalog item "Release Testing Preview and Early Availability Signup"
• When the RTP program officially begins, the customer will receive an additional email with details on how to schedule sub-production upgrades through the "Manage Instances" page on HI
• During Release Testing Preview, any issues encountered should be submitted as Case on HI, and should be prefixed with release name (i.e., "Paris -" followed by the description
• Release Testing Preview participants will be automatically enrolled in the Early Availability (EA) program
• Once Early Availability begins, RTP registered customers will receive the EA email notification and entitlement to the EA release build for upgrading both sub-production and production environments
• Customers must upgrade to a production-ready build (e.g. Early Availability or General Availability) to upgrade their production environment.
• At Market Launch, the latest release becomes generally available to all customers.  RTP and EA participants are then encouraged to upgrade to the Market Launch (GA) build.

What are the differences between Release Testing Preview and Early Availability?

1. Program timing within a Release:
   
   • Release Testing Preview starts at least 60 days prior to Market Launch
   • Early Availability starts 45 days prior to Market Launch
2. Sub-production vs. Production environment upgrades:
   
   • Release Testing Preview offers a pre-release build to customers for testing on sub-production instances only  
     
     • RTP is made available for use on non-production instance(s) only for the sole purpose of testing in preparation for upgrading to the latest Release Family
     • Any other use, including use of the RTP build in a production instance, would be a violation of the use restrictions set forth in the customer’s contractual terms and conditions with ServiceNow, and is strictly prohibited
     • Cloning RTP to production is also prohibited.  In accordance with system clone best practices (here), a production instances cannot be used as the target instance for a clone after the instance is live
   • Early Availability allows customers to take a production-ready build to either sub-production or production environments.