ServiceNow Books

Books are infinite in number, and time is short, therefore the secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.
- Swami Vivekananda

ServiceNow Development Handbook - 4th Edition: A compendium of ServiceNow "NOW" platform development and architecture pro-tips, guidelines, and best practices by Tim Woodruf and Nick Nash

Tim Woodruff has worked in IT for ~20 years, and has written software for even longer. For the last 15 of those years, Tim has focused largely on ServiceNow's “IT Service Management++” platform, otherwise known as the “NOW” platform. He now serves as a Sr. Director of Engineering at a large telecom company, leading ServiceNow and other ticketing and tools development/engineering teams. Tim has written multiple books on ServiceNow's platform (which you can find at https://books.snc.guru), and writes a ServiceNow development blog that's full of tips, tricks, best-practices, and free ServiceNow tools (https://snprotips.com). Tim is a massive nerd. He enjoys reading sci-fi and non-fiction, as well as listening to audiobooks, studying physics and programming, discussing philosophy, exploring ghost towns, and going on long road-trip adventures with his drone and three-legged dog, Ezri. You can find Tim Woodruff on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sn-timw, on Twitter/X and Threads, at @TheTimWoodruff

ServiceNow is a powerful enterprise workflow platform with a massively configurable back-end. One of its greatest benefits is the ease with which it can be configured and customized, letting you do nearly anything you can imagine.

This is also its greatest risk. To realize the full benefits of ServiceNow's customizability without risking the integrity of your instance, requires deep knowledge of the arcane ins-and-outs of the ServiceNow platform, its capabilities, and its corresponding pitfalls and "gotchas".

The goal of the ServiceNow Development Handbook is to make you a better ServiceNow admin, dev, and architect. It does this by showing you not only what best-practice *is*, but *why* certain practices are considered "best" and why others are pitfalls. These lessons would otherwise be learned the hard way or not at all.

By reading and understanding the concepts in this compendium of ServiceNow knowledge, you will be able to build more robust, resilient, and powerful ServiceNow solutions.

Witch Doctor's Playbook: ServiceNow AI by Göran Lundqvist

Witch Doctor’s Playbook: ServiceNow AI is a hands-on field guide for developers and architects who want to ship reliable AI on the Now Platform, without hype. Learn how to write prompts that hold up in production, design skills with clear input/output contracts, and bring your work under governance with AI Control Tower.

Written by the author of Witch Doctor’s Guide to ServiceNow Knowledge (2019), this playbook focuses on what actually works across the platform. If you build on ServiceNow and want AI that behaves predictably, this book shows the path from first prototype to dependable production use.

Göran Lundqvist is a practitioner who likes turning ideas into working solutions on the Now Platform. Since 2014 he has served as administrator, developer, architect and mentor, building custom applications, integrations and portals; coaching teams on Flow Designer and IntegrationHub; and helping organizations modernize processes in many areas. Today he is Principal Delivery Manager for Expert Program, where he leads the Certified Technical Architect (CTA) in EMEA: coordinating content, partners and learner communities, and driving continuous improvement. A Community MVP between 2017 – 2019 and active contributor since 2014, Göran shares practical how-tos through blog posts and his YouTube channel. He has reviewed technical books, spoken at Knowledge, and previously authored Witch Doctor’s Guide to ServiceNow Knowledge (2019). His current main focus is applying AI safely and predictably, using disciplined prompt and skill design, modular architectures and sensible governance.

What you will learn.

Prompt & skill design: patterns that scale, with explicit output contracts.
Governance: practical use of AI Control Tower for visibility, approvals, and oversight.
Modular architecture: small, focused subflows and skills you can evolve safely.
Real-world patterns: examples you can adapt to your own apps and domains.

Low-Code Development with ServiceNow: Understand ServiceNow architecture, data relationships, security, UI configuration, automation, and integrations by Nicola Attico

Nicola Attico has been working with ServiceNow for over ten years, engaging with the Now Platform since its “Aspen” release, and is a veteran in cloud computing and enterprise software. He has served in multiple roles—software engineering, solution consulting, partner, and product management—focusing on building low-code applications that integrate cutting-edge technologies. He guided numerous customers and partners in optimizing their use of the Now Platform and remains an active contributor to the ServiceNow community, creating content and sharing best practices. Nicola earned an M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Pisa, graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore, and holds professional certificates from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainable Leadership.

ServiceNow is a leading cloud-based platform that enables digital workflows to streamline business operations. This book offers valuable insights into the Now Platform and its technology stack, combining both classic and modern ServiceNow capabilities. Mastering these capabilities is essential for developing new low-code applications on the Now Platform and for configuring existing ones.

Starting with fundamental concepts and PDI setup, this book progresses through data modeling, UI design with Core UI, Service Portal, and Now Experience, and server-side logic using business rules and APIs. Security is thoroughly covered with ACLs, data encryption, and KMF. You will explore automation through scheduled jobs, flows, and API integrations. Analyze Service Catalog, mobile app development using Now Mobile, and advanced AI and conversational features like Virtual Agent, NLU, and Now Assist. Learn to utilize the UI Builder, Playbooks, and Workspaces. Become skilled at automated testing with test suites, test cases, and client test runners. Finally, real-world use cases demonstrate ServiceNow's versatility across industries, providing valuable best practices.

By the end of this book, you will possess the skills to confidently develop sophisticated ServiceNow applications using low-code development. The book explains concepts from first principles with practical examples, while offering advanced insights from the author's decade of experience with the Now Platform.

Managing the ServiceNow Platform: A comprehensive guide to ServiceNow administration by Felix Acosta

Felix Acosta has spent over ten years developing and implementing ServiceNow for many organizations and over 20 years working with different service management solutions. Throughout his experience, Felix has played many roles, including developer, architect, and project manager, and has coached and mentored many ServiceNow consultants, developers, and administrators.

Today, Felix shapes complex ServiceNow solutions, coaches consultants, and helps many organizations throughout their ServiceNow journeys.

Felix holds multiple ServiceNow certifications, including the Certified Master Architect badge. Other ServiceNow certifications include Certified Application Developer (CAD), Certified Systems Administrator, and Certified Implementation Specialist for ITSM, HR and CSM, Discovery, Service Mapping, and Event Management.

He is also certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and ITIL 4 Managing Professional.

Felix also holds a Bachelor’s in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering (ITESM – Mexico), a Master's in Telecommunications Management (ITESM – Mexico), and a Master's in Business Administration (University of Toronto).

The ServiceNow platform is a powerful tool for managing IT services, but it can be complex to manage. This book provides a comprehensive guide to managing the ServiceNow platform effectively, from the core architecture concepts to scripting and integration.

Whether you're a beginner or an experienced administrator, this book will help you get the most out of the ServiceNow platform. You'll learn how to manage users and access, manage licensing, move configuration across environments, manage upgrades, and configure forms, workflows, business rules, and more. You'll also learn about foundational data such as locations and groups, how to configure notifications and the mobile app, and how to import and export data. And, of course, no book on managing the ServiceNow platform would be complete without a discussion of scripting and integration. In addition to the core topics, this book also covers some more advanced topics such as managing technical debt in the ServiceNow platform.

By the end of the book, you will be able to manage the ServiceNow platform effectively and efficiently.

ServiceNow for Architects and Project Leaders by Roy Justus, and David Zhao

Gain insight and strategic advice for driving value in your organization with this practical guide that condenses a decade of ServiceNow wisdom into the must-know essentials for impactful deployments.

In this book, you’ll learn how to avoid pitfalls that can challenge value realization, where to focus, how to balance tradeoffs, and how to get buy-in for complex decisions. You’ll understand the key drivers of value in ServiceNow implementation and how to structure your program for successful delivery. Moving ahead, you’ll get practical guidance on the methods and considerations in securely using ServiceNow. You’ll also learn how to set up a multi-instance environment including best practices, patterns and alternatives in the use and maintenance of a multi-instance pipeline. Later chapters cover methods and approaches to design processes that deliver optimal ROI. Further, you’ll receive tips for designing technical standards, designing for scale, ensuring maintainability, and building a supportable instance. Finally, you’ll focus on the innovative possibilities that can be unlocked in a ServiceNow journey which will help you to manage uncertainty and claim the value of being an early adopter.

By the end of this book, you’ll be prepared to lead or support a ServiceNow implementation with confidence that you’re bringing not only a solution but also making an impact in your organization.

Mastering ServiceNow Scripting 2nd Edition by Andrew Kindred

Customize your ServiceNow instance according to your organization’s needs. Learn to work with inbuilt JavaScript APIs in ServiceNow. Take your ServiceNow experience to the next level by learning to script. Industry giants like RedHat and NetApp have adopted ServiceNow for their operational needs, and it is evolving as the number one platform choice for IT Service management. ServiceNow provides their clients with an add-on when it comes to baseline instances, where scripting can be used to customize and improve the performance of instances. It also provides inbuilt JavaScript API for scripting and improving your JavaScript instance. This book will initially cover the basics of ServiceNow scripting and the appropriate time to script in a ServiceNow environment. Then, we dig deeper into client-side and server-side scripting using JavaScipt API. We will also cover advance concepts like on-demand functions, script actions, and best practices. Mastering ServiceNow Scripting acts as an end-to-end guide for writing, testing, and debugging scripts of ServiceNow. We cover update sets for moving customizations between ServiceNow instances, jelly scripts for making custom pages, and best practices for all types of script in ServiceNow. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience in scripting ServiceNow using inbuilt JavaScript API.

What you will learn.

Customize your ServiceNow instance according to your organization's needs.
Explore the ServiceNow-exposed JavaScript APIs and libraries.
Discover the method for using ServiceNow scripting functions.
Take your ServiceNow experience to the next level by understanding advanced scripting
Learn to build, test, and debug custom applications.
Use your customized instance efficiently with the help of best practices.

This book is targeted toward ServiceNow administrators or anyone willing to learn inbuilt JavaScript APIs used to script and customize ServiceNow instances. Prior experience with ServiceNow is required.

The Witch Doctor's Guide To ServiceNow by Göran Lundqvist" title="The Witch Doctor's Guide To ServiceNow by Göran Lundqvist

ServiceNow has grown gigantic in the last years and have taken the leading role as the Enterprise Service Management system for the future. As the users have grown exponentially, the system has added a massive number of functionalities and only the imagination of its users sets the limit. The Witch Doctor's guide to ServiceNow is written to share the knowledge and best practices that the author Göran Lundqvist has collected over the years working with ServiceNow. Starting out as a customer and then moving over to work for a ServiceNow partner have given him insights and knowledge from both sides of the spectrum. It’s knowledge from a vast number of hours in the community, learning and helping others together with creating videos and blog posts that make the foundation of this book. It might be a cliché, but the book is written in the theme of what he would say to himself if he could travel back in time to mentor himself when he started out with ServiceNow. All the small things and errors that you make on your journey in ServiceNow, both as a newbie and expert, this book contains knowledge for everyone.

Learning ServiceNow 2nd Edition by Tim Woodruff

This book is an updated version of Learning ServiceNow, that will cover the new and updated features of the ServiceNow platform. It will show you how to put important ServiceNow features to work in the real world, while introducing key concepts via examples of managing and automating IT services. It'll help you build a solid foundation of knowledge, and will demonstrate how to effectively implement and configure modules within ServiceNow.

Read and write clear, effective code for the ServiceNow platform. Identify and avoid common pitfalls and missteps that could seriously impact future progress and upgradeability. Use debugging tools to troubleshoot when things go wrong Discover tips and tricks from top ServiceNow developers, architects, and administrators. Find out what the pros wish they knew when they were starting out.

Mastering ServiceNow 2nd Edition by Martin Wood

ServiceNow is a SaaS application that provides workflow form-based applications. It is an ideal platform for creating enterprise-level applications giving requesters and fulfillers improved visibility and access to a process. ServiceNow-based applications often replace email by providing a better way to get work done.

The book steps through the main aspects of the ServiceNow platform, from the ground up. It starts by exploring the core architecture of ServiceNow, including building the right data structure. To add business logic and control data, and interactivity to user interaction, you will be shown how to code on both server and the client. You will then learn more about the power of tasks, events and notifications. The book will then focus on using web services and other mechanisms to integrate ServiceNow with other systems. Furthermore, you will learn how to secure applications and data, and understand how ServiceNow performs logging and error reporting. You will then be shown how to package your applications and changes, so they can be installed elsewhere and ways to maintain them easily. If you wish to create an alternative simple interface, then explore ways to make ServiceNow beautiful using Service Portal.

By the end of the book, you will know the fundamentals of the ServiceNow platform, helping you be a better ServiceNow System Administrator or developer.

What You Will Learn:

Build custom scoped applications that access the full ServiceNow API
Build a modern, responsive self-service interface with Service Portal
Design feature-rich, responsive, automated workflow systems
Design powerful data-driven applications
Control information flow and apply business logic with Business Rules
Write efficient and effective client-side JavaScript
Learn how to authenticate and secure Web Services
Integrate and exchange data with people and systems
Create and secure your systems with proper access control