Tagging/Marking Your Instance

Did it ever happen to you that you developed something on dev instance but tested on another OR accedently you created something directly on prod/test just because you didn't notice that the record you are modifying is not of dev. If yes, then don't blame yourself, as this is common mistakes that almost all developers have done at some point of time, who works on multi-instance tools like servicenow where you have one instance for development, other for testing and separate one for production.

So, is it possible that while making change to any record I can have something that remind me of the instance other than looking at the URL? 

Answer is yes. One solution that I used to have in my intitial days, it used to help but was not very effective. I used to change the theme of all the instances so let's say OOB theme for production, blue for development and green theme for test instance. But this is effective only when you open records in the frame of the servicenow main page. Once you open the record in a new tab, you loose the track.

Now the solution that I use now which always remind me of the instance is Environment Marker extension. This is a chrome extension plugin in which you can mark your instances as prod/dev/test and then it will mark you screen accordingly when you open any page. This marking works based on your URL. Let's see how:

1. Search for Environment Marker  extension in chrome and open it.

2. Click on 'Add to Chrome' button and then Add extension

3. Open the extension now

4. Click on the go to configuration page

5. You need to do the configuration here like name, instance url, color selection, postion of marker and then finally save

Once the configuration is saved, open your instance and you will see your screen will automatically be marked with Production/Dev/Test.

Now which ever page of the instance you open , the page will be marked as shown above. There are other markers available as well, the one I shared is my favourate one.

I hope this helps.