This article is relevant for Australia, Yokohama, Zurich ServiceNow releases.

So you’ve just upgraded to the latest family release, but 200+ apps are out of date and still requiring updating.

You probably thought that you were getting all the latest features and fixes, but you would be wrong!

Shared admin dashboard count of store apps requiring an update

So, what gives?

What actually happens when you upgrade?

First, context is important. Let’s learn about the ServiceNow store

ServiceNow Store

The ServiceNow Store went live in 2015 as a centerpiece of the Knowledge15 forum, a year before my first entry into the world of ServiceNow conferences where I went on to publish an app for myself on the store. Initially, the store was heralded as a store to host apps “created by technology partners, solution providers, systems integrators and service providers”. No doubt ServiceNow were looking to emulate the success seen by the Apple store.

As the store matured, ServiceNow put more and more of their own apps on the store. After all, it provided an effective mechanism to push applications out of family release cycles to customers (quarterly releases), and serve as a service catalogue of their own applications.

Based on my own rough estimates from search results and paginations, the ServiceNow store currently hosts more official ServiceNow applications (1849) than vendor apps (1730). It is no wonder that almost every new capability is developed as a store application that can be patched and uplifted without waiting for a family release.

With so much ServiceNow functionality now in store apps, you might be wondering – what do you really get from a ServiceNow upgrade?

Upgrade True-up

When upgrading to a new family release, you do not have to manually update all your apps from the store. Your instance will automatically receive the minimum supported GA-ready version of your scoped apps. This is to ensure all your upgraded apps have passed compliance checks, localisation, security scans and third party reviews.

Why aren’t all my store apps updated to the latest version?

Note the keyword minimum. Since the ServiceNow store releases quarterly, upgrading on the bleeding edge means you will miss the last ServiceNow store release. If you upgrade even later, you might miss two quarters of store upgrades. It is expected that your store apps will be out of date after your family release upgrade, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Screenshot from Platform Academy: ServiceNow Upgrades with Version Checklists and True-Up Essentials, Copyright ServiceNow

Some 3rd party store applications may not follow the family release cadence and fall behind in compatabilty.

Family Release	Upgrade Time	Skipped Store Release(s)
Australia (Q2 2026)	March 2026	Q1 2026
Australia (Q2 2026)	September 2026	Q1 2026

Q2 2026

Q3 2026

|
| Brazil (Q3 2026) | September 2026 | Q3 2026 |
| Brazil (Q3 2026) | May 2027 | Q1 2027

|

By the time you upgrade to the latest family release, there may be new features and bug fixes available in higher supported versions.

So how do I stay current?

Never fear, there are a few simple ways to stay current with the latest ServiceNow store applications:

Upgrade Console

Ironically, the best way to stay current is by downloading the store app Upgrade Console. When upgrading via this app, you can select Upgrade store applications to latest version feature.

Upgrading all ServiceNow Store application will increase your time to upgrade and upgrade risk position

The Upgrade Console is underpinned by Upgrade Plans , which is now used primarily as a mechanism to improve and optimise store apps at upgrade time. Starting in the Yokohama release, customizations and skipped records are not a part of the Upgrade Plan, by default

Upgrade store applications to latest version

If you don’t wish to update all your plugins to the maximum version, which is completely fine, you can use the delta true up feature to get a recommendation of which applications to specifically upgrade.

Batch Installer

If you want to choose which applications to upgrade, you can use the Batch Installer. This utility breaks updates down into Major, Minor and Patch allowing you to decide which store application to update in bulk. The application architecture uses one of my favourite capabilities, Remote Tables, and the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) API.

Upgrade twice a year

Each upgrade will update the store apps to minimum supported release, so your release will only miss one quarter of updates.

Upgrade core store apps quarterly

Consider updating critical store apps quarterly, rather than waiting for your family upgrade. This will maximise the value you get from ServiceNow at all times!

Background scripts

You can do almost anything in ServiceNow with admin rights and a background script.

Take this script by Eric Riemer for instance, that updates all your applications to the latest version.

Where to from here?

If you truly want to keep your ServiceNow instance as updated as possible, using the Upgrade console to update all applications is a solid option. Be mindful that this will change more of the system, result in more skipped records and take longer to test. But overall, the benefits may outweigh the risk. It may be faster to run a leaner upgrade and just accept that you will always be behind, and that is totally okay.

The information in the blog was largely informed from the video Platform Academy: ServiceNow Upgrades with Version Checklists and True-Up Essentials.

For a deep dive on the Upgrade Console, please see Platform Academy: Guided Upgrade Console

The post Why Your ServiceNow Instance Is Stuck in the Past (Even After an Upgrade) appeared first on The SN Nerd.