Exercise 1: Creating tables for our travel request application

Duration: 20 minutes

Introduction

In the first section, we will create two tables. Our first table will be used to capture the Travel Requests coming in from employees, and our second table will be used to store all the major airports and cities that can be traveled to. We will assume that all Travel Requests will only be for air travel.

Let’s start

1. Click All, then search and click App Engine Studio

   

2. Click Create app on the top right of the screen

   

3. On the Create App page, name the app “Travel request”, and for description, enter “Track travel requests from employees.”

   

4. Click Continue

5. Leave the default roles - admin and user, and click Continue

6. Click Go to app dashboard

   What you’ve just done is create a scoped application. Scope uniquely identifies every application file, why is this important?

   • Scope protects an application, its files, and its data from conflicts with other applications.
   • Scope determines which parts of an application are available for use by other applications in ServiceNow.
   • Scope allows developers to configure which parts of their application can be acted on by other applications.
   • Scope prevents work done in the main ServiceNow browser window (not in Studio) from becoming part of an application’s files.
   • Without Scope, it will be very difficult to govern new applications!

Create a Travel Request table

We will now create a table to capture the travel requests.

1. Under Data, click Add

   

2. On the Add Data page, click Create a blank table

3. Click Continue

   

4. On the next page, select Create from an extensible table

5. Click Continue

   

6. On the next page, click Table, and select Task under Recommended Tables

   

   The task table is one of the core tables provided on the platform. Any table that extends task can take advantage of task-specific functionality such as SLAs and Approvals. This speeds up the overall process and ease of building logic and functionality.

7. Click Continue

8. For Table label, enter Travel request. Table name should be auto-populated.

9. Check Auto number

10. For Prefix, enter TRV

    

11. Click Continue

12. Allow all access for admin and Create and Read access for user

    

13. Click Continue

14. Click Edit table

15. If presented with the Welcome to Table builder pop-up, read through the steps, then close it

16. You should now be on the Table Builder interface, in the Spreadsheet view

    Instead of adding fields individually via table builder, we will add fields directly onto the form view instead. But note that there are several ways to add fields to a table.

17. Click on the Forms pill

    

18. The current form layout is inherited from the task table, we will only keep the fields relevant to us

19. Remove the following fields from the form:
    1. Priority
    2. Assigned to
    3. Configuration item
    4. Parent

    

20. The form should look like this

    

21. On the left panel, click Add a field in the table

    

22. On the pop-up modal, enter Departure date under Column label, the Column name should be auto-populated

23. Change Type to Date

    

24. Click Add

25. Click Add another one

26. Enter Return date under Column label, the Column name should be auto-populated

27. Change Type to Date

    

28. Click Add

29. Click Add another one

30. Repeat the steps above for the following 2 fields:

    Column label	Type
    Number of days	Integer
    Reason for travel	Choice

31. The panel on the left should show 4 new fields with a purple highlight

32. Drag and drop those 4 fields onto the form

    

    Tip: You will need to ensure that you see a grey outline box with a plus icon before releasing the field

33. Search and add two more standard fields onto the form: Opened by, Approval (These come standard with the Task table)

34. Click Save on the top right of the form

35. Within you form, locate and click Reason for travel

36. The right-side panel will update for the configuration of this field. Expand Choices, then click Edit (1)

    

37. On the Edit choices for Reason for travel screen, click + Add a choice

38. Under Label, enter Customer meeting, the Value field should auto-populate

39. Add another two Labels: Internal meeting and Training

    

40. On the bottom right, click Apply

41. Click Number of days

42. On the right-side panel, expand Formula and click +Add

    

43. In the pop-up Formula box, you are able to enter Excel based formulas. Here, we would like to calculate the number of days traveled

44. Enter TIME, the it should automatically pickup the operator for TIMEDIFF, press Enter

    

45. The inputs are shown in the formula example below, we need to provide two different date values

46. Within the brackets, first type *return, then select your custom field **return_date

47. Key in a comma

    

48. Finish off the formula by entering and selecting departure_date

    

49. Click Submit

50. Click Save

    At this point, we could also capture the Origin and Destination via a String field so that the users can enter free text, but for more consistency, let’s create an Airports table so that users can select these locations (like how you would select on any airline reservation website)

Create an Airport table

1. Click the App Home tab to return to the main view

   

2. Under Data, click Add

   

3. Click Import a spreadsheet

   

4. Click Continue

5. Download this file: airports.xlsx

6. Upload the downloaded file to the upload box. You should see the following screen once the upload is successful

7. Ensure that Enter a row number for the table header is set to 1

8. Check the Import spreadsheet data box

   

9. Click Continue

10. On the following page, click Create new table

    

11. Click Continue

12. You should land on the page that says: “Great! Here’s the info we brought over from your spreadsheet”

    

13. Scroll through the list to see all the fields that will be created. Notice that you can change the data Type if necessary, but we can leave everything as String fields for now

14. Click Continue

15. Under Table label, enter Airport. Table name will be automatically populate

16. Click Continue

    

17. In the roles page, check All for admin, and only Read for user

    

18. Click Continue

19. Click Edit table

20. You should see the imported data in the Table spreadsheet view

    

    In case you were wondering, the Lat and Lon fields are deliberately left empty. In the optional bonus exercise, we will use an API to get these values, but has no impact on our exercises.

21. Click more next to the Data pill, and change the Data views to Fields

    

22. Toggle Display to true for the Name field

    

23. Click Save

Great, you now have a table to store the list of Airports!

Completing the Travel request table

1. If the Travel request tab is still open, click to navigate to it

   

2. If not, return to App Home and open the Travel request table, ensure you are in the Form view

3. Click + Add a field in the table, and add the following fields:

   Column label	Type
   Travel from	Reference (Airport)
   Travel to	Reference (Airport)

   

4. Drag and drop your two newly created custom fields onto the form

   

5. Click Save

   For simplicity, we are not adding additional fields like Daily estimated expenses, etc. You can always choose to add those fields if you want to.

Congratulations, you have completed Exercise 1 and now have a complete way to store the Travel requests from your employees.

Previous screen Next exercise