Bringing xtype Clone View to Life: Tackling Cloning's Biggest Hurdles

In the exciting and innovative ServiceNow landscape, innovation isn't just about building new products – it's about truly understanding the challenges faced by ServiceNow professionals and crafting solutions that directly address their pain points. At xtype, we live by this ethos, and our upcoming xtype Clone View product was born from an intimate understanding of one of the most productivity-killing tasks in the ServiceNow world: cloning.

The Candid Realization

It started with a conversation—a frank discussion with a customer that revealed the disruptive toll cloning was taking. As they shared their experience of scheduling sleep around their cloning process, it became abundantly clear that this critical task of keeping ServiceNow environments as production-like as possible had morphed into an overwhelming burden, encroaching on professionals' personal lives.

This admission was a wake-up call. How could we help ServiceNow professionals reclaim their nights and overall well-being? The answer wasn't incremental improvements but an innovative solution that redefined the entire cloning experience.

Conceptualizing a Streamlined Approach

From this pivotal realization, the vision for xtype Clone View took shape. By leveraging many of the algorithms and IP from our other products, we realized we were in a position to act and produce a product that could automatically identify inconsistencies between source and target instances, pinpointing differences or work-in-progress (WIP) to minimize errors and data loss risks.

But we didn't stop there. xtype Clone View takes that identified WIP and generates a comprehensive runbook that includes suggestions, providing users with a clear action plan. This insight ensures critical WIP like update sets, apps, and plugins are never missed during the pre-clone process and, thus, the resulting post-clone import/validate process.

Most importantly, Clone View fosters seamless collaboration by giving all developers a real-time, shared view of the runbook. This unprecedented visibility into the WIP on a ServiceNow instance, coupled with export and exclusion recommendations, cultivates an environment of efficiency and accuracy.

Releasing a Game-Changer

With xtype Clone View, we're poised to release a product that represents far more than just an innovative solution—it embodies our mission to deeply understand and serve the ServiceNow community. Clone View was meticulously engineered from the ground up to tackle the most cumbersome and error-prone cloning challenges and drastically reduce the mean time to clone readiness.

This release isn't merely a new product launch; it's a testament to our commitment to improving the lives of ServiceNow professionals. Clone View was born from our customers' experiences, feedback, and real-world struggles with cloning's complexities and time constraints. We value the trust our customers place in us. After we had fundamentally changed how our customers develop and deliver on the ServiceNow platform, they encouragedly asked what else was possible.

At xtype, innovation is driven by empathy. We've walked in your shoes, faced similar frustrations, and dedicated late-night hours to these unsung processes. Clone View is our pledge to evolve continually, not just our products but the positive impact we strive to make on your daily work lives.

Paving the Path Forward

The debut of xtype Clone View signifies our steadfast dedication to those we serve and our mission to create purpose-driven innovations that tangibly improve your ServiceNow experience.

We are partners invested in your ServiceNow journey, dedicated to turning your feedback into solutions that make a meaningful difference. xtype Clone View exemplifies this commitment, and you can expect this same ethos to drive our future innovations as we continue improving the lives of ServiceNow professionals across the world.