What is Write-off & Peer Review?
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The Write-Off and Peer Review functionalities in Quality Clouds ensure that development and configuration quality in ServiceNow is controlled, traceable, and aligned with business priorities.
- Write-Off allows teams to skip specific issues in future scans so they no longer appear in current or subsequent results.
- Peer Review process enforces controlled approvals before exceptions are accepted, including write-offs and update-set promotions when Quality Gates fail.
Written-off issues are hidden by default but can still be displayed when needed, while Peer Review guarantees that all exceptions are properly validated.
Why this matter? #
- Focus results on relevant and actionable issues
- Maintain clean dashboards and meaningful KPIs
- Control exceptions through structured approval processes
- Ensure traceability of decisions (who approved what and why)
- Prevent low-quality changes from being promoted
What It’s Used For #
These functionalities are used to manage exceptions and maintain quality without blocking delivery.
They are typically applied when:
- Issues are acknowledged but not immediately actionable
- Best practices are intentionally deferred
- Technical debt is accepted in a controlled way
- Update sets fail Quality Gates but still need to be promoted
By using Write-Off, teams keep dashboards focused on priority issues, while Peer Review ensures that all exceptions are reviewed, approved, and fully traceable.
Peer Review Setup #
To configure Peer Review in Quality Clouds portal:
- Go to Account –> Instance –> Edit Instance
- Select the Peer Review tab, and enable
User Management
To provide permissions to users to approve or reject write-off requests by developers, please follow this steps:
- Go to Account –> User –> Edit User
- Enable the “Approve Peer Review” toggle from the Access Control section
Write-off Reasons #
You can customize write-off reasons to support your peer review process and align with your company’s policies for writing off issues.
To configure write-off reasons:
Account → Write-off Reasons → Create the reasons you want to use.
Once created, these reasons will be available to developers when they request a peer review.
Peer Review in ServiceNow
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Peer Review approvals can be configured to take place directly within the ServiceNow application, instead of the Quality Clouds Portal.
To enable this setup, please contact Quality Clouds Support at help@qualityclouds.com and request to switch the peer review workflow to the ServiceNow app.
Once enabled, you will need to grant the appropriate permissions to your users:
- Add users to the Quality Clouds Peer Reviewer group
Users in this group will be able to approve or reject peer review requests for both individual elements and Update Sets.
Once configured, users can access peer review requests directly in ServiceNow via:
All → Quality Clouds → Peer Review
