ServiceNow App Engine vs. Syncfusion Essential Studio

I suggest that people in ServiceNow start by building apps in App Engine through learning plans on the ServiceNow Developer site. It is a very guided process, and it is fun to do. Newcomers in ServiceNow can learn a lot about configuring tables, fields, behavior of fields, roles, Flows, UX, and many more. App Engine tends to make development work simpler and faster to ship. However, it can be a difficult concept for people new to ServiceNow to understand scoped applications. So there should be a brief on the App Engine homepage that mentions what can be built and includes a link to learn more about scoped apps.

Incentivized

The datagrid is probably their most popular control I would think. It is so flexible and configurable. Most of mine are plain views in ASP.NET Core, but I have a whole bunch that are dynamically created at runtime in my controller. That is so powerful.

• App Engine can be used by non-developers to create Applications on the go, without coding.
• App Engine has all the important aspects of the application available for adding or editing within a single record. Hence, it is easier to modify.
• App Engine has a delegated development option which can be granted to specific developers or groups to manage a specific area for Scoped App Development without giving admin rights.

Incentivized

• Integrates well into Microsoft tech stack. i.e. ASP.NET, Blazor etc. So it acts as a plug-n-play, which is great!
• Shrinks the development cycle without adding too much of its own ecosystem overhead.
• Provides different UI skins so the controls don't appear as "stitched".

• The scoped app prefix should be shorter to allow appropriate application naming if it exceeds the character limit. Either the scoped app name limit shall be increased, or the limit on scoped app prefixes shall be increased to allow better naming for scoped apps.
• It's challenging to make citizen development work at scale. Businesses want experienced pro code developers rather than citizen developers to work on this feature.

Incentivized

• Most complex activities (beyond the out of the box examples) require a very extensive knowledge of javascript. This is not really a short coming of the product but rather a reality for the user who is trying to fully utilize the capabilities of the software.

There are limited use cases where we are just using the service now app engine as of now

Incentivized

It takes effort to include a new component library into existing software, especially in our case where we have 5 large applications that are written and maintained by about 100 developers. So changing such a core thing comes with a lot of effort. The other reason we will very likely renew our use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition is that it works really well and has helped us to speed up the development process.

Overall, very much usable for anything that happens in organisation. Able to track and discover each asset in the underlying infrastructure of the organisation and manage them. It is easy to understand the impact if any asset fails and hence risk mitigation becomes easier. It is a simple tool but with everything an organisation requires to go live with maximum customer impact and satisfaction

Incentivized

I would rate Syncfusion® Essential Studio® a 10 out of 10 for overall usability. The components are intuitive to implement, with clear APIs and consistent design patterns across the suite. This makes it easy for developers to get started quickly and reduces the learning curve even when working with new controls.
In addition, the documentation and sample projects provide practical guidance that helps accelerate development. The built-in customization options also allow us to adapt the components to fit our branding and business requirements without excessive effort. Overall, the usability is one of the key reasons why Syncfusion has become an essential part of our development toolset.

Almost 100% available on time

Incentivized

They tried their best to resolve our queries every time we contacted them about any technical support

Incentivized

Although I have decades of software development experience, I had never created a website from scratch before, and my html and css skills are not particularly strong. Between documentation and incredible dedication from the support team they helped me overcome all of my challenges. It's amazing that they typically create sample code for most of the issues that I submitted. On rare occasions where I uncovered a defect they kept me informed as to its status, and typically resolved it in a short-term release, and/or gave me a reasonable workaround. They hopped on zoom calls with me on multiple occasions when necessary.

App engine can be used just to process the minimal amount of the data which is being received from the user. We are service now catalogue items or any other data technology.

Incentivized

Feedback from the team has been very positive.

There were no options from the other products because ServiceNow App Engine is a large product with many different modules, growing each year, which allows you to recreate your business processes in a very short time, making the migration to ServiceNow very easy.

Incentivized

Firstly, there is a free version for small businesses and it allows you to jump start without risk. I found one of the other products a bit short in the number of out-of-the-box supported events handlers for each control and, although you can manually add them, I feel more comfortable to just have them ready. After using the free version I just felt in love with Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls and decided to stay with them; they have all I need and more. The usage of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls is straightforward and intuitive. Support is world-class even for the free version; you get answers in 24 hours at most. Also, the support team is ready to remotely connect to your project in case it is needed; we have had one situation like this, and the issue was solved.

It is scalable but not reliable

Incentivized

• We have managed to close the un applied cash item from 56% to 89% in a given five working days period by using ServiceNow App Engine
• By automating and entire money laundering process, we have managed to provide the background check data as quickly as within a day, which was actually taking weeks Same reports when we were doing the things manually.

Incentivized

• First of all, I think the best positive impact is the reduce of time development. I do not know exactly how much time, but certainly, using the framework we save a lot of effort and time.
• About negative impact, sometimes using the controls of the framewrok have a signifcant impact in the execution time and page load.
• And of course, the use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition has a significant impact of the learning of javascript and JQUERY.