Congratulations! You have just become the ServiceNow system administrator for Gardiner Hotels, one of the most successful chains in the region. The CIO realized that ServiceNow fits his needs exactly: it gives him a suite of feature-rich applications built to manage an array of service-management domains, including IT, HR, and facilities.

But what really caught his eye was what the platform brings. All the applications rely on a core set of capabilities, providing powerful logic, data manipulation, integration, and security features. Understanding all these elements not only helps you build your own applications quickly and easily, but it also allows you to understand how every other application works.

This book guides you through creating a custom application in the Helsinki version of ServiceNow. By building an application from the ground up, you will master the core foundational concepts that you can then apply to any other application. Each chapter builds on the last, with plenty of examples providing you hands-on experience in building out each feature.

Because the majority of the examples are built inside a scoped application, you can easily follow along by connecting your instance to a GitHub account. By switching branches, you can jump between chapters without needing to complete all the prerequisites. To do so, fork the repo at https://github.com/gardinerhotels/hotel. Further instructions are given at https://www.gardiner-hotels.com/ and in the first chapter.