“A person who tries has an advantage over the person who wishes.”
— Utibe Samuel Mbom
Theoretically, all of the artifacts are complete for this initial version of the Collaboration Store, but now that we have crossed that threshold, we need to really shake everything out before we can build that final 1.0 version that will be solid enough for public consumption. Before we do that, though, we should probably back up just a bit and explain the general purpose of the app, and go through a little bit of a user guide for the folks that might be joining this party a little more recently.
The concept for the initial version of the app is pretty simple. It allows developers from one ServiceNow instance to share Scoped Applications with developers on a different instance. There are three primary functions included in the app: 1) the initial set-up process, 2) the application publishing (sharing) process, and 3) the application installation process. One instance in the community needs to be designated as the Host instance, and all other instances are considered Client instances. The Host instance needs to be set up first, as the set-up process for a Client instance requires communication with the identified Host. Once an application has been pushed to the Host, the Host instance then distributes that application to all of the Clients in the community. Once any instance has a version of a shared application, developers can then install that application on their own instance.
Initial Set-up
Once all of the artifacts have been installed, the first thing that you need to do on your instance is to run the set-up process. To enter the set-up process, select Collaboration Store Set-up from the Collaboration Store section of the left-hand nav. You will need to be in the Collaboration Store scope, and if you are not already in that scope, you will be prompted to make the switch.
The form is fairly self-explanatory, but you need to make sure that you have selected the correct Installation Type, and if you are setting up a Client instance, you will want to make sure that you have entered the correct Host instance ID, which is the first element of the URL of the instance, the unique portion that precedes the .service-now.com portion of the instance address. Also, you will want to enter a valid email address to which you have access, as an email will be sent to that address with a verification code, which you will need to enter on the next screen.
Once the email has been validated, the set-up process commences and the final screen of the set-up process appears when the set-up process is complete.
Application Publishing
Once your instance has been set up, you should now be able to publish applications to the store. This is accomplished through a new link that the application has added to the Scoped Application form. A while ago I created a scoped app called Simple Webhook when I was playing around with outbound Webhooks, and we can use that as an example to give this thing a go. To publish the app to the store, pull up the application form and select the Publish to Collaboration Store link down at the bottom of the form.
Clicking on this link will pop up the Publish to Collaboration Store dialog where you will enter the details of this version of the application.
Clicking on the Publish button will then bring up the Export to XML progress bar while the Update Set is converted to an XML file.
Clicking on the Done button will then bring up another dialog box where you can see the progress of all of the other steps involved in creating the Collaboration Store records, attaching the XML file, and sending all of the artifacts over to the Host instance.
Clicking on the Done button here will close the dialog and reload the form, completing the process. Once the last artifact reaches the Host, that will trigger a background process that will distribute the app to all of the other instances in the community. You don’t need to worry about that, though; that all goes on behind the scenes and takes care of itself. If you are testing, however, and hopefully you are (the more, the merrier!), you will want to check all of the other instances in the community to ensure that all of the artifacts arrived safely and in good condition. That’s the whole point of the app, obviously, so we want to make sure that it all works as intended.
Now if things do take a wrong turn somewhere along the line, there is another background job that runs on the Host to check with all of the Clients each day and sends over any missing artifacts to keep everything in sync. That’s another thing that we will want to test out thoroughly, which may require introducing some intentional errors just to see if the daily sync process finds and corrects them.
Application Installation
Once another instance has shared an app, you should be able to install it on your own instance, which is accomplished in this version of the app by navigating to the version record for the version that you want to install and clicking on the Install button. This should kick off a series of events starting with the conversion of the XML file attachment back into an Update Set, Previewing that Update Set, correcting any errors detected in the Preview, then Committing the Update Set and updating the Collaboration Store data to reflect the installation of the app. Once again, using our Simple Webhook app as example, let’s pull up the version record on a different instance and click on that Install button.
After clicking on the Install button, you will first see the XML file being uploaded to the server.
Once the XML file has been uploaded and converted back into an Update Set, you will see the Preview progress bar.
Once the Preview has been completed, you will see the Commit progress bar, which looks very similar to the Preview progress bar.
Once the Commit has been completed, the Collaboration Store records will be updated and then you will be returned to the version record, where the Install button will no longer appear, since this version has now been installed.
Also, if you preview the associated application record, you will see that the Collaboration Store application has been linked to the installed application and the installed application’s version matches the latest version of the app.
Let the Testing Begin!
OK, that’s it, the initial set-up process, the application publishing process, and the application installation process. Seems pretty simple for something that took 55 episodes to complete, but there is a lot going on under the hood behind all of those little pop-up screens. Of course, if you want to do any testing, you will need something to test, so here are the artifacts that you will need to install, in the order in which they need to be installed, if you want to take this out for a spin:
- If you have not done so already, you will need to install the most recent version of the snh-form-field, tag, which is needed for the initial set-up widget. You can find that here.
- Once you have the snh-form-field tag installed, you can install the newest Scoped Application Update Set.
- And then once the application has been installed, you can install the Update Set for the additional global components that could not be included in the Scoped Application.
Once you have everything installed, you can go through the initial set-up process and then you should be good to publish and install shared applications. As usual, all feedback is welcome and encouraged. Please pull it down and give it a try, and please let me know what you find, good, bad, or indifferent. If we get any comments, we will take a look at those next time out.
