NewYork HRSD Highlights

ServiceNow New York release is finally here! Although ServiceNow does releases at a fast pace of twice per year, customers are always looking forward to the highly anticipated new features and enhancements that come with every release.

In this post, we will focus on some exciting highlights within the ServiceNow HRSD (Human Resources Service Delivery) Module.

1.    Mobile Onboarding App and Now Mobile for HRSD

ServiceNow has always paid strong focus on delivering a great user experience for its customers on both desktop and mobile platforms. In New York, ServiceNow has released a new Mobile Onboarding App dedicated to onboard new hires seamlessly via mobile devices. The Mobile Onboarding App can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

Note that the Human Resources Scope App: Lifecycle Events plugin will need to be enabled as a prerequisite. The activation of this plugin comes with a subscription cost.

When the new hire installs the app and logs in, they would be presented with an app homepage illustrated below:

ServiceNow Onboarding Mobile App will provide New Hires with the following features:

1. Media Content section where relevant content can be pushed to New Hires throughout different stages of their onboarding processes.
2. Activity Sets for the Onboarding Case whereby New Hires may click into and complete their to-do tasks such as signing documents, completing profile information, watching new hire videos or providing any other supplementary information.
3. Ask a Question where New Hires can correspond with HR Agents via the Comments section in the Onboarding Case.
4. Notification tab where New Hires can see all Push notifications related to their onboarding process (i.e. when a new to-do task has been assigned to the New Hire). There is also an option to enable/disable Notifications.

On the same note, New York also sees the release of an HRSD Mobile App. Now Mobile for HRSD provides employee the ability to view HR requests, request help, complete HR tasks and chat with the HR Virtual Agent.

2.    Collect employee input with employee forms

ServiceNow has enhanced HR Tasks with a new type called ‘Collect Employee Input’. As the name suggests, this new type of HR Tasks provides the functionality for collecting additional information from employees throughout the lifecycle of an HR Case. The catch here is that information is collected in the form of survey questions which can be mapped to fields on any target table – meaning that you don’t necessarily have to create any additional ‘dummy’ HR Services, HR Cases or custom fields to achieve the same purpose!

Configuring a new ‘Collect Employee Input’ HR Task can be done in several easy steps. We will illustrate the steps with an example below:

1. Create a new Employee Form which acts as the parent container.
   In this example we will create a new Employee Form for obtaining conflict of interest declarations from employees.
   
2. On the Employee Form record, create questions using the Survey Designer – note that you can leverage all existing Survey capabilities. In this example we have created a mandatory question (‘Do you have any conflicts to declare?’) and if employees answered ‘Yes’, a follow up question will appear prompting for declaration details.
3. On the Employee Form record, define target table and field mappings. In this example, we have set the target table to ‘HR Profiles’ and created mapping for two custom fields related to Conflicts of Interest.
4. Now that the Employee Form record has been configured, we can trigger a new HR Task either manually or via a workflow. Once triggered, employees will see a new to-do task on the Employee Service Centre as per below:
   

Once submitted, the collected input is mapped to the HR Profile record as per below:

Optionally, we can extend the functionality to conditionally trigger a follow-on task. For example, if an employee has declared a conflict of interest, we can configure the workflow to conditionally trigger another HR Task for the employee’s manager to review details on the declaration.

3.    Related items and Articles

A great nifty feature in the New York release is the ability to cross map related Catalog Items and related Knowledge Articles, thus allowing employees to easily find relevant information and submit relevant requests on the Employee Service Centre.

Configuring a new mapping between Catalog Items and Knowledge Articles can be illustrated with an example where we will relate the ‘Direct Deposit Setup’ Catalog Item to a Knowledge Article containing details on setting up direct deposit accounts. In addition, we will also map it to another ‘Direct Deposit Enquiry’ Catalog Item.

1. Navigate to the Catalog Item in question and note the two newly added related lists: ‘Related Articles’ and ‘Related Catalog Items’. Modify the related lists to add the desired Knowledge Articles and Catalog Items.
   
2. Now that the mapping has been configured, when an employee navigates to the ‘Direct Deposit Setup’, they will be presented with the view below:
   

Since the related lists are defined by many-to-many (m2m) tables, you can also relate a Knowledge Article to a Catalog Item or another Knowledge Article.

For more resources, tip and assistance watch this space for more updates to come soon.

Written by –
David Liu
SERVICENOW SENIOR TECHNICAL CONSULTANT
Tribe – Architecture