I’m a big ServiceNow fan.  I became a bigger fan when they opened up a new Developer Program that included access to a free, personal ServiceNow Instance.  Just go to that link, register, and then ask for your Developer Instance.

Having a personal instance is amazing, because “back in the day” you’d have to request access to a shared demo Instance.  The problem with these is that they were often used as sandboxes by lots of other people, completely wrecking your ability to test ideas or see how something would react.  If you wanted to see an out-of-box Instance and compare to yours, you were hosed, these always had modifications to them.

Now you don’t have to compete with other developers, you have your own!

Only one small problem, if you aren’t actively developing on them, then ServiceNow will reclaim the Instance and you’ll have to request a new one.

Update

I’ve pulled my solution to this issue.  The reason is simple, while my solution adhered to the letter of the law, it did not adhere to the spirt of it.  It was pointed out to me that the developer instances cost ServiceNow money, money they are investing in the developer community.  A community I very much enjoy being a part of…I do not want to see us lose it.  If I contributed to extra costs for ServiceNow to provide these instances, then I’m not achieving that goal.

Instead I would ask ServiceNow to find a better solution to the issue of “idle” instances.  Being a developer is hard work, made harder when the tools you rely on are pulled out from under you because you’re busy working with a client, or dealing with you life.  Give us a Workflow that asks for us to approve our instance every 10 days, if we approve it, it stays around.  Requiring me to to log into it, and then make arbitrary changes to it, seems, well arbitrary.  If you just want to a human being to tell you they’re still using it, do it with an Approval, that’s what we do.

Thanks.