Lab #0 — ServiceNow Setup (PDI / On-Demand)

🛠️ 1: Walkthrough

1.1: Sign Up for a ServiceNow Developer Account

Goal: Create the developer-program account that owns your PDI.

1. Go to https://developer.servicenow.com/.

2. Click Sign up and Start Building.

   

3. Verify your email and log in. Select your experience options when prompted (the choices don’t affect lab functionality — pick whatever fits).

   

   

1.2: Request Your Personal Developer Instance

Goal: Provision a fresh ServiceNow instance you fully control.

1. Click Request Instance at the top of the developer portal.

   

2. Wait a minute or two while ServiceNow provisions your instance. Refresh the page periodically to check whether it’s ready.

3. Once ready, click Manage my Instance.

   

4. 🛑 IMPORTANT: Copy the Instance URL, Admin Username, and Admin Password and save them somewhere safe (Notes doc, password manager, or spreadsheet). The auto-generated password is displayed only here — if you lose it, you’ll need to reset it from the developer portal.

   

1.3: Log In to Your Instance

Goal: Confirm admin access before configuring users.

1. Open your instance URL (https://dev######.service-now.com) — you can click the hyperlinked URL from the Manage Instance page.

2. Sign in with username admin and the password you saved in the previous step.

1.4: Add Your Personal User

Goal: Create a personal user record that represents you (separate from the admin service account).

1. Once logged in, go to User Administration → Users.

   • You can find it by searching for “Users” in the All menu (top-left filter) and scrolling to the User Administration section.

   

2. 🛑 IMPORTANT: Add a new user with your email address. This is your personal user account — separate from the admin service account.

   Working in a group? If you are sharing this PDI with one or more teammates, repeat this step for every teammate assigned to the same lab environment.

   

1.5: Set the Admin User’s Timezone to GMT

Goal: Normalize the service account’s timezone so downstream labs behave consistently.

1. Still in User Administration → Users, open the user record where User ID = admin (this is the ServiceNow service account, not the personal user you just created).

2. Change the Time zone field to GMT.

3. Save the record.

   

1.6: Copy the Admin sys_id

Goal: Capture the canonical identifier you’ll paste into Lab 2.

You need the admin user’s 32-character sys_id for Lab 2 (User Identity & Service Account Setup), where it’s used to identify the ServiceNow account Moveworks impersonates when calling into your instance. You’re already inside the admin user record from the previous step, so it’s the right moment to grab it.

There are three ways to copy the value — use whichever works for you.

Option A — Hamburger menu Open the admin user record. Click the hamburger menu (three lines, top-left of the form) → Copy sys_id.

Option B — Right-click on the form header Open the admin user record. Right-click on the gray header bar of the form → Copy sys_id.

Option C — Pull it from the URL With the admin record open, the URL contains the sys_id:

https://{instance}.service-now.com/now/nav/ui/classic/params/target/sys_user.do%3Fsys_id%3D{sys_id}

✅ 2: Verification & Next Steps

You should now have:

• A working ServiceNow PDI with admin access (URL + auto-generated admin password saved to your notes)
• Your personal user added to ServiceNow with your email address
• The admin user’s timezone set to GMT
• The admin account’s 32-character sys_id saved to your notes

❗ 3: Troubleshooting

My PDI is hibernating / I can’t sign in. Go to developer.servicenow.com → Manage > Instances. If your instance shows as Hibernating, click Wake Up Instance. Wait ~2 minutes, then refresh your instance URL.

I lost my admin password. Go to Manage > Instances > Your Instance > Reset Password in the developer portal. A new auto-generated password will be issued.

Request Instance is greyed out. Make sure your ServiceNow Developer account is verified (check the email you registered with). If you’ve recently released a previous PDI, there can be a short cooldown before you can request a new one.

The Copy sys_id option doesn’t appear. Try Option B (right-click the gray form header) or Option C (extract from the URL). The hamburger menu option can vary depending on which ServiceNow UI version your PDI was provisioned with.

🪞 4: Reflecting on This Configuration

Through this guide, you’ve learned the following:

• A PDI (Personal Developer Instance) is a free, isolated ServiceNow sandbox provisioned by the developer program — ideal for self-paced learning and experimentation without affecting any production environment.
• ServiceNow distinguishes between service accounts (e.g., admin) used for system-to-system integration and personal user accounts used to represent real end users. Both are needed for the Moveworks ↔ ServiceNow integration to work end-to-end.
• The sys_id is ServiceNow’s universal 32-character record identifier — it appears throughout the platform (URLs, REST API calls, scripts) as the canonical way to reference any record, including users.
• Setting the admin user’s timezone to GMT keeps audit timestamps and scheduled-job behavior consistent across the labs.

⚙️ 5: Configuration Details

Use the table below to fill in the required fields accurately. Save these values to your notes — you will reference them throughout the rest of the labs.