Resources – Enable Professional Services

Category: Resources

Effective Risk and Compliance Management in Higher Education

October 15, 2020October 15, 2020
by Myhendri Govender

In a consistently evolving regulatory and risk environment the one constant remains the ability to respond promptly, appropriately and almost pre-emptively to these changes. This has fostered a need for deep embedment of risk management and more particularly compliance to regulatory requirements, into the corporate culture of all organisations, some more highly regulated than others. The bottom line is that risk management and Compliance are no longer perceived burdens but rather form an integral part of doing business in the right way. Efficient and effective risk management practices place organizations at a competitive advantage. It is not sustainable to consistently allocate additional resources to these issues. This is where intelligent, automated, integrated risk management solutions play a key role.

The bottom line is that risk management and Compliance are no longer perceived burdens but rather form an integral part of doing business in the right way.

The financial services industry has experienced the brunt of it through changes in regulation and regulatory frameworks, hefty penalties and fines and commissions of enquiry, with heightened expectations from consumers. Other industries such as higher education have also followed suit under these regulatory pressures and expectations.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (“TEQSA”) has focused on the protection of students’ interests and in preserving the reputation of the higher education industry. TEQSA’s the regulatory approach is a risk-based and standards one to regulation. It’s remit in conducting compliance and risk assessments, re-accreditation assessments of courses and in collecting and analyzing information for these assessments has necessitated effective risk and compliance management practices and the flow of qualitative, accessible data to TEQSA.

TEQSA conducts its risk assessments on an annual basis. According to TEQSA these serve as a regulatory tool guiding TEQSA’s priorities and regulatory scoping activities in a risk-reflective manner. And therein lies the opportunity to manage risk pre-emptively based on the results of the preceding risk assessment conducted.

In order to accommodate higher education practises in a Covid 19 climate, TEQSA has introduced interim relaxations to the standards. Staying on top of these changes in addition to industry-relevant legislative changes can pose a challenge.

The IRM Practice of Enable Professional Services can add value to risk management and compliance practises in the higher education industry.

Enable Professional Services is the most qualified, certified and capable ServiceNow partner in the APJ region. ServiceNow Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) helps transform and integrate inefficient GRC processes into an integrated GRC risk program. Through continuous regulatory change alerts, control compliance monitoring, issues and incident management, key risk indicator (KRI) monitoring and automation, and dashboard reporting ServiceNow GRC delivers a real-time view of compliance and risk levels, improve decision making, and increases GRC performance across organisations.

Related links:

For more TEQSA related information please refer to the TEQSA website: https://www.teqsa.gov.au/

Written by –

Myhendri Govender

LEAD CONSULTANT – GRC

CONNECT ON LINKEDIN

News

Increasing exposure to cyber risks during COVID-19

October 15, 2020October 15, 2020
by Vikram Khatri

The alarming spread of COVID-19 worldwide has led to the fastest migration in the history of employees moving their work from formal office environments to home workspaces. While this has helped achieve goals of social distancing and curbing the spread of the pandemic, it has greatly increased the possibility of security and data breaches due to deficiencies in cybersecurity measures. IT departments have been given impossibly short deadlines to cater to the move to remote work, without the opportunity to prepare for this transition. The transition to remote work has been even more challenging in organizations where the IT infrastructure and security teams were operating in silos.

Threat actors have taken advantage of cybersecurity gaps caused by widespread remote work – caused by increased pressure on IT and Security teams, end-users not following security best practices as they perform work on their own devices and exposure of critical company information outside traditional office network boundaries. Phishing, data theft and ransomware attacks have increased in quantity and severity and threat actors have used the fear of the pandemic to design new ways of performing cyber-attacks.

The need for improving efficiency and productivity of IT and security teams, so that they could focus on adapting and executing on cybersecurity measures in this new environment, has never been greater. The increasing number and types of cyber-attacks require an automated approach to assessing, triaging and remediating security issues. Also important is to break the barriers between the security and IT teams to ensure that they operate as one cohesive unit to meet the business needs of the larger organisation, while minimizing exposure to cyber risks.

Are you interested in learning about a platform which could help you optimize your cybersecurity spending and efforts in these special circumstances? Sign up for a Free Business Value Assessment here.
ServiceNow® Security Operations helps organizations connect security and IT teams, respond faster and more efficiently to threats, and get a definitive view of their security posture. It connects the workflow and systems management capabilities of the Now Platform™ with security data from leading vendors to give your teams a single platform for a response that can be shared between security and IT. With orchestration, automation, and better visibility, teams can respond more efficiently, reducing business risk.

The solution provides interdependency views between infrastructure, applications and business services so that IT and Security teams can understand the overall business impact before taking remediation actions.

The less time in-house experts spend on administrative tasks, the more they can spend on creating and implementing comprehensive cybersecurity measures.

Written by –

Vikram Khatri

GRC PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT

CONNECT ON LINKEDIN

Resources

Mid-server installer in Paris

September 27, 2020October 15, 2020
by Alikutty Karupamveetil

Our 2020 ServiceNow Now Community MVP Alikutty Karupamveetil has been busy preparing some practical tools for ServiceNow developers. He has recorded a video on the new windows mid server installer in Paris.

The features include:
– New native windows installer
– Ability to configure a separate service account for mid server during installation
– Auto-update the mid server service Log on the tab with the service account
– OOB credential for the windows service account

Watch the full instruction video here: https://youtu.be/TtxOki_f5ts

For more practical tips and resources, head to our Youtube Channel,

Read more about the 2020 MVP program here

Resources

Win-Win in Paris

September 23, 2020October 8, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Good News!

With ServiceNow’s latest release, Paris, ServiceNow has created win-win capabilities for your organisation and employees.

This pandemic has created new challenges for all rogansationa, and requires a industry shift to adapt.

Paris is launched with 6 new products to help organisations platform adoption strategy. Let’s have a quick overview, what is new…

Business Continuity Management:
Under the Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) offering, this business continuity product ensures identification of recovery time against the appropriate disaster recovery plans configured in the system. Furthermore, prepare your teams with simulated and actual crisis events to avoid D-Day surprises and confusions.
Financial Services Operations:
Improving customer handling time and providing financial transparency in the context of refunds, claims, and automated payment collection from customers or third-party banks. Never miss a dollar!
Hardware Asset Management:
Uplifting the CMDB multiple discovery data sources capability, it is a great leap complimenting and synthesizing the hardware/software inventory lifecycle. Ensuring that leadership has better visibility on asset utilization in the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
Legal Service Delivery:
We could not agree more that Legal work is so detail and eye to content. A platform enrichment to increase productivity at the business pace and elimination of manual work is more than welcome. The legal serf-serve portal provides 24×7 access to the information. Bring spreadsheet and paper-based solution, if required tailor-made to an organization needs, onto the one platform. Legal reporting and dashboards on the same platform ensure better decision making.
Telecommunications Service Management:
Reduction in the incoming calls is every help desk agent wishes, and this product envisions the reduction which in return ensures customer loyalty. Right time when online work and call pressure has increased.
Telecommunications Network Performance Management:
Removal of data silo between customer service and network to expedite the network issue resolution. Thus, reducing the operational cost improves the meantime to resolve and customer Net Promoter Score

In this season, good news should not end that soon, Right?

Let’s have a second overview of few cool enhancements which are packaged in this Paris release.

HRSD campaign builder:
Keeping non-technical HR teams in mind, this cool feature with drag and drop user interface enables them to create campaigns from NOW platform.

NOW intelligence for HR Service delivery:
Again, in alignment with the current COVID situation where a spike in HR CASE is increasing strain on the HR teams this Machine Learning to route the CASE appropriately is a boon.

Vulnerability & Assignment Recommendation:
As the name suggests, it helps to identify the most appropriate teams for each vulnerability. No surprise, again Machine Learning is the core of this capability.

Field Service Contractor Management:
Empowering businesses to manage work assigned to third-parties to enhance the overall collaboration between field service organizations and their contractors.

At a pinnacle of excitement, it will be an injustice if we do not mention the ServiceNow acquiring Sweagle, a CMDB pioneer.

On June 22, 2020, when we read this news, we could foresee a revolution coming to the CMDB processes and/or methodologies especially to ITOM / DevOps offerings.

Let’s have a quick overview of what does that means under the NOW hood.

Service Graph Connector Program:
As ServiceNow CMDB is the fortitude to the one architecture framework within an organization. The announcement of this program is a step closer to the better management of the Customer’s digital Lifecycle. Leveraging this program many third-party tools that businesses rely on today on its delivery can directly integrate with ServiceNow to increase data quality and reliability.

ServiceNow Service Graph Connectors:
There are pre-built connectors that facilitate the integration between 3rd party tool and ServiceNow Service Graph. Leverage the new reconciliation engine which is ServiceNow Common Service Data Model (CSDM) compliant. Thus, gone are the days of point-to-point hard code development and maintenance of integrations.

Before we wrap up, keeping the heartbeat developers in mind, a quick overview of what we will not see any longer in ServiceNow.

DevOps & Event Management dashboard
Service Portal Social Q&A widget

Author:
Bharat Rajora
Delivery Principal

News

Ready to work, ready the workplace

September 16, 2020October 8, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Amid a global pandemic, there is no playbook that HR and OHS professionals can use to ensure the safety and smooth transition back to the workplace.

ServiceNow, a company that develops cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations, who are also recognised for innovation are innovating again, this time ServiceNow has created a number of apps this year, to assist organisations so they can best manage their employee’s safe return to the workplace. With the Safe workplace suite, your orgnaisation can get a complete view of your readiness to reopen with the ServiceNow® Safe Workplace Dashboard. Provide a safe, employee-ready workplace with the ServiceNow® Safe Workplace app suite. Including Contact Tracing. Consumerize HR Services. Manage Employee Health.

Organisations must plan for workforce and workplace readiness:

The traditional office and desktop workplace will likely change as a result of COVID-19
Many employees will expect to work how, where and when they want
Employers will expect them to stay productive
Organisational agility is accelerating digital transformation
The need for business functions to work together has never been more important

The Safe Workplace suite helps you manage essential needs and services for reopening and returning your organisation to a new normal. Your organisation can simplify the complex workflows involved with returning to the workplace:

Contact Tracing

Identify and respond to employee exposure risk with data-driven contact tracing.

App to maintain a safe back to work program

Workplace Safety Management

Create a safe return process with distancing floorplans, automated cleaning tasks, and self-service reservations.

App to support safe business travel for employees

Employee Travel Safety

Pre-authorize business travel for employees based on the safety status of the destination.

App to survey if employees are ready to return to work

Employee Readiness Surveys

Gauge readiness to return to the workplace and address employee safety concerns.

Employee Health Screening

Verify employees meet workplace entry requirements through onsite screening or mobile self-service.

App to manage PPE supply as employees return to work

Workplace PPE Inventory Management

Manage your PPE inventory across locations and facilities to meet the physical safety needs of your workforce.

Quickly assess your ability to reopen

Get a complete view of your readiness to reopen sites with the Safe Workplace Dashboard. The dashboard displays data from the Safe Workplace apps so you can quickly evaluate your current state.

Manage your response from end to end

Respond quickly and with purpose in challenging times. Put technology to work with connected workflows that extend your response capabilities.

Prepare for your return to the workplace with apps that enable workforce and workplace readiness—available by subscription in a single suite.

Contact your Enable Customer Success Manager to arrange a Demo, or head to our Registration page to register for a demo.

Resources

TLS 1.2 in ServiceNow

August 26, 2020October 8, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

All you should know about TLS 1.2 and how ServiceNow is moving to it.

Web encryption is changing, and so is the ServiceNow security best practice around privacy and data integrity. Now in Oct 2019, ServiceNow has also decided to retire1.0 and 1.1 and intends to move all its customers to TLS 1.2. This article will enable you to understand all about TLS and upcoming changes, which may impact integrations.

Wondering what TLS is?

“Transport Layer Security” is the protocol that allows the handshake of your laptops/smartphones and then to communicate your sensitive information securely over the internet.

How ServiceNow use TLS?

Anytime users/customers try to access ServiceNow from devices within seconds, this is what is happening to establish a secure session between users and ServiceNow Instance. For example, below lock sign in the URL confirms that the secure session has been established securely between customer and ServiceNow instance.

What if I change the SSL certificate and not worry about the ServiceNow TLS change?

Certificate & Protocols are two different things, and Certificates are not dependent on protocols. SSL certificate only handles incoming traffic to the server and will not protect any calls that the server may make to other services.

What is the impact? If I don’t upgrade my integrations?

Any legacy services that currently rely on TLS 1.1 or older versions will no longer be available. If there are custom legacy integrations or customer is using an old browser, then there is a significant impact.

Finally, how do I prepare myself for this change

ServiceNow (Global Technical Support group) is contacting its customers that are using TLS1.0 or 1.1 and letting them aware of the change. Also, ServiceNow has published the Knowledge article: KB0746078

Written by –
Bharat Rajora
DELIVERY PRINCIPAL
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bharatrajora/

Resources

eBonding Integration Between ServiceNow Instance

July 16, 2020July 27, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

What is eBonding?

With respect to ServiceNow, eBonding means the creation of bi-directional integration across ServiceNow applications.

Benefits:

The main benefit of an eBonded solutions is that they typically provide a “synchronised” exchange. This means that data is shared automatically and two applications will always have matching data. This can reduce the amount of manual intervention normally required to sync the systems.

Key Feature:

Automation and simplification are the keys to improving efficiency and saving both time and money. eBonding helps in this by simplifying an array of tasks and keep the required system in sync to deliver requests efficiently.

Capability:

ServiceNow out of the box (OOB) capability provides setting up of two eBonded systems using Integration Hub. It uses common integration patterns to synchronise incidents across different ServiceNow instances.

Availability out of the box OOB:

ServiceNow eBonding spokes provide out of the box actions which helps in the synchronisation:

Create Remote Incident action
Lookup Remote Incident action
Update Remote Incident action

Pre-Requisites

In order to have eBonding in place, a HTTP connection record should be created by providing the credential for authentication and details of the URL to be connected.

Subscription:

**The ServiceNow eBonding spoke is included by default in your instance and doesn’t require an Integration Hub or Orchestration subscription.

Written by:

Avinash Kumar Sharma

Senior Technical Consultant

Learn more about Avinash – follow on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinash-kumar-sharma-378a9466/

Resources

ServiceNow’s Orlando Release: What’s New?

May 20, 2020June 10, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Orlando is around! The journey of ServiceNow, which started from Aspin, has reached to Orlando. We all know ServiceNow brings up a massive list of features with every release, so instead of composing a large file, I have highlighted some exciting features with some suggestion to consider for the upgrade. So, if you are planning your upgrade to Orlando, then this blog can help you utilize new features and mitigate any issues that may occur.

Here is the list of my favourites:

Agent Affinityis an “Advanced Work Assignment” feature that lets you assign work items by an agent’s work history, related task, or account team affinity. Agent Affinity ensures that the same agent is assigned to a similar work item instead of orienting a new agent every time. This feature is also available for an incident to route to agents based on historical affinity.
Workspace Agent Chat introduced a feature where managers can view ongoing chat conversations and join them to assist agents and requesters.
Agent workspace is now renamed to “Workspace Experience” and has brought up some of the most awaited features:
1. Custom Logos: You can now replace the ServiceNow logo with one of your own! Though there are some sizing limitations.
2. Custom Branding: You can now use up to 2 brand colours. ServiceNow introduced two system properties. One applies on the header, and the other property reflect on critical areas (list categories on the left, as a background colour when hovering over icons)
3. Custom Landing page: If you find that the default landing page does not meet your needs or that you are looking for more specific information, the UI Builder allows an administrator to set up a custom landing page.
4. Form Annotation: This is a huge step forward for customers who are looking to customize their form to provide context/clarity around specific fields.
5. Field modal: ServiceNow introduces two additional field types: glide_list and HTML. ServiceNow added a feature that informs the user that the field type is not supported when placed out on the form

HR Service delivery also introduced some cool features:
1. You can train a predictive model to auto-determine the correct HR service for a case.
2. You can train a predictive model to act as an HR agent to categorize HR cases submitted by email automatically.
3. Use Center of Excellence (COE) ACL Configuration to allow specific groups to read or write access to HR cases under a particular Center of Excellence(COE). For example, you might not want the Talent Management group to be able to view cases created by the Benefits group.

Widget diagnostics can be very helpful if a portal page is not working as expected. To identify the customization levels of widgets on a portal page, open the widget context menu and select Show Widget Customizations. Widgets show the following colour-coding
1. Green – base system widget
2. Yellow – cloned widget
3. Blue – new widget
4. Red – customized widget

Mobile Branding is finally here! Now customers and employees can recognize their company in the mobile App.

Extension for visual studio code brings some relaxation for developers. This feature enables you to edit applications within your ServiceNow instance. You can edit your applications offline and using Visual Studio Code JavaScript features reduces development time and improve code quality.
Source control integration enables the application developers to integrate with a GIT source control repository. It allows to save and manage multiple versions of an application from a non-production instance.

Some Considerations for Upgrade:

In Jakarta and later, Internet Explorer versions before IE11 are no longer supported. If you are using Internet Explorer 11, ensure that Protected Mode is disabled.
ServiceNow workspaces do not support mobile devices, and, starting with the Orlando release, Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Edge. Instead, use Microsoft Edge-Chromium or one of the other supported browsers listed in Generally supported browsers.
The Document Viewer Plugin (com.snc.documentviewer) is activated by default during the upgrade to the Orlando release.
The Flow Designer for service catalog (com.glideapp.servicecatalog.flow_designer) plugin activates during the upgrade.
If you have HR Service Delivery and upgrading from any release before Kingston and you have customizations that reference script includes, you might experience issues with Restricted Caller Access (RCA) errors. For more information, refer to the HR Service Delivery upgrade information.
The Knowledge Management with Knowledge Centred Support (KCS) plugin (com.glideapp.knowledge2) was deprecated in the Madrid release and support for this plugin is available until the Orlando release only.
In the Service Level Agreement (SLA) definition form, there is a new field added known as Flow that allows you to select a flow activity which runs for all task SLAs associated with it.
When you upgrade to Orlando, every time you create a new skill level type, the Default skill level is associated with it. You can change the skill level after you make the upgrade.

Want More?

Release notes:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-release-notes/page/release-notes/release-notes-summaries.html

Pre and post-upgrade checks:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-release-notes/page/release-notes/upgrades/reference/upgrade-and-migration-tasks.html

Written by –

Shakshi Gupta

SERVICENOW TECHNICAL CONSULTANT

Tribe – HR

Follow Sakshi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sakshi-gupta-a30274124/

Resources

ServiceNow SLA Upgrade/Downgrade Scenario

April 27, 2020June 1, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

All you should know about how to achieve the SLA upgrade/downgrade scenario when priority changes.

ServiceNow SLM provides the capability of tracking and documenting all service commitments between IT, service providers, and customers. What if, there is a business scenario where SLA should upgrade or downgrade when the priority of incident/case changes. This article will enable you to understand all about how we can achieve this business scenario without any customization.

Business Requirement 1 (Upgrade):

Whenever priority changes from P4 to P3 or P3 to P2 or P2 to P1, then-new SLA should get attached as per current priority, and the SLA time should be priority changed time.

Business Requirement 2 (Downgrade):

Whenever priority changes from P1 to P2, P2 to P3, P3 to P4, then New SLA should get attached as per current priority, and the SLA time should be created time of the record (incident/case).

Challenge:

We cannot achieve this business requirement through one SLA for each priority, as one SLA can either be retroactive or not. Both at the same time is not possible and, we don’t have Changes, Changes to, and Changes from in SLA condition builder.

Solution:

Create 2 SLA for each priority, one with a retroactive start as ‘true’, and the other with retroactive start ‘false.’ Specify the different names for both SLA.

For example, P2 upgrade SLA is named as P2_Resolution_Upgrade, and P2 downgrade is named as P2_Resolution_Downgrade and creates one SLA called ‘Cancelled SLA’.

Now, as we have 2 SLA’s created for a priority OOB SLA Engine will create both task SLA whenever condition met for SLA.

The next step is to detach the incorrect task SLA when priority upgrade/downgrade.

To achieve this, create two business rules one would be running when priority is downgraded, and the second would be running when priority is upgraded or when any other changes are done on incident/case.

If priority is downgraded, then find the task SLA where “SLA name contains current priority AND name contains Upgrade and Stage is In Progress” and set state = Cancelled and SLA definition = Cancelled SLA, Active = false, task = ‘ ’ inside the business rule.
If priority is upgraded, then find the task SLA where “SLA name contains current priority AND name contains Downgrade and Stage is In Progress” and set state = Cancelled and SLA definition = Cancelled SLA, Active = false, task = ‘ ’ inside the business rule.
If some other attribute changes on the incident, then find the latest SLA which got attached, as per the-

- “SLA name contains current priority and orderByDesc with the created time of task SLA.”
- and set state = Cancelled and SLA definition = Cancelled SLA, Active = false, task = ‘ ’ inside the business rule script.

To avoid any impact on SLA reporting, create a table clean-up record on task_sla table with ‘sys_updated_on’ and age in seconds to 30 mins or one hour, and condition should be SLA Definition is ‘Cancelled SLA’.

This clean-up record will remove all the unwanted Cancelled SLA’s from the system. We achieved the upgrade/downgrade scenario without creating any new field on incident or case.

PFB screenshot which shows Task SLA’s in case of priority upgrade P4 – P3 – P2 (current)

PFB screenshot which shows Task SLA’s in case of priority downgrade P2- P3- P4 (current)

Written By:

Palash Mahajan
Technical Consultant

Events

Enablers out and about

February 24, 2020June 1, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

We love to see our Enablers out and about

At Enable, we believe that a change is as good as a holiday

Change is something that we ensure is that our Enablers have the chance to work on a variety of blue-chip logos.

You may not know that we have 250 consultants dedicated to our ServiceNow practice. This makes Enable to most qualified, certified and largest ServiceNow partner in the Asia Pacific region.

What sets us apart is that our company has the benefit of working on incredible blue-chip logos and exciting ServiceNow projects that are not just ITSM projects but include HR, ITOM, CSM, GRC, Service Mapping.

We are also a truly People First culture working hard to create a world-class employee experience that focuses on your professional development, and a positive and enjoyable work environment. This includes working for a variety of Blue Chip logos not just developing on the ServiceNow Platform but hosting a training session, conducting a project Kick-Off, social events, presenting and consulting.

Here are some of the roles that our team are involved with on a daily basis: