Search ServiceNow when you only have a sys_id

I have this sys_id "b33d7380db8fe410360972f5f39619d1".
What is it?
What does it do?
What table is it from?
I don't know what to do with this! Where do I start looking?

Don't you hate it when you have a sys_id from somewhere in ServiceNow, but you have no idea what it's for or even what table it's supposed to be from? It's one of those unique problems that when it happens, searching for the answer will get you angry and frustrated.

My first time was when an application install went bad because an ACL record in the application had the same sys_id as an ACL record that already existed in our ServiceNow. So that ACL from the new application was given a new sys_id, which threw everything into chaos. All non-admins couldn't access anything, and it took us weeks to figure out where the conflict had happened.

Unhelpful error messages that only spit out a sys_id are another culprit, and unfortunately they're not uncommon.

Well fret no more! Here is a function that you can use to find where that mystery sys_id lives.

I'm pretty proud of this one, and I've found it useful more than once.

It works by searching every base table for a record with that sys_id, and then returns a list of results. It's smart enough to avoid tables that don't have sys_id's (e.g. text search tables), it'll even search the deleted record audit table in case it was deleted, and you can configure it with the options parameter.

There's an example and a guide on how to use it at the end of the script.

function findSysId(sysIdToFind, options) {
	sysIdToFind = ""+sysIdToFind;
	if (sysIdToFind == "") throw "sysIdToFind is empty or missing";
	
	options = options || {};
	
	var results = [];
	
    if (options.search_records !== false) {
        // Search through tables
        var grTable = new GlideRecord("sys_db_object");
        grTable.addNullQuery("extension_model"); // Only want tables that don't extend from anything
        grTable.query();
        while (grTable.next()) {
            var tableName = ""+grTable.name;
            var tu = new TableUtils(tableName);
            
            try {
                var gr = new GlideRecord(tableName);
                
                // Need to use TableUtils to check for sys_id,
                // because gr.isValidField is still TRUE on some tables that don't actually have one,
                // like the "ts_" text search tables.
                if (!tu.isValidField("sys_id")) { 
                    _log("Skipping table '"+tableName+"', no sys_id field");
                    continue;
                }
                
                // Skip DB views
                if (options.skip_db_views && tableName.indexOf("v_") == 0) {
                    _log("Skipping DB view table: "+tableName);
                    continue;
                }
                
                gr.addQuery("sys_id", sysIdToFind);
                gr.setLimit(1);
                
                _log("Searching table "+tableName);
                gr.query();
                
                if (gr.next()) {
                    _log("Found result!");
                    results.push({
                        type: "record",
                        table_name: ""+gr.getRecordClassName(),
                        table_label: ""+gr.getClassDisplayValue(),
                        table_searched: ""+tableName,
                        display_value: ""+gr.getDisplayValue(),
                        sys_id: ""+gr.getUniqueValue()
                    });
                    
                    if (options.single_result) {
                        _log("Single result mode, stopping search");
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (ex) {
                _log("!!! Error searching "+tableName+": "+ex);
            }
        }
    }

    if (options.search_deleted_records) {
        _log("Searching deleted records");
        var grD = new GlideRecord("sys_audit_delete");
        grD.addQuery("documentkey", sysIdToFind);
        grD.query();
        _log("Deleted record results: "+grD.getRowCount());
        while (grD.next()) {
            results.push({
                type: "deleted_record",
                table_name: ""+grD.tablename,
                table_label: ""+grD.tablename.getDisplayValue(),
                table_searched: ""+grD.getRecordClassName(),
                display_value: ""+grD.display_value,
                sys_id: ""+grD.documentkey
            })
        }
    }
	
	return results;
	
	function _log(msg) {
		if (options.verbose) gs.log(msg);
	}
};

// ===
// === Usage example ===
// ===

var r = findSysId("b33d7380db8fe410360972f5f39619d1", {
    verbose: true, // Adds more logging
    single_result: false, // Don't keep seraching if you find a result
    skip_db_views: false, // Don't search in DB view tables
    search_records: true, // Search through tables, TRUE by default
    search_deleted_records: true // Search the sys_audit_delete table, in case the record with that sys_id was deleted
    });
gs.print(JSON.stringify(r, null, 2));

// OUTPUT
// [
//   {
//     "type": "record",
//     "table_name": "sys_script_include",
//     "table_label": "Script Include",
//     "table_searched": "v_metadata_descendant",
//     "display_value": "MyAwesomeScriptInclude",
//     "sys_id": "b33d7380db8fe410360972f5f39619d1"
//   }
// ]