ServiceNow App Engine

Score8.1 out of 10

46 Reviews and Ratings

What is ServiceNow App Engine?

ServiceNow App Engine aims to bring creator workflow apps to production quickly for mission-critical tasks. Design with best-practice guidance and templates within a holistic low-code dev experience.

Categories & Use Cases

Drag-and-drop Interfaces
Drag-and-drop interface for building applications
Category average: 8.2
Platform Security
Security guardrails in place to help prevent malware, data breaches etc.
Category average: 8.4
Reusability
An internal repository where assets, modules, and even entire applications can be reused
Category average: 8.3

Platform Scalability
Apps developed by low-code platform must be scalable and capable of supporting large numbers of users
Category average: 8.5
Platform User Management
Tools enabling admins to control user access and on-board and off-board users
Category average: 8.2
Visual Modeling
Visual modeling tooling allows business users to design processes visually.
Category average: 7.5

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

30.8%

98 installations of 318

#2 most frequent

Information

12.9%

41 installations of 318

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

12.9%

41 installations of 318

Arymann Sinha View profile

ServiceNow Developer in Information Technology at Sgital (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At our Company, we use ServiceNow App Engine as our primary platform for building low code applications that streamline our operations. With Ap Engine, we have been able to empower our non-developers to also build and deploy functional apps without needing deep coding expertise.

Our Use cases range from IT request management and employee onboarding workflows to custom approval processes and asset tracking.

It has been a game changer for small team like ours and where we cant always dedicate a full team to internal tooling.

Pros

Non Developers on our team can build functional apps Quickly using App Engine Studio.
Multi Step workflow automation with approvals, notifications and conditional logic work reliable out of the box without heavy scripting
Flow Designer within app Engine makes it easy to automate complex IT workflows

Cons

App engine studio is great for basic apps but once u need advanced UI customization or complex client side logic , you're forced into ServiceNow Scripting which creates a steep learning curve
Integrating App Engine apps with third party tools outside the ServiceNow ecosystem like Jira requires IntegrationHub spokes
ServiceNow App Engine's licensing model can be difficult to navigate for smaller organizations. As you scale the number of custom apps or add more users, costs can rise very quickly

Return on Investment

Since adopting App Engine, we have reduced internal app development time by roughly 60%. Workflows that previously required custom coded solutions taking 3-4 weeks are now built and deployed within a week using App Engine Studio
We eliminated at least 2-3standalone Saas tools we were paying for separately , replacing them with custom built apps on Now Platform which saves us good amount of tooling costs annually.
On the negative side, the initial licensing and onboarding cost was higher than expected for a small team. It took us nearly 3 months before we saw meaningful ROI and we had to invest in ServiceNow training for two team members before we could fully utilize App Engines Capabilities.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Mendix, Appian and OutSystems

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Atlassian Jira, Atlassian Confluence

Waleed Aladwan

Technology Support Eng in Information Technology at Takeda Pharma (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organiziaiton users ServiceNow App Engine to build and manage internal workflows and service reqeusts across our organization. it helps us automate manual processes, track INC and tasks, and improve between teams.

Pros

Workflow Automation
Custom app development
Reporting and visibility

Cons

performance with large data set can be very slow
User interface Complexity
Cost Transparency

Return on Investment

Improved Efficiency
Better visibility
cost

Usability

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Business problem: Client used an Excel-based 5-case model across multiple spreadsheets for project investment. Approval was manually routed via email. Budget and financial data were fragmented. The system was based on ad hoc scoring and prioritization. There were no automated calculations (NPV, IRR, capacity gaps). A manual search was in place for past initiatives. Impact: There was no single source of truth, causing version control issues. There was no audit trail in the existing process. Limited visibility into spending efficiency. Inconsistent investment decisions and analysis. There was a risk of duplicate or overlapping projects.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Return on Investment

Based on the business case provided earlier, Approval cycle time became 40% faster.
95% increase in submitted cases with 5-case data.
Budget visibility improved from monthly manual reports to real time data.
User satisfaction was more than 80%.

Usability

Other Software Used

ServiceNow IT Service Management, ServiceNow IT Operations Management

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently in my organisation we have an integration of our tool with servicenow app engine. Our custom applications are built on the servicenow application. It helps us create scoped applications basis our custom requirements. Currently we support integration of our tool with servicenow and using CMDB we are able to find out our assets in the current infrastructure

Pros

Creating custom applications
Minimal coding platform
Seamless integration across tools
End to end delivery of IT process to customer

Cons

Initial learning of the tool requires some training
Possibilities of conflicting scripts- ui policies, actions, business rules, client scripts . Changes made to any one might not actually work. So need to be fully aware of what code is written where
To build custom applications, knowledge in IT domain is required. Also it is a huge platform. Learning requires time

Return on Investment

Increase customer satisfaction
Improved speed of app development
Easy to learn with some knowledge in IT
Overall stakeholders can get a working model in a short span of time
Customers requirements are easy to adapt
Helps integration with other tools and hence very much impactful as all data is managed at a centralised location

Usability

Alternatives Considered

ServiceNow Automated Test Framework (ATF)

Other Software Used

ADP Enterprise HR, Okta Workflows, Jira Align

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the ServiceNow App Engine to create and automate many business processes that were implemented in different ways. In this way, all these processes are encompassed in a single web tool, allowing the people in charge of each process to manage them and receive all requests and information in the same tool.

Pros

Workflows
Notifications
Management

Cons

Manage of the workflows.
Integrations with other systems.
Reports

Return on Investment

Speed of resolution.
Dependency of the processes.
Management in the same app.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

BMC Helix Remedyforce

Other Software Used

CoPilot, SAP SuccessFactors HCM, Microsoft Teams

ServiceNow App Engine

What is ServiceNow App Engine?

Categories & Use Cases