So, I have just watched the Xanadu release afterparty live stream event. If you missed it, I have posted a link at the bottom. The live stream began with a surprisingly catchy but slightly too long tune about the Xanadu release. Xana-me, Xana-you, Xanadu! Rang the chorus and before long I found myself singing along to the infectious tune. It was a new and fresh way to kick off a release and for all its nerdy quirkiness, I liked it.

After listening to this, we then switched to Earl Duque, Senior ServiceNow Developer Advocate, torturing three ServiceNow experts with a game of correcting each other’s knowledge of the new Xanadu platform features. Pitched like a quiz game show, it came across more like a dorm room drinking game. Now I don’t have an issue with either. But I did feel sorry for the three experts who struggled to find the errors in Earl’s questions that they could correct to score points. Earl obviously didn’t want to make it easy for them as he asked some very nuanced questions, but I also suspect the experts hadn’t done their assigned homework and read the release notes. This became evident when people in the live stream chat were providing the correct answers. After many excruciating moments of awkward silence, the game ended with a clear winner.

I was glad that I didn’t need to stay online to watch a tie breaker. I decided to leave the live stream event and look at a few of the Xanadu developer features myself.

After logging into a new Xanadu instance, I was presented with 6 different IDEs to use.

  • Creator Studio
  • App Engine Studio
  • Studio IDE
  • Workflow Studio
  • UI Builder
  • Mobile App Builder

Each of the 6 IDEs have their differences and some may need to remain separate, but I believe there is more work to consolidate some of these. I was glad to see in past releases the different IDEs for Flows, Playbooks and Decision tables were merged into the Workflow Studio. This makes life just a little easier for the developer and certainly helps new developers navigate the platform more easily.

Absolutely contradictory to the above, I am keen to explore the new ServiceNow IDE that embeds VS Code and allows use of the ServiceNow SDK to build complete applications purely in code. Now this is aimed at the pro-coders out there and I’m glad they haven’t been forgotten. I’m excited to see how this might benefit the development of complex applications on the ServiceNow platform. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find or activate this in my Xanadu instance.

I really like the continual evolution of developer options for those new to the platform and those who have worked on it for many years. I’ll take this opportunity to put on the soundtrack to the Xanadu movie with Olivia Newton-John and keep exploring these new features in my developer instance. And… maybe even put on that jingle from the live stream. Xana-me, Xana-you, Xanadu!!

Xanadu After Party YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/DSaJqHMBpLk?si=nxy8NoFCLTyGgEL9