[Music] mmm [Music] [Music] hey everyone thank you so much for joining today's edition of lady cody happy hour um i'm joined today by paige duffy and karen barnes my name is ashley snyder i am a senior service law developer at virginia tech i've been working on the servicenow platform for a little over five years i'm really excited for this edition of lady coding happy hour um today i am drinking athletics outside dawn it's a non-alcoholic beer it's a golden and it's produced i think brad's had it on the show before um it's really good beer i really enjoy it i'll go ahead and pass it off to paige to introduce herself now hello my name is paige duffy i am a senior developer and platform product owner at novant health i have been working on the platform for a very long time i honestly can't remember what year i started i just know it was before they started naming the releases after cities um so it's been a while uh today i do not like beer i think i've mentioned that a few times on this show but uh so instead i made a nice mixed drink out of a cherry soda and an armarito can't really go wrong with that so and i got it in my nice uh creatorcon cup which is kinda hard to see 2019. [Music] we'll be able to see it better once you have drunk at all right i am sharon barnes i am working with new access innovations um government contractor and my role is to do business analyst as well as system administrator on the servicenow platform and i've been in the ecosystem for approximately two years now and for my beverage also not as much of a beer person this is one of my favorite wines it is petite petit and mostly i originally got it because it has such a fun background with elephants and monkeys and it just looked interesting and it tastes good too awesome so paige i know you kind of are the brain child behind what we're doing today so i'll go ahead and hand it over to you to kind of discuss what we're working on sure um so today we're pretty much just going to build an app from the ground up um so you know some of you may know how to do this and some of you may not but we'll start from the beginning we're going to build something to allow the developer nvp cohort to come into a portal or a catalog item and basically submit a blog post that they've created and then hopefully automatically socialize that through twitter and linkedin um so i'm not sure how far we'll get through all of that but we'll we'll see so yeah yeah quite large goals we'll see how far we get all right sounds good um i almost feel like we should play a drinking game how many times paige says um i'll say it a lot anyway ignoring gabby uh i am going to go ahead and use the new app engine studio i we're not using it yet at novant but um i've kind of started playing in it a little bit and i i really like the interface uh it does not replace necessarily studio but uh it's it's it's got some cool things um i really like it for like laying that initial groundwork of an application you know just like getting started and getting that like scaffolding up and then moving it just looks so much easier to get started here very true it's got nice walk-through sections to to get through each step all right so um we just gave it the basic information i'm just kind of following along at this point uh so we will need a table um [Music] and create it from scratch label mvp submissions i will say one thing that i've noticed in um playing around with it that uh unlike studio where you could kind of pick your name and then pick your or sorry pick your label and then change your name in the background it doesn't allow you to do that so sometimes i don't like these really long names that it gives you but but otherwise yeah it's a pretty solid experience so we created our table from scratch let's add a few fields probably don't need that [Music] so um so on my pdi we do not have access to a list of mvps but uh we'll just pretend like we do that's on mine cappy's pdi sorry it's all right right um [Music] we will need some other fields as well yeah well of course yeah so get that girl type and then [Music] i'm not really sure what else we need um have a date that it is up for or expiration date type of threat i mean it can't hurt [Music] yeah i will tell you that i often find i kind of start at the the minimum necessary what i know i need for sure and regularly go back in and add fields as i go i'm like oh i should really have a field for x and i should really have a feel for why um so you'll probably see that a little bit i feel you it's so much easier just to like go and more than to like yeah you construct them you know or have to remove them later well then for me at least i i can never think through everything that i need initially it it's just it never happens so um move things around a little bit i think i work the opposite way i always try and sort of map out what i'm building first but that's because i hate to delete things yeah you probably should map things out first i've just i've never been very good at it i've always always kind of just like dove into it and i'm like i'll figure it out as i get through this yeah um that field [Music] i also really really really like the way and this is the same with like the new catalog item builder um the way that you can preview things as you're building them uh it's it's a lot it's a lot nicer um yeah i agree not having to flip back and forth really have multiple sessions over open it's really nice just to have that tab experience there definitely i agreed let's try that again i'm not really sure why the the number field doesn't uh flip to read only when it's submitted or when it's created that's right okay so that's our basic table um that did not take long so let's see what else can we do um i guess for submission we could potentially create a catalog item uh speaking of catalog item builder why not can you kind of like for those who haven't used it kind of walk through the basics a little bit of what you're doing yeah um so it's built very similarly to like app engine studio uh it really is geared towards more of your kind of probably citizen developer and not someone who develops in the system constantly there there are a few things missing from it um but for for like just a simple catalog item or for people who aren't in the system all day long doing this it's it's really really nice um so when you come into it there there's kind of a few things uh you've obviously got your create new catalog item you also create catalog item template so you can create a template that then someone else is coming into this can reuse to create the basis of their item um so if we go ahead and create a new one cool and just demystify anything you create here you can go back and to maintain items if you need to like advanced features incorrect yeah the the only caveat to that is you do have to um i don't i don't remember if it's the quite the same verbiage as flow designer but you do have to like submit or you know kind of save or publish the item um so and i'll show you as soon as i pick a random template i'll just change it as we go um when i create this item you can see on the back end submission let's uh save this and we can take a look real quick [Music] let's see on the back in the item i just created [Music] so this is the item i just created you get this nice little uh you know alert um it shows it's inactive but you should also see when it's checked out and then when it's checked out you can't do anything in the back end with it so okay so that was good but now if we start editing in it again [Music] um [Music] oh this template's not going to let me do that all right so uh we're just going to delete that what did you say sharon about not liking to delete things that is my least favorite action i always check like three times before i actually click accept on delete it bugs me had i been uh [Music] i've been a little more ahead of things i would have just created a basic template but um i did not do that try to use a out of the box one but it does look like it locks you into the into the template itself um so i mean i guess i'll just walk you guys through this i am creating a template i am just doing the bare minimum here um you know you've got obviously the basic information on the template and who it's available for i'm not really going to restrict it to anybody because nobody else is in my pdi um i'm not really going to set any of these fields either but as you can tell there's a lot of information where you can kind of create that and then keep your users constrained in within that template um your citizen developers specifically which i love to talk about you can preload some questions and things like that this looks like a system that would be very user friendly for citizen developer yeah far more than the the backend version of it which at this point i'm so used to i don't know what i would do without it but uh yeah so there's kind of our basic template i mean the only thing i said on here is the name of the template and um [Music] oh yeah this first override uh be nice if it didn't always require a template to use the catalog builder but you can get around that pretty easily so there's always ways yeah where there is a will there is a way my favorite mentor always says can it be done yes should it be done totally different question yeah ah it's like how do i break this so i know how you broke it that way i can help you it's right now it apparently just won't let me do anything i'm gonna get a nice blank uh blink catalog item that i can't change hmm alrighty i want to select a table in my current application unlock it find an item template [Music] you know what yeah i know i'm also pretty sure you can open free like catalog items that already exist so [Music] so you can open one that exists in catalog builder i'm pretty sure you can i feel like that's what we see right over here probably done this before i feel like a noob all over again because i know how to create catalog items and i've been doing it for five years but catalog builder is like totally new to me yeah what's really exciting i've used this a few times and in that amount of time i've forgotten how to use it so no but i swear it's really easy to use there we go look at that i agree with that about two weeks ago i was teaching our interns about how to build catalogs and we open up their pdi and the system takes us straight into this catalog builder and i'm like oh we're gonna learn this together guys [Music] because i figured never teach them the the old stuff when you can get them used to the new uh so they there was a um i forget what it's called i think it was called the catalog item designer that came out um for a little while was not a fan uh and this i mean this is light years ahead of that despite the fact that i apparently cannot use it today that is probably a me problem and not a technology problem but um yeah it's i mean if anyone has used the old catalog item designer it's it's night and day difference so definitely a lot better uh but as you can see here this is what i was trying to show you um when it's open in the catalog builder it's not accessible really on this end uh well yeah there we go you cannot edit this item here as it's being checked on the blog builder uh so it kind of i wish that you could um kind of do this on the back end too kind of check out those items even if you're not using the catalog builder i don't know if anyone else has ever run into this but occasionally we've had two people working on the same catalog item and um can create some conflicts as you're moving things around in the instances so that makes sense unless you've got a very organized team once you get past a certain number of people it is easy to have them all occasionally step on each other's projects um you will kind of notice too that you know i i know when i'm building out questions it kind of gives you the entire selection of questions and here you'll see that they they've split them up um i believe almost all of the same choices are available here they're just kind of categorized and then categorized into buckets and then you can pick your question type um so like see i don't know what i'm looking for though yeah it's my reference record [Music] but this is what i really like and i you know i'm going to assume that as there are more iterations of this that it will just get better but i really really like that you can see the question preview it it makes me happy i like that too sometimes i don't know i'm like space now and picking stuff and i'm when i try it it's not what i wanted yeah you're like that just that does not look the way that i thought it was going to look but like like even here so you can get your list of users but you can also pretty sure you can see the filter live as you're building it i really love that yeah i mean it works better when it you know works at the right table guys keeps making a liar out of me does not make me happy it's friday um and it's a friday in a live demo i mean it's gonna happen well then i've never driven one of these before so [Music] that seems really specific that's it looked it up this is cyber truck dinner and they were talking about the glass being like bulletproof and shota bullet at it and the glass it didn't like shatter but it did crack and everything that's not how you want your demo to go for that particular thing no well that i mean if i mess up here nobody cares my company's not watching um but again i really love the the ability to preview look at that you will not noticed that you could preview the different types of databases like the only way you can do it without you know using like the um the catalog item builder is to you know go grab your phone or an emulator and pull like pull up the app and log in so this is just so much better i can't tell you how many times i have done that [Music] all right so this is gonna really expose me i don't build a lot of catalog items anymore they do occasionally but it doesn't happen often i really thought there was a url field type there is there one i wonder if this is one of those fields that's not accessible in um let's see yeah because i know like um like the requested four variable isn't available on catalog builder you said they're just some of them that i i guess would call quote unquote more advanced features yeah so it does take a minute to check it back in [Music] yeah okay so we're checked back in [Music] and this is the workaround to still get to that type of variable right from the back end there is always a way let's see yeah there we go i think it uh we can work on that [Music] be nice if we could have access to all the variables [Music] i also didn't notice that if there was a way to tie the field i created i'm sure there was back to the um back to the actual field on the record but for now uh i'll just do it here because i'm already here [Music] and strangely now i have that song stuck in your head which song is that oh yeah i have a tendency to uh talk to myself while i'm creating things i'm not used to other people listening and so just um expiration dates and then decoration all right so i mean we at least have a very basic catalog item hey try it still opens it in uh i guess we organized some of that [Music] but how does that work i'm just curious you mean like um the so there's not it's not quite the same it's not the try it um you can view it in that same preview so in the preview box you can kind of tell it which way to view it you get your portal you're now mobile or the virtual agent can you um there or just see it you can okay you make selections and stuff you can't submit it i don't believe um okay i don't think yeah you're limited there but it does have this handy dandy opening new tab so maybe you can do it here i don't actually know i'm interested to see yeah that was going to pop open your portal or not no i did see a question or a comment by someone that kind of flew by about having it in two separate windows and it looks like that actually allows you to do it so you could have like your preview on one side and then as you're working i bet you have to refresh it but yeah my plants always dancing because i have fans on in here it's a happy plant so i actually read somewhere that they think that they may possibly get more of the fenstration i think that's a great word you know like where they have the holes in the leaves if there's more wind that it's something to do with by allowing them to withstand wind i don't know if that's true but i'm like i will give you all the wind just be a happy plant um okay so we have our basic catalog item and we have our basic table um [Music] let's go ahead and add some automation that's close but we want an incident and i don't know if you can change these templates i'm going to guess based on the other templates that maybe you can yeah let's see twitter's book does not have connection set up that's fine take care of that in a second [Music] yeah all right so you can't change that either in the templates that makes me sad [Music] don't know what i did there apparently i'm not patient enough and then again um it doesn't really have a state so just yes i know i know it's fine we'll do it in a second um that is a good question so don't necessarily just want to send the blog url i think we'd want some sort of message so maybe that's a question we should ask like description yeah in the twitter spoke and flow designer you can go ahead and script that message but it looks like here you're just grabbing it from the field yeah i think it's it's like automatically creating the flow for you i'm not really sure that's what i want to do so we're gonna cancel because we've not created anything yet so i don't have to delete anything let's build it from scratch i don't want advanced options and yes i'm breaking it very well done i mean if i show everyone else how to break it then they know how not to break it right that's what i'm going with that is one advantage and i'm sure you show them how to unbreak it as well that part is questionable like i don't know sometimes i just break things so we're not on rome yet we're working on that upgrade but i am really excited for this they are handling it's the little things yes um let's do created [Music] oh i'm gonna get ahead of myself [Music] all right so i kind of want to some sort of approval i guess on it seems to make sense instead of just automatically throwing it out there into twitter that probably wouldn't be safe um unlike my blog i'm just like go yeah yeah i do that sometimes all depends on your content uh creators as to whether that's okay or not yeah hmm we did not have like a default approval prover in here um [Music] but i kind of have to pick who does the approval if all of the mvps were in a group you could then just let it be sort of peer moderated or you could assign them somebody who's always going to be in charge of it and that is the the default assigned to sucks for that person yeah i don't uh i don't tend to like having a single approver for anything that i do always feels like you're asking for trouble yes then you have created the roadblock right though admittedly having a group of approvers is probably just as dangerous as uh but that's all right definitely dangerous yes let's see all right so we have our approval [Music] hmm i don't actually know which one of these it is i did that's not it that's not even i don't know what that does maybe select choices yeah there we go we'll see that'll that'll probably do something maybe um all right so is this what you meant where you could um yeah yeah it's really nice you just throw your script in there and you can kind of define whatever you want [Music] oh let's throw a default mess again i will say when i looked at this for my blog you have to have like one connection set up for messages in one connection set up for media so like you know in your screen right now it's like message and media you have to make sure that you have both of those connections set up if you want to do both so what is media exactly in this um in this regard is that like a video or yeah i would assume like anything that isn't text like pictures or like whatever but you can just set up just text messages if you want [Music] know that i want no it would be sorry it would be trigger [Music] all right thoughts [Music] taking a risk pretty sure that's the right field you got that tab right next to it you can always click that tab which tab sorry right there next to your flow tab the table tab yeah um the flow tab the table tab like create twitter message inside of app engine studio you got the three tabs at the top oh yeah the one right there with my table i know we're not used to luxuries nope [Music] message plus url all right um we do need to actually set up the credentials on that though and she said um so i drink garnet i didn't even know i said it uh i see what you're saying you know the two different credentials yeah so and i will before i pull that away i'm using ashley's blog post for this uh i did already go through and set up um the developer account on twitter i don't remember what the url is for that you pull that back up uh and then set up the like all the little pieces it walks you through what you need in there um so sorry it locked me out i will admit i get i always get a little confused when i'm working in like the credential the connection and credential alias stuff it's just a little bit like am i doing the right thing yeah i think you should just be able to set up a connection underneath that yeah it would be helpful but uh but you might have to create a credentials kind of backwards because we saw a credential yeah what i did was go into credentials first because i was kind of following what um brad and them did on their twitter live cutting happy hour created the credential first and then went and kind of tied it all together with that sorry [Laughter] he had to show me what he was thankful for which was me by the way very nice uh so yeah you were saying try create the creating the credentials first [Music] yeah there we go thank you and then i think i need [Music] okay trying to find my uh made the mistake of not copying down the um it's a really developer interface because it's like if you don't save it all the first time like you've got to regenerate it yeah yeah they're pretty unforgiving but i think i got it now so you can't go in and regenerate them um which is what i'm doing okay well while you are doing that do you ladies have something exciting for thanksgiving coming up no um no uh my whole family's in oklahoma and we're in north carolina so i'm in north carolina too you should come on up and see me we're all in north carolina right we are we already have 15 people coming so one or two more won't do anything no we uh a couple years ago we were moving on thanksgiving and we ordered thanksgiving dinner and i really enjoyed that because i didn't have to cook and so we kind of just continued to do that okay that does sort of sound magical it is definitely nice i got like a prepared meal this year usually i try to cook some things if i have the time so i'm really looking forward to just popping it in the oven and seeing what happens and i'm looking forward to andrew smoking a uh turkey that sounds really good it will be delightful he is trying to talk me into smirking smoking a cheesecake which just still sounds a little odd that that would be interesting um definitely i will tell you if it happens i found a recipe and i love to make cheesecake so why not i mean i can't really go bad with this can't really go wrong with cheesecake right so hey i just left that blank when i did mine i mean it ultimately worked for you right so for my very simple use case this will be pretty simple too and then i think after that i just added a new connection under like the under here um yeah sorry yeah go ahead and try here i feel like this is always so much easier to do when people aren't watching you why is like setting up connections and like permissions and authorizations like the hardest thing to do it's like so easy you're just copying things but it's like the hardest thing to do because you have to copy it exactly and most of the time you do it once and then it's a really long time before you do it again for anything else yeah and for me i i get really uh kind of confused around you know the connection or connection and credential aliases and credentials and like how to connect all those together that's that's one of those pieces that i i kind of struggle with as you saw i'm like which one do i do now yeah this is not the first time that i've uh set something up for integration up either so or the second or the third i'm still like i don't know what to do um so all right so i mean we have a basic flow in theory that should do something let's see one last thing i checked flow designer itself there's like a connections tab and you could just kind of verify that it's set up for twitter there yeah i think that's in the action itself where the connection is listed i think maybe not but it's really slow at loading also possible nope that's not it so you're saying inflow designer like outside of the yeah and we want the one we just created if you go back and stop there's that connections tab um somewhere you're down there so you should be good yeah i see it i have honestly configured but not the other nice i didn't do the media one that's okay wow that's actually really nice i've never clicked on that tab before so oh it brings you right into everything you need that's magical this is like an adventure for me it even tells you like credential name oh yeah that's really nice this is the question i always find myself laughing to ask but how long has that been there that simple thing that makes my life so much easier i'm i'm definitely kind of curious now yeah oh that's great anyway uh i don't have any mvps in here yet so we'll just take and got this handy-dandy blog post that i already have pulled up and uh see what happens oh sorry oh no probably an issue with the approval do we have any people in the group nope um no oh no i mean i did everything all right with the id so yeah you're probably right it's probably if there's nobody in the group let's uh let's try adding someone real quick if that doesn't work just to try and make sure that we get something onto twitter i will just remove the approval it's how i test i'm like oh you're a roadblock that i don't want to deal with right now so i'm just going to remove you see if it fixes the problem yep oh pretty much that makes me think back to when i was learning how to do flow designer and i just identified there were four different things that needed to be fixed changed all of them totally didn't run didn't know what broke it i learned change one thing and test at a time much faster yeah i almost wonder if it's because we don't have any kind of approval field on the form or something but like i said i'm just gonna for now i'm actually just as a side note um in the chat andrew said that the connections tab was probably added around orlando oh so it's been a while so what you're saying is it's been a while and uh just completely completely missed that um yeah this is uh this is my super complex um flow so let's test you all right hey look at that access hmm this is a little different so like i said we're still on uh we're still in quebec this is a little different about authentication data yeah i i got that when i was doing my blog too i think i had to re-copy and paste everything back in like all the keys and stuff i think i just put them in wrong the first time yeah um i can try that real quick i mean now that i know how to get to the connections tab quickly um just uh copy [Music] come in here [Music] it's entirely possible too that i put the wrong thing in the wrong place yeah i found on twitter they call consumer key something different yeah it's like that wouldn't be an access secret like the wording is different yeah it uh they yeah the under consumer keys they've got um api secret and key and that is definitely what threw me off i was like is that is that right is that where those go let's try this again um say that right [Music] that was really fast um huh still the same thing how strange [Music] um yeah there's also bear token in here i'm assuming we don't need that for anything no i didn't use that um one thing to check on your twitter developer account yeah on like the twitter account that's linked to it is that app connected to it and it should be um with read and write i did uh did do that i'm not in the app anymore though let's go back a couple yeah here it is sorry that was the documentation uh so yeah here's the actual app um permissions read and write yeah so description app id icon authentication settings i didn't have to do that disabled if you go into like like if you click on your picture i don't know if you can go into your twitter account from there there's like a setting for connected apps [Music] very slowly the birds are flying very slowly the the only this is a account i made just for this the only person that i'm following is taylor swift so they made me follow someone yeah i know i hate that i'm like this is for business and work all right you didn't choose to follow your work yeah some sessions let me share okay you're right well how disappointing very disappointed in you twitter very disappointed hmm let's see yeah i don't know [Music] i don't know what to do if that's not working yeah obviously just double check let me just double check the credentials and your credential your connection alias is the same as what i used yeah i copied it from your blog the connection url i didn't i know it's really small let's make sure we typed it in right uh just one more time i'm making sure i did not mess these up uh yeah this is what i use for connection url hmm let's see what servicenow has to say about it when in doubt uh google name potentially this not helpful actually [Music] we did all of this yeah i uh i don't know and we are rapidly running out of time um in your developer account can you just pull that up real quick the like the uh the tokens and stuff right yeah sure yeah you got it access token is secret i mean i don't know if there's something we're missing here but that's all i had to do apparently not as easy for me does not like me as much all right i mean so i guess our developer mvps can socialize nothing but we'll take a log of all of your entries for a later date and try activating it real quick though and then testing it yeah [Music] this is a good start to an app because i like the logic of where it's going what i'd love to see for sort of a second version would be from inputting it by the different mvps then instead of it having going to one central like company uh twitter account or some such the mvps are already still well connected having a different portal page that they could come up to and have cards for each different uh blog that people have submitted to the system and then having a button that they click from that that will then have them log into their own linkedin or twitter and post it to their own account so that you're you're really meshing and crossing the cross-pollinating the the communities that would be an interesting enhancement [Music] yeah so basically like hey check out this really cool blog post that i found from ashley's blog and have it just automatically post your stuff exactly i mean i can't even post a twitter my own but that would be really cool um so yeah i mean you guys got to see failure what for next time i mean you did everything i did so i don't yeah something in twitter that you probably miss setting up because there was a lot that you had to set up like on the api and stuff yeah yeah yeah when i tried to set it up all ahead of time and it is entirely possible that i missed something i was like i'll be on top of everything and of course i was on top of everything except for you know installing the twitter spoke and so like um um i also started kind of looking into how you do that with like linkedin that's a little more complex and since we can get past twitter um you know maybe next time we'll get there we will we will i'm finding these live coding happy hours there's always something there's always a part two yeah i mean that's kind of the fun of it right people get to see other people mess up that's part of the point of this is to actually see some of those roadblocks that really developers go through and how they overcome it or don't [Laughter] all right we do have to wrap up um we can go ahead and rate our beers or drinks can't start with you since you've had one of the fanciest drinks tonight um it was really good but i realized i did not mix it at all so it was all cherry soda and i'm just now actually hitting the alcohol in it so right now it's really really good oh and you can see my cup well deserved on a friday um mine i i really enjoy these i like these um maybe give it a five just because it's a really decent beer for non-alcoholic beer it's not like your own duels and stuff and the company is coming out all kinds of beers like i got a a maple and a cranberry pail on the way so definitely check them out all right and the petite petite is pretty darned awesome um like i said one of my favorites and it goes great with like any type of red meat or in this case uh turkey so any type of thing all right well awesome um thank you everyone i know we'll be back we're going to get this twitter out to go paige is going to figure it out like literally a minute after we're off the air so yeah i will probably look at it shortly after getting off of here because that'll drive me crazy but thank you everyone for joining us um paige did a really great job you went through a lot of stuff in like an hour i mean you got a whole app built and like basically in integration mostly bill and i'm blaming twitter for this i mean the app building's getting easier and easier so you can throw a table up in no time now well awesome thank you for joining everyone have a great weekend if you're in the us have a great thanksgiving holiday it was a pleasure bye bye [Music] foreign