ServiceNow

Periodical Scheduled Reports: only send on Workdays in Business Times

In the project I’m currently working are multiple reports scheduled. Some of my colleagues receive more than 20 of those mails daily. Most of them on a periodical basis. Also on the weekend and in the night, where they weren’t required or even necessary, they only flood the mailbox. Some of them then asked me, how this can be adjusted so the reports will only be sent on the weekdays. I’ve therefore searched and adjusted a condition script to exclude the weekends. However, the script was sometimes working and sometimes not (it was correct though).

I’ve then searched more in detail and found something even better – a condition script to only send mails in a schedule AND in a specific time zone, since most of my colleagues are located all over the world and only a hand full in Germany.

The best on this solution: it’s suggested from ServiceNow! Not a script from the community or even developed on my own.

In the below list there’s the procedure how to use the condition script:
1. Create a Schedule (System Scheduler > Schedules), or use an existing Schedule in your system
2. Add the ‘Conditional’ and ‘Condition’ fields to your Scheduled Reports form
3. Check the ‘Conditional’ checkbox
4. Set ‘Run’ to Periodically, then set an hour interval you wish to have the report sent out with
5. In the ‘Condition’ field, use the following script (replace the timezone with your timezone, replace the 32-character sys_id with the sys_id of the Schedule you created – you can get that by right-clicking it in the Schedules list and selecting Copy sys_id

Script:

var s = new GlideSchedule("<sys_id of the scheudle>");
var gdt = new GlideDateTime();
s.isInSchedule(gdt, "<the target time zone>");

Example:

var s = new GlideSchedule("08fcd0830a0a0b2600079f56b1adb9ae");
var gdt = new GlideDateTime();
s.isInSchedule(gdt, "US/Pacific");

To get the list of schedules, you can use the below link (simply set your instance suffix) or use the application menu method:
https://<instance>.service-now.com/cmn_schedule_list.do
System Scheduler > Schedules > Schedules

Time zones are not available in a central table. They’re stored as choice list options. There are several ways how to access the available tables. You can use the below link (adjust the ServiceNow instance name):
https://<instance>.service-now.com/slushbucket_choice.do?sysparm_ref=sys_user.time_zone&sysparm_form=sys_choice&sysparm_dependent=&sysparm_stack=no

I hope this solution helps you and your colleagues as it helps me and my colleagues.

Related Links:

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0694062

Paris Release Platform Features

Last Tuesday, Chuck Tomasi (Sr. Developer Evangelist, ServiceNow), Kreg Steppe (Program Manager, ServiceNow) and Jeremy Duncan (Platform Architect, ServiceNow)  announced in the TechNow podcast some of the upcoming Paris release platform features. This release is available by now with the early access program and in October for public.

I want to share some of the features with you and those are pretty cool! You can find all information of the upcoming release in the release notes.

You can try the new release and features in the developer portal and request your own PDI (Personal Developer Instance)
Some of the benefits of the developer portal:

  • Free personal developer instance
  • Early access to releases
  • Free learning plans
  • Script API documentation
  • Developer meet-up information
  • Developer events
  • Developer blog
  • Share content
  • Videos

The recording is now available on demand:
https://www.servicenow.com/events/on-demand-webinars.html

Please note, all features are in the safe harbour state and changes could affect.

Automated Test Framework (ATF)
Improved indexing
Buttons can now be indexed to select the right one.

Authentication

OpenID Connect SSO
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an identity layer built on top of the Oauth protocol which provides a modern and intuitive SSO experience to you and your end users.

Self-Registration
External user self-registration enables a large group of users to register to a ServiceNow app without the help of an administrator.

Core Platform

Scoped data administration
With scoped data administration, administrators can now allow or disallow specific users to edit specific information within an application. Other users are not allowed to change those information.

Flow Designer

Order of Actions – Number
With the new release, the Actions in Flow Designer are now labled with an ongoing number, not longer dots for child actions. It’s easier now to identify the right action.

Duplicate Action Instance
Do you sometimes have to create multiple Actions which are nearly identical to each other? With the new icon next to Annotation and Trash Bin you can easily duplicate an Action, and the best is, it is already prefilled with the same Data Pills.

Ghost actions
With the new release, missing Spokes or Actions from an migrated Flow from your dev or test instance are now shown as a ‘Ghost Action’, also a message is displayed.

Make a decision
With a new flow logic, you are now able to easily make decisions based on certsin criterias.

Run with roles
Flows can only be executed with an system user or by the user who initiates session, and also with the roles of this user? But what if the flow needs to execute something where the user don’t has access to? With an very cool improvement, you are now able to add some temporary roles to this user to enable those specific Actions.

Those roles don’t have to be licensed, since they are temporary.

Send SMS Action
With a new Action, you can now send SMS to users.

User Access Control Critertia
This is also a very nice new feature. It’s something like domain separation, but not directly. You know there are hundrets of spokes available. Maybe an administratot know most of them or at least knows how to deal with numerous spokes installed. But what if an additional contributor needs to build flows or at least add or configure some Actions? Not only the high number of potentially installed Spokes are dangerous, also some Actions. You now can set permissions to enable some contributors to specific spokes, so they for example can edit or add Actions for systems or departments for which they are experts.

To do so, you can set those permissions in the Flow Menu.

IntegrationHub

Integration Authentication
With IntegrationAuthentication, you can now create new credentials without exit the Flow.

Process Automation Designer
Business Process Owners can now digitize,  visualize and manage end to end workflows to Business Services with an new Builder experience.

Upgrade Center
In the new Paris Release, there is a new Upgrade Center. Upgrades can be previewed or reviewed and you can manage skips with VTP.

This was only a short list of numerous new Platform Features in the Paris Release. Other cool improvements or coming features are in the Workspace, Studio, Playbook experience, Notifications, Platform backend, FlowAPI and FlowScriptAPI, Domain separation.

Referred Links
http://bit.ly/sn-break-point
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-release-notes/page/release-notes/family-release-notes.html

TechNow:
http://bit.ly/servicenow-technow
Community link: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=4d6eaeaddbd0dbc01dcaf3231f961964
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkGSnjw5y2U7HkJd7YkVtX93pA5pl8KDM

Now Create – Deliver Successful Projects

Now Create is a new Framework to provide guidance on how to deliver successful projects on the ServiceNow Platform, gained from the insights and learnings of thousands of successful projects.

With Now Create, you are able to find methodologies for implementation, upgrade, enhancement, and landscape optimization projects. Assets containing detailed product specific guidance are attached to the methodology right where you need them.

The system also provides project related templates to accelerate execution, such as project charter, project report, raid logs, and many others. In Now Create, this collection of methodology and assets is called a success pack. A success pack is designed to deliver a specific successful project outcome, for example, an ITSM implementation or CSM upgrade.

Who Benefits from Now Create?

Every single person involved in the scoping and delivery of a ServiceNow project can benefit from Now Create. It doesn’t matter how technical your role is or which organization you belong to. Now Create is designed for everyone.

Before starting your project, Now Create’s content will guide you to define activities, skills, and resources required for success. This will support the definition of business cases, as well as allowing customers, partners, and ServiceNow teams to optimize the combined team resourcing.

Now Create provides an intuitive and simple way to explore the steps for successful project execution. During the first ServiceNow project, Now Create will act as a great companion as you ramp up. For seasoned ServiceNow practitioners, Now Create’s vast library of detailed and evergreen leading practices will keep you at the top of your game.

The system’s structured processes and leading practice assets drive higher quality and more predictable results with a faster time to value. By removing uncertainty, Now Create also reduces anxiety withing project teams. All of this reduces project risk and creates amazing business outcomes.

How Now Create Works

Within Now Create you can search for the right success pack for your project. You can use the fi lters or text based search to locate  the right success pack and then dive in to learn about the details of it.

After you discovered the right success pack for you, you can explore this success pack. The project follows hybrid waterfall methodology with sequential project phases and exit gates coupled with agile scrum development in the execution phase.

To learn more about any of the tasks on the overview page, simply click into it, and you will be presented with the task level details telling you why this is executed and the risk of not executing it.

On the Success Pack Overview page, you also can choose to download the success pack for loading into ServiceNow’s ITBM PPM product or other project execution tools.

How can I Access Now Create?

Now Create is part of the Now Learning Portal. However it can’t be found easily on the homepage, so I would recommend to directly access the Now Create homepage by visiting https://nowlearning.service-now.com/nowcreate

ServiceNow and Generation Z – the perfect fit?

Generation Z. Most people associate it with a ‘lazy’, ‘difficult’ or simply ‘another’ generation. They are considered disinterested and addicted to smartphones. What happens to the world of working when this generation enters?

Let’s take a closer look at the Generation Z. It extends mainly between the years 1997 to 2012, in which they were born. The first ones have already entered into the world of working, while the others will not enter the working world for a few years.

But: what is important to the Generation Z?

For most of them, it’s not work, a steep career or financial wealth that is important, but time for the family, personal freedom, self-fulfillment and, of course, having fun in life is.

They don’t want to spend a lot of time at work with manual processes, and they don’t want to rack their brains over open tasks. They want to live a relaxed life and experience many exciting things – and all this without the stress of work.

The first ‘digital natives’ – that describes it quite well. Almost everyone in the Generation Z has been involved with digital media since childhood and has been influenced by it – whether through television, the Internet, smartphones, etc. – so they are ‘fit’ in the new technologies.

They are more than familiar with the media. They know how to work efficiently with notebooks, smartphones, apps and co. Most of them ask themselves very early on when they start something ‘can’t this be done by smartphone?’. And it is exactly this thought that makes them masters of digitalization!

What does this have to do with ServiceNow? Very simple: ServiceNow wants to make working life easier in many areas due to the motto ‘make work, work better for people’. Who, if not Generation Z, would be best suited for this? ServiceNow offers a modern platform with extensive functionalities. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Flows, Workflows, Mobile Apps and numerous integrations are only a small list of the platform capabilities.

Working life is becoming more and more mobile. Everything has to be done on the go. An unbelievable amount has to be done in an unbelievably short time. By touching digital media at an early age, Generation Z fits perfectly with ServiceNow because both share the same passion.

I’m very excited to see how Generation Z makes working life easier with ServiceNow.

Review: ServiceNow: the Now Platform® Orlando Product Release Broadcast

Last Thursday the latest ServiceNow version Orlando was officially launched. Here you will find the most important information in case you were not able to attend or want to read the content again.

In the latest release Orlando, ServiceNow introduced more than 800 new features. The most important ones I would like to introduce you briefly:

  • Now Intelligence
  • Analytics Q&A
  • Mobile Branding
  • Mobile Analytics
  • Now Experience
  • ServiceNow Extension for VS Code

Now Intelligence

In the new release, everything is about intelligence. AI is still an unfulfilled promise. Everyone is talking about it but nobody knows how to address the topic. So ServiceNow has fulfilled that promise. True to the motto ‘Intelligence done right: Making work better for you’. Now Intelligence is now behind most applications.

Analytics Q&A (limted access)

What do you think when you read this? Q&A to the Analytics Application? That’s wrong. Analytics is a very interesting topic for the high management level, which needs fast reports and has no time to create them.

The trick is, you enter what information you are looking for in a search field and the Analytics Q&A application generates the required report.

Mobile Branding

With the Orlando release ServiceNow has responded to many customer requirements. One if the requirements is to adapt the available mobile applications. Not only the mobile theme colors can be customized, but also the app name, app description, app icon and splash screen image. With the new release, MAM (Mobile App Management) support is available.

Mobile Analytics

With the new release ServiceNow also introduces a possibility to check user data of mobile applications and thus further improve the stability and performance of the applications.

The ServiceNow Mobile Analytics application provides dashboard views to monitor key performance indicators for mobile application users created with the ServiceNow mobile platform. Visualize metrics and interactions to better understand the user experience and create more intuitive trips for your users.

Now Experience

Today the experience of the employees is broken. Employees have to navigate across several departments to do simple things.

The IT department is responsible for things like connecting to the Internet, needing a new device, resetting the password and much more. The HR department provides policies, changes the address and updates contact information. Facilities organizes office moves, books meeting rooms, a new desk. The Legal Department is responsible for providing evidence of compliance, reporting risks to the Board of Directors. The finance department takes care of payment problems, company credit cards, purchase of various utensils.

ServiceNow Employee Workflows transform the employee experience. How? ServiceNow combines everything in one platform – not only via website, but also via smartphone. This makes it easier for all employees to get things done, find information or whatever needs to be done.

ServiceNow Extension for VS Code

ServiceNow already provided an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code in the past. With the new release, this extension has been further improved.

From now on you can develop offline. As soon as an internet connection is available, the changes can be applied.  The extension also provides a 2-way-sync between VS Code and the ServiceNow instance. Furthermore, the extension provides code suggestions to use the correct syntax.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is an aPaaS (Application Platform as a Service) model and is the fastest growing enterprise cloud platform. It provides the customers a modern platform with extensive functions and several integrations. With the modern platform, workflows can be easily created to automate several business processes to make work easy. 

Now Platform®  

The Now Platform® delivers a System of Action for the enterprise. Using a single data model, it’s easy to create contextual workflows and automate any business process.  

Anyone, from the business user to professional developer, can easily build applications at lightning speed. Any application user on the Now Platform® can make requests through the service catalogues, find information in common knowledge bases, and be notified about the actions and information they care about the most. Departments, work groups, and even devices can assign, prioritize, collaborate, get down to root cause issues, and intelligently orchestrate actions. Now, makes your business move faster. 

ServiceNow key products 

  • IT Service Management: With the IT Service Management (ITSM) solution you are able to manage and deliver services to your users through a modern, single cloud-based platform. The ITSM suite offers features used by your IT Service Desk to manage the ITIL processes such as Incident Management, Change and Release Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management, Service Catalog, Knowledge Management, and Configuration and Asset Management along with features like reporting and administration, which are extended across other features as well.

Applications: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Asset Management, Cost Management, CSI Management, Walk Up Management

  • Customer Service Management: Customer Service Management (CSM) is the pendant to the ITSM application. While ITSM is used for internal purposes, CSM is used for external use. CSM is used to resolve complex issues end-to-end. Problems can be fixed proactively and drive action to solve common requests more quickly and efficiently.

Applications: Customer Service Management, Communities, Field Service Management

  • Intelligent Applications: Intelligent applications are self developed applications, custom apps. This is now included in the Now Platform®. This solution includes Service Portal Designer, Studio (the developer interface), Delegated Development and Automated Testing.

Applications: Service Portal Designer, Studio, Delegated Development, Automated Testing

  • HR Service Delivery: HR Service Delivery is one of the key trends of ’20. With HR Service Delivery, ServiceNow wants to improve the employee satisfaction and make work more efficiently. Most of the HR employees are burdened by manual processes. Onboarding and Transition is a important topic as well. In this application all departments of the onboarding process are involved to improve the overall experience.

Applications: Case & Knowledge Management, Onboarding & Transition, Employee Service Center,  Employee Document

  • Security Operations: ServiceNow Security Operation brings incident data from your security tools into a structured response engine that uses intelligent workflows, automation, and a deep connection with IT to prioritize and resolve threats based on the impact they pose to your organization. So it provides your company a solution for security incident response, work through quickly and process all incoming signals onto a heatmap. You can also ask a anonymous community (trusted security circles) of several companies to solve your security issue. You are also able to discover all your systems to get data for current patches, event management and libraries to check whether a new patch is available or not.

Applications: Security Incident Response, Vulnerability Response, Threat Intel, Trusted Security Circles

  • Governance, Risk & Compliance: With this suite, automation of policies and live cycles of several services is possible. You can respond to business risks in real time, connect security and IT with an integrated risk program offering continuous monitoring, prioritization, and automation. Vendor management is possible as well to manage live cycles of the vendors and weight up how reliable a vendor is.

Applications: Vendor Risk Management, Audit Management, Policy & Compliance Management, Risk Management

  • Software Asset Management: ServiceNow started in this area three years ago and it’s the only solution which really saves costs. With Software Distribution, License Change Projections and Software Asset Management, every installed and licensed software can be identified on every client or server. With this information, companies are able to identify how many licenses are used, used to much or not exhausted at all. Unused licenses can be returned to the vendor to save those costs.

Applications: Software Distribution, License Change Projections, Software Asset Management

  • IT Business Management: ITBM is the most flexible/agile solution of ServiceNow. This suite will soon be renamed to Enterprise Portfolio Management. EPM is a more suitable term since it better describes the functions. Project Management isn’t only relevant for IT but for the entire company, for this, ITBM or soon EPM is used. All important parts of the classic project management is included and is strongly oriented towards agile project management.

Applications: App Portfolio, Demand, Resource, Project Portfolio, Agile Dev, Test Management, Financial Planning,  Financial Modeling & Charging

  • IT Operations Management: The ITOM suite is the heart of ServiceNow, right after the Now Platform. With this suite, you are able to discover every system in your network environment and map services. Now you are able to understand processes, the correlation between assets and the whole infrastructure. This is the base for event management. So if for example outlook doesn’t work anymore on a device, you can identify all systems involved to detect the error and resolve it. Also with Cloud Management you can for example provision Microsoft Azure resources or identify cost factors.

Applications: Event Management, Operational Intel, Service Mapping, Discovery, Orchestration, Cloud Management

  • Now Platform: The Now platform is the real heart of ServiceNow. ServiceNow is based on a CMDB. The CMDB is filled by discovery. With this CMDB you have a single source of truth where all CI’s are managed. But the Now Platform offers out-of-the-box several features as well.  Some of them are Virtual Agent, Notifications, Push-notifications, mobile Apps, Visual task boards, Flow Designer, Workflows and much more.

Applications: Service Portal, Virtual Agent, Knowledge Management, Notify, Push, Mobile, Guided Tours, Supervised Machine Learning, Anomaly Detection, Actionable Analytics, Time Series Database, Peer Benchmarking, Connect, Visual Task Board, Service Catalog, CMDB, Orchestration, Integration Hub, Flow Designer, Workflow

Capabilities 

  • Authentication: Single sign-on (SSO) feature is the essence of any tool and ServiceNow is no different. This tool has multiple provider SSO features. An organization can use several SSO IDPs (Identity Providers) to manage authentication. SSO enables a user to login into the application without providing any UserID or password. Hence it uses the Windows ID and password. 
  • LDAP: Companies can use Active Directory for various purposes. Be it providing access to applications or maintaining Outlook Distribution list; there are many. The LDAP integration is a piece of cake for ServiceNow tool, and the part is that you do not have to code anything. Everything is a simple configuration. 
  • Orchestration: ServiceNow provides the capability of orchestrating or automating simple or complex tasks on remote servers. One Orchestration is implemented in an IT company, the entire work requires less skill and labor. It can automate systems which are listed in the Integrations section. 
  • Web Services: The Platform provides the capability of publishing or consuming API at the same time. SOAP, WSDL or REST API are protocols supported. You can either create codeless API or scripted ones. 
  • Enterprise Portal: One of the most important requirements for any organization is to have a web portal where users can request for access, service or support. ServicePortal has the capability of giving wings to different organizations. Today Enterprises are developing their ServicePortal to showcase their ServiceNow capabilities. ServicePortal also replaces CMS site which was the old version of portal but it does not have a capability like a Service Portal.  
  • Mobile Ready: Today most of the people would want an enterprise application/service/solution to be mobile enabled. They need the ability to make changes on the go. ServiceNow makes it possible. ServiceNow forms and applications are mobile friendly and can be published directly to the mobile without specific development done for mobile. ServiceNow provides the web-based application for the mobile and a mobile native app for iOS and Android. 

Integrations 

Integrations are licensed by different packets. 

  • API 
  • REST 
  • SOAP 
  • SSH 
  • PowerShell 
  • JDBC 
  • XML 
  • JSON 
  • Microsoft Teams 
  • Workplace by Facebook 
  • Azure DevOps 
  • Docker 
  • Jira 
  • Kubernetes 
  • Twitter 
  • Google Cloud translator 
  • Microsoft AD 
  • Microsoft Azure AD 
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 
  • Microsoft Exchange 
  • Adobe Experience Platform 
  • Microsoft SCCM 
  • Salesforce 
  • … 

Q2’20 SAP: 

  • Ariba 
  • Business Suite 
  • Fieldglass 
  • S4/Hana 
  • Concur 
  • … 

Hosting 

The customer instances are hosted in ServiceNow’s own datacenters which are shown in the image below. Two datacenters are combined to a datacenter pair for reliability. For a small number of customers with special requirements, an onsite implementation is possible. 

The German datacenters are located in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt Main. 

Plugin: WebKit HTML to PDF

Today I want to introduce you to a small, but very useful ServiceNow plugin: WebKit HTML to PDF. The name is not very meaningful, so I want to tell you something about this plugin.

The plugin WebKit HTML to PDF is used to provide users the ability to export homepages and dashboards as PDF documents. This is a very useful tool for your daily work. But keep in mind, that this is only an extract and will not be updated, unlike homepages or dashboards.

Note: When you activate this plugin, OAuth 2.0 will be activated as well if not already installed.

ID: com.snc.whtp
Price: Free
Producer: ServiceNow

Roles required
admin

It’s very simple to activate this plugin. I’ll explain what functions the plugin offers and how it is activated.

Before the plugin is actived, lets view the homepage. The homepage (dashboards as well) do not offer any functions to export the visible information to PDF.

Homepage before plugin activation.

Let’s activate the plugin. Plugins are listed in the System Definitions -> Plugins module. In the content frame, search for ‘WebKit HTML to PDF’. Now you can simply klick on Install to install this plugin.

Plugins module.

Before the plugin will be installed, you’ll receive a prompt to finally activate the plugin. Dependent plugins are also shown. For the WebKit HTML to PDF the dependent plugin OAuth 2.0 is necessary and will be automatically activated.

Activation plugin WebKit HTML to PDF.

After you clicked on activate, the plugin will be installed.
Please be careful, activating a plugin can affect performance to your inctance, so I recommend to activate the plugin outside the business hours in order not to impair other users of the systemt.

Activation state of plugin.

The activation is finished in a short time. You have the ability to view the activation log, plugin list or simply close & reload the form to use the functions of the plugin.

Activation result.

In the Plugin Application Logs, the changes are listed which are made to install the plugin.

Plugin Activation Log 1.
Plugin Activation Log 2.

After the installation is completed and the whole website has been refreshed, you can go back to your default landing page and you’ll note a new icon in the banner of the content frame of homepages and dashboards. When you click on this icon, a pop up appears.

Homepage after activation.

The popup ‘Export to PDF’ offers the possibility to define certain frame criteria.
You can devine the Orientation of the export, portrait or landscape. Also the paper size and zoom factor can be set.
A very nice feature is, you can decide between directly generate and download the PDF, or send the PDF export by email to specified recipients.

Export to PDF.

When you select the option to generate the PDF right now, after a few seconds when the export has completed, the PDF can be downloaded.

Export complete, download.

The exported and downloaded PDF file, is shown in the image below for the ITIL Homepage. It’s generated as a letter sized file and all information at the time of export are visible.

PDF export of homepage.

The activation of this plugin has no impact to your instance, it only provides you the ability to simply export dashboards and homepages to PDF.

Interview: Full of drive for ServiceNow

Yesterday I had a great talk with Ricarda Kleff, marketing of cellent a Wipro company about ServiceNow @cellent. Please feel free to read the whole interview below:

English version below

Voller Tatendrang für ServiceNow

18.12.2019 | Simpel gesagt: Hinter ServiceNow steckt eine Cloud-Plattform, die für effizientes Arbeiten sorgt, dank einem automatisierten Workflow-Management. Auch cellent gehört nun zum Kundenstamm des US-Cloud-Spezialisten und setzt eine ServiceNow Instanz ein. In naher Zukunft will der IT-Dienstleister auch seinen Kunden Beratungs-, Implementierungs- und Entwicklungsservices für die Applikations-Suite aus der Cloud anbieten. Mehr dazu verrät Felix Großer, Junior Consultant und Head of Center of Excellence ServiceNow, hier im Interview.

Felix, die Nachricht ist noch ganz frisch: Du leitest ab sofort das Center of Excellence für Service Now innerhalb der Practice Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS). Herzlichen Glückwunsch erst einmal. Was genau sind deine Aufgaben?

Vielen Dank! Ich freue mich wirklich riesig diese spannende Aufgabe übernehmen zu dürfen. Deshalb möchte ich mich an dieser Stelle auch bei Matthias Eckmeyer, Leiter Practice CIS, für das entgegengebrachte Vertrauen bedanken. Mein Auftrag ist herausfordernd. Kurz gesagt: Ich werde mich um den Auf- und Ausbau unserer Beratungs-, Implementierungs- und Entwicklungsleistungen rund um ServiceNow kümmern. Das Center of Excellence (CoE) ist eine Art Kompetenzzentrum. Teil des CoE und meiner Arbeit ist es unter anderem ein Qualifizierungsprogramm für unsere Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter aufzusetzen, also festzulegen, welche Schulungen für welche Zielgruppe relevant sind. Ein enger Draht zu ServiceNow ist dabei natürlich sehr wichtig. Wir benötigen zum Beispiel Einblicke in die Roadmap, um, was neue Releases und deren Features angeht, am Puls der Zeit zu bleiben. Zusätzlich werde ich mich auch um die Erstellung diverser Unterlagen beispielsweise für Vertriebsaktivitäten kümmern.

Das klingt allemal herausfordernd.

Auf jeden Fall. Aber ich freue mich darauf hier etwas bewegen zu dürfen; sowohl für die Kolleginnen und Kollegen, als auch für die Firma. Denn in ServiceNow steckt echtes Wachstumspotenzial. Die Plattform ist sehr mächtig – und macht sie mit all ihren Anwendungen extrem spannenden und bedarfsgerecht einsetzbar für Unternehmen. ServiceNow geht weit über das klassische IT Service Management (ITSM) hinaus. Sie deckt zum Beispiel zusätzlich Customer Service Management (CSM), IT Operations Management, Personalverwaltung, IT Security, Predictive Analytics und vieles mehr ab.

Welche dieser Teilbereiche nutzen wir als cellent?

Die beiden Hauptanwendungen. Wobei wir aktuell ITSM mit Incident, Problem, Change sowie Service Request Management im Einsatz haben. In naher Zukunft folgt dann auch CSM.

Deine bisherigen Erfahrungen mit ServiceNow teilst du in einem eigenen Blog. Woher kam diese Idee?

Die Idee kam eigentlich eher spontan auf.  Ich gebe mein Wissen gerne weiter und das ist auch die Zielsetzung meines Blogs „Fix IT – today“. Im Rahmen unserer Einführung von ServiceNow standen wir beispielsweise vor dem Problem die Service Level Agreements unter Berücksichtigung der Feiertage in Deutschland abzubilden. Davon habe ich mich als Blog-Schreiber inspirieren lassen, mit meiner persönlichen ServiceNow Instanz herumgespielt und meine Lösung in Worte gepackt. Anschließend wurde sie sogar auch im Projekt umgesetzt. Mein Job dient somit als Inspirationsquelle für den Blog.

Felix, wir danken dir für das interessante Gespräch und freuen uns schon jetzt auf deine nächsten Blog-Beiträge!

Full of drive for ServiceNow

18.12.2019 | Simply put: ServiceNow is a cloud platform that ensures efficient work thanks to automated workflow management. cellent now also belongs to the customer base of the US cloud specialist and uses a ServiceNow instance. Soon, the IT service provider also wants to offer its customers consulting, implementation and development services for the cloud-based application suite. Felix Großer, Junior Consultant and Head of Center of Excellence ServiceNow, gives more details here.

Felix, the news is still fresh: You are now leading the Center of Excellence for ServiceNow within the Practice Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS). Congratulations! What exactly are your tasks?

Thanks a lot! I’m more than pleased to take over this exciting task. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Matthias Eckmeyer, Head of Practice CIS, for the trust he has placed in me. Honestly, my job is challenging. In short: I will take care of the development and expansion of our consulting, implementation and development services for ServiceNow. The Center of Excellence (CoE) is a kind of competence center. Part of the CoE and my work is, among other things, to set up a qualification program for our employees, for instance, to determine which training courses are relevant for which target group. A close connection to ServiceNow is of course very important as well. For example, we need insights into the roadmap in order to stay up-to-date with regards to new releases and their features. In addition, I will also take care of creating various documents like sales collaterals.

That really sounds challenging indeed.

Absolutely. But I am looking forward to being able to make a difference here and drive the topic forward; both for my colleagues and for the company. ServiceNow has real growth potential. The platform is very powerful – and with all its applications it becomes extremely exciting for companies. They can use it based on their needs. ServiceNow goes far beyond classic IT service management (ITSM). For example, it also covers Customer Service Management (CSM), IT Operations Management, Personnel Management, IT Security, Predictive Analytics and much more.

Which of these parts are we using at cellent?

The two main ones. Currently, we have ITSM with Incident, Problem, Change and Service Request Management in use. And in the near future, CSM will follow.

You are sharing your previous experiences with ServiceNow in your own blog. How did you come up with this idea?

The idea came up rather spontaneously. I like to pass on my knowledge and that is also the goal of my blog “Fix IT – today“. As part of our implementation project, for example, we faced the problem of displaying the service level agreements considering the public holidays in Germany. As a blog writer, I got inspired by this, played around with my personal ServiceNow instance and put my solution into words. And it was even implemented in the project. Thus, my job also serves as a source of inspiration for my blog.

Felix, thank you so much for the interesting conversation and we are already looking forward to reading your next blog posts!

Release Notes: Orlando – first information to Flow Designer and IntegrationHub

Today I had the chance to get some Flow Designer and IntegrationHub information of the next ServiceNow release in Q1 2020: Orlando!
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The Orlando release is according to the motto ‘Smarter, Faster, Easier’.
Some of the release notes are described below on behalf of the Safe Harbor statement:

Flow Designer
Flow Designer is a Now Platform® Feature that gives you rich capabilities for automating processes in a single design environment. Flow Designer lets process owners use natural language to automate approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations without coding.

The published new functions include:

  • Support IntegrationHub
    • Data Transformations
    • 3rd party introspection of results
  • Dynamic Outputs
  • Dynamic Subflows
  • What changed trigger
  • Support Service Level Management
    • SLA Timer
  • Natural Language
    • Action title authoring

IntegrationHub
IntegrationHub is ServiceNow’s possibility to integrate 3rd party systems. It enables anyone-developers, IT generalists, and process analysts-to extend flows in Flow Designer to any 3rd party service and easily create end-to-end digital workflows.

Some new functions include:

  • Modernize Auth Framework
    • Custom Auth & Request signing
    • Connection Configuration UX v1
  • IntegrationHub Usage dashboards (Features, Password Reset, CSD (Client Software Distribution))
  • Data Stream
    • MID Support
    • Action API Support
    • Usability improvements
  • Codeless integrations
    • Input Sanitization transform for JDBC/SSH
    • Dynamic outputs
  • Orchestration Party
    • Migrate Client Software Distribution
    • Protocols: SFTP, Managed File Transfer

Also, in Q2 ’20 some SAP integrations are announced. Some of them are Ariba, BusinessSuite, Fieldglass, S4/Hana and Concur.