How to clone ServiceNow applications

Have you ever thought about the ability to clone a scoped ServiceNow application? There are multiple use cases where this can be beneficial, mostly when you built something very valuable (Service Portal, complex scoped app, etc.) and want to have its exact copy on the same instance.

ServiceNow out-of-the-box does not provide the ability to clone scoped applications. It is possible to copy portal pages and clone widgets, but it is nowhere close to the cloning of the entire scoped app.

Fortunately, we can do some tricks. ServiceNow scoped application can be exported as an XML file. That means if we manipulate XML data in the right way we can make a clone of the application and import it into the same instance where the original one came from. The application clone will become a completely separate scoped application with its own scope!

The question is how exactly we need to manipulate XML data to create a clone? It is tricky and involves multiple processing steps, so we built an online service, where you can play and make application clones:

IMPORTANT: this is an experimental functionality to play in sandbox/PDI only. It may not work with your application. Use your own judgment and clone your app on your own risk.

You can also find a direct link to the service on dev-labs.io. The service does not store your XML files, behind the scene it is just a lambda function served by a React application on AWS S3.

Consider this service as a proof of concept how we can utilize standard ServiceNow features in a bit different (than out-of-the-box) way and achieve interesting results.