hello there if you're watching this video I'm assuming you've come into possession of a free servicenow personal developer instance or PDI for short to which I say congratulations with this new Sandbox environment the servicenow world is your oyster it effectively allows you to learn explore and experiment to your heart's content now you may be thinking to yourself well that's great and all but I don't even know where to begin and if you are you're in luck the intent of this video is to leave you with the appropriate best practices to get the fullest extent out of your PDI experience as well as to answer some frequently asked questions as they say the fundamentals are the building blocks of fun so that is exactly where we will begin every person servicenow customer or not is capable of acquiring one PDI to do so one needs only to create and log into their developer account and click request instance in the upper right hand corner selecting the version that you wish to develop upon and just just a few moments your PDI will be deployed and ready for use to use this brand new instance all you need to do is click the start building button now be warned pdis are not identical to corporate instances not only are they hosted on more lower performing hardware and nor are they eligible for support but pdis are not for permanent ownership if left unused for 10 days the PDI will be reclaimed wiping it completely clean and unassigning it to you so that it could be used by another developer so essentially if you don't use it you lose it so back up your work frequently using Source control or update sets now this activity can come in a variety of formats for one instance hibernate when they're not being used within the 10-day activity window to save on resources the act of waking up an instance resets your 10-day activity counter more commonly though any type of developer action such as creating an app a table a field a script will do exactly the same thing to check on your instances is activity status simply click on the menu in the upper right hand corner to access your PDI dashboard checking on your activity status is the least that you can do here which of course you can see is now available on that right hand column this PDI dashboard not only hosts a wealth of information about your instance but also allows you to take action upon that instance as well on the left hand side we can see the instances status what release it is currently running and the type of user role that you currently have in the middle of the dashboard you will find all the actions that you can take on your instance by default pdis are essentially blank so if you're wanting to test out certain paid for features most are available as plugins from this dashboard including even demo data for you to play around with demo data can also be purged as a group from your PDI dashboard albeit it does take about 20 to 30 minutes to complete if your instance is behaving irregularly or if you found yourself finished with its use you can also release it back into the pool of instances here similarly if the instance is working fine but you've kind of gone Haywire with all of your tinkering you have the option of starting from scratch with a reset and a wipe if you're one of the few that manages to cling on to a PDI for an entire relief cycle you can even upgrade your instance from here as well it's worth noting that an upgrade similar to your corporate instances will take a few hours to complete the dashboard is also where you can handle more admin tasks such as user role definition as well as resetting your instances password we highly encourage everyone to frequently back up your work elsewhere anything can happen now as far as general best practices go I will leave you all with one commandment to follow Thou shalt not use pdis for business or production purposes using a PDI for business or production will put you in violation with servicenow's developer program agreement now following that breakdown you might have a couple of questions so allow me to answer the most common ones we receive how do I backup my PDI now sadly you can't back up your pdis directly so like with all servicenow content the best way to do so is through Source control or update set I will provide links to using Source control with servicenow as well as update sets in the description down below what can I do if my PDI does not wake up from hibernation hibernation is when your instance has not been utilized within your activity window and has kind of been put to sleep to save servicenow on resource cost if your PDI does not wake up give it a little bit of time usually pdis take about three to five minutes to wake up however can take as much as 20 depending on how many are being used think of things like knowledge or those large Network conferences if your PDI still doesn't wake up you can always check back later but if it still doesn't wake up after trying again later unfortunately I would recommend releasing it and requesting a new PDI my pdi's instant status is listed as offline when will it come back online if it lists that your PDI is offline Line This is due to server maintenance on servicenow side your PDI will be online again once that maintenance or bug is fixed sometimes a time frame is provided but there is the unfortunate occasion in which the PDI will not be recovered if it remains offline longer than a day again I'd recommend releasing it and requesting a new one why can't I currently request a PDI now as I've said it in the beginning every person is entitled to one PDI but that does not mean that it is not a finite resource if there is a high demand for pdis such as around a new release coming out you may not be able to get the release that you're looking for you can always request an earlier release and upgrade it through your PDI dashboard or simply join the waitlist to be notified when they are available my PDI status is listed as online but why can't I log in the most common reason that a user cannot log into an online PDI has to do with tinkering with the user's admin role on servicenow you have the ability to create a variety of roles and attach the specific security levels to them as you wish however you should really stay away from tinkering with the default admin role third time's a charm in this circumstance unfortunately the answer is to release the PDI and request a new one how can I install an older release on my PDI simply put you can't you can upgrade an instance but you cannot downgrade an instance if you need an older instance and the one currently on your PDI one more time the answer is to release the instance and request a new one I am trying to activate a plugin but it's taking a quite a long time to do so while rare it is possible for plugins to fail in their activation you can always retry the activation from your PDI dashboard and you will know if this works because the servicenow will email you that it was activated successfully and that brings us to the end of the frequently asked questions about pdis as well as today's video if you have any questions that I possibly missed please leave them in the comments down below if you found this video helpful and or enjoyable please leave us a like down below and if you like to see more servicenow developer content you can go ahead and click subscribe as well thank you so much for joining me here today stay hungry stay humble and I'll see y'all next time cheers [Music]