ServiceNow Development Handbook (Old): Don't buy this one, you ninny. Buy the third edition at handbook.snc.guru

There are not many books/authors in this space which will have such an impact on your ServiceNow coding skills in a mere 67 pages. Tim's book will undoubtedly save you tons of time and provide new Developers with a great coding foundation to start with. The ServiceNow platform can be considerably powerful and doing things wrong can incur costs down the road, do yourself a favor and apply the concepts in this book to ensure your next custom application will run in a robust and performant way.

It's one of the best reference to go to for best practices in ServiceNow Development. You get a holistic view on ServiceNow development in such an interesting format that you can complete it in just one sitting, at least I did. Great work, Tim. Looking forward to more of your work.

Great set of guidelines and best practices, easy to digest information. Wish there were more/additional volumes.

Smart, useful and funny

Now this is what I've been waiting for--a nice compact, detailed, dense handbook about ServiceNow development. It's aimed at ServiceNow developers that don't care to sift through a 300-page book that's mostly filled with beginner level concepts. Rather, it's a no-nonsense guide for SN Admins and developers..It gets down to the nuts and bolts of when to use a constructor versus creating a number of functions that do pretty much the same thing, but on different tables. Or, when it's best to use getters and setters in your code, or what to do when faced with the possibility of having to change out-of-box code. The author also discusses field level security, and when it's best to utilize ACLs and business rules over client-side scripting, or how to utilize AJAX and display business rules, and the differences between how calculated fields and default value fields work behind scenes. These are just a few of the many topics discussed in the book. And the author backs them up with several example scripts to visually show how one method works over the other.In addition, there's also a section on coding guidelines where the author explains efficiency and consistency, and provides examples of how to write code that not only saves you time, but is also easy to understand when other developers come across it.This handbook is not only about scripting, but also field naming conventions, table creation standards, and pitfalls to avoid when doing admin work. I believe what the author had in mind was something us developers could walk around with and reference if we need examples on how to accomplish something specific, or rather when to use method A over method B. It’s great for those of us that have a handle on scripting, but would like to know the best solution for a given problem. That’s who the book is for, which I believe is the category most of us fall into.

This book is a must-have for developers on ServiceNow. It’s brief, cutting back on any unnecessary beginner’s information for the more experienced developers, but is also dense with all the information needed to create an experience which is smooth and easy for developers and clients alike. As such, you definitely need a basic understanding of ServiceNow and Javascript before diving into this book. Fortunately, if you don’t already have this knowledge, Tim Woodruff also has a beginner’s guide to ServiceNow called Learning ServiceNow (which I think I will be wanting to check out as well).For such a…dry subject, for lack of better words, Woodruff manages to insert engaging humor through the quotes at the beginning of each chapter and even some of his example codes. (I’m still cracking up from the example that incorporated the Simpsons.) All humor aside, Woodruff clearly knows his stuff and presents it in a well-organized, relatively easy-to-understand manner. You can read through the entire book to get a feel for how to approach ServiceNow better before starting a project, or you can skip to the parts you need a refresher on as you are in the midst of creating tables or code. Of course, you’ll probably want to do both—Woodruff points out mistakes which should be obvious but aren’t actually spotted until it’s too late to fix them, so better safe than sorry!All in all, this book is a perfect cheat-sheet for developers working with ServiceNow. In the modern age with all of the technology and information being thrown at us, it’s almost impossible to figure everything out on our own and remember it when it’s time to put the knowledge into practice; books like ServiceNow Development Handbook help to keep us on the right path, saving us hours of missteps, frustrations, and coworkers or clients getting ticked off.

ServiceNow is not a simple solution to manage and very difficult to learn without the right coach, training material, etc.This book is just what I was looking for to guide me through much more than what I've found elsewhere and in an efficient/timely way. The writing, illustrative content, workflow articulation, and nuggets of key things have been much needed to be the hero at my workplace and as a consultant on the side.Thank you so much for taking the time beyond your dev career in ServiceNow etc. and putting down the fast tracks and ideal important bites that are so so helpful!

I’m relatively new to ServiceNow and I find myself needing guidance when I don’t feel confident in what I’m working on, this has become my first “go-to” source to try and navigate whatever issues I run into. Looking forward to more from this author.