Virtual Agent on Quebec

March 15, 2021April 6, 2021
by Alikutty Karupamveetil

Our 2021 ServiceNow Now Community MVP Alikutty Karupamveetil has been busy preparing some practical tools for ServiceNow developers. He has recorded a video on Virtual Agent in Quebec.

The video is on the action utility in the Virtual Agent which is a new feature from the ServiceNow Quebec release. It allows seamless integration of virtual agent topics with any spoke available in the integration hub.

The video covers:
– Configuring a VA topic to use the new action utility from the Quebec release
– Setup Slack Webhooks for connecting virtual agent to a Slack channel via iHub
– Explains about an existing issue with OOB Actions connecting with external APIs

https://lnkd.in/dgY4-M5

For more informative videos, subscribe to Alikutty’s channel – https://lnkd.in/dwmCgCr

Or check out his Community Profile for more.

News

Using IoT data to drive customer satisfaction

October 20, 2020October 19, 2020
by Herman Taljaard

When the term Internet of Things (IoT) first gained popularity a decade ago, many futurists looked forward excitedly to the commercial and industrial applications of these always-on, always-connected data sources.

Today, smart homes and internet-enabled personal devices are ubiquitous and commercially successful, but B2B applications haven’t seen the same success. Vast pools of underutilized IoT data are left to grow stale in organizational silos.

It’s little wonder, when one considers the numbers:

Nearly 80 zettabytes?

That’s 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. “We’re building IoT systems that take data from all these devices, and this data is classified as alerts,” or active signals, says Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s chief innovation officer. “The challenge then becomes: What do you do with all of these alerts?”

There’s untapped value hidden within these massive data volumes, Wright believes—particularly when IoT data is integrated with a customer service management platform (CSM) using smart workflows. Device data can be analyzed to prioritize service calls, for example, add value to a customer contract, even predict and prevent costly equipment failures.

“With the number of connected assets set to increase dramatically,” — an estimated 41.6 billion devices by 2025, according to research — “it’s important that we start to analyze and understand the business context of any given device,” Wright says. “In the world of connected assets, no one has really focused on this before.”

Read the Full Forbes article to see how SerivceNow’s connected enterprises use smart workflows to analyze IoT data in real time — and deliver measurable ROI in customer service, field engineering and other mission-critical departments.

Read the full article here

SOURCE: FORBES ONLINE

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/

News

CSM Product line achievement – achieved!

February 24, 2020March 18, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

This may not be breaking news to you…

but to us it’s still pretty special!

At Enable we strive to be recognised as Australia Pacific’s largest, most awarded and most qualified Elite ServiceNow partner.

So far, we are proud to be ticking all those boxes.

Our latest product line achievement, our 9th, is no small feat and means that we are the first Australian partner to achieve the CSM badge.

Product Line achievements

We are so pleased to announce that Enable is the first Elite ServiceNow partner to achieve 9 product line achievements in the ServiceNow partner program.

We are the first Australian based partner to achieve the product line achievements across all 4 workflows in the Now Platform, this includes product line achievements for:
• IT workflows (ITSM, ITOM, ITBM)
• Employee Workflows (HR, ITSM)
• Customer Workflows (CSM, ITOM)
• Now Platform (App Engine, App Store)

CSM and Enable

When it comes to choosing a partner for a CSM implementation, choose Australia’s most qualified, certified and largest ServiceNow Partner.

Our numbers speak for themselves
When it comes to CSM implementations, our stats tell a big story.

9.6 average CSAT Score
17 CSM implementations completed in 2019
21 Certified CSM specialists
9 product line achievements

Don’t take our word for it

Here is what our other CSM customers had to say:

Resources

4 key times that OCM can be used to…

February 3, 2020February 10, 2020
by Mark Galgsdies

A successful ServiceNow transformation starts long before the build commences, and training is conducted.

Preparation and planning are two key factors.

From the People and Organisational Change Management (OCM) perspective, there are 4 key times that OCM can be used to improve project success.

Enable’s approach to OCM has a laser-like focus on the People side of clients’ ServiceNow implementations in support of the technical aspects of Processes and Platform. Our OCM, adoption and training services align with The Enable Way – our project delivery methodology (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Enable Way

Enable’s OCM adoption, and training activities run in parallel with, and across, the five delivery stages with inputs to and delivery outcomes from each stage.

Enable OCM adoption, and training efforts track across four key times of work (shown in Figure 2):

Readiness
Go Live Preparation
Go Live Transition
Sustainment

Figure 2: Enable’s 4 stages of OCM, adoption and training work

What Makes Enable Different?

We know that implementation occurs before, during and after Go Live. We also understand the importance of continued people support beyond Go Live, through Hypercare and Warranty periods. Mature organisations pay particular attention to supporting their staff 3, 6, 9 months or more after the implementation has moved from being a Project to being Business As Usual (BAU). Figure 4 depicts Enable’s OCM maturity model.

Enable can provide clients with the tools and support that assist with embedding and measuring the adoption rates of the new ways of working.

Figure 4: Enable’s OCM Maturity Progression

Experience Matters

So, what have we learnt over many years of successful ServiceNow solution installations?

Enable’s experience has highlighted seven fundamental key lessons learnt for successful ServiceNow implementations:

OCM starts BEFORE formally kicking off any deployment:

Dedicate a role(s) to designing and managing the OCM plan that considers all stakeholders and contexts
Research the organisational context (including the stakeholders, risks, etc.) to inform OCM planning
Use collected knowledge of the organisational change environment to design an OCM Plan that includes plans for how to communicate the organisational change with stakeholders, deliver needed training and enablement, and minimise the impact of organisational change

Assign a fully dedicated OCM lead + team. Ideally, the team would consist of:
- A communications person
- A systems trainer
- An administration person
OCM is a part of good governance and should be developed concurrently with any changes your work processes and policy. To ensure consistency, the OCM Program Team and Plan would be in alignment with, or a part of, the client’s governance program for the implementation
Enable and our clients agree on what “good” OCM looks like – expectations can be set at that point and then together we work in creating and driving the various Plans along with agreeing what the measures of success will be and how/when we will report them
Constant, visible, active sponsorship is the single most important factor in ensuring a successful implementation
Selection of Change Agents (eg SMEs) / Champions / Advocates / Stewards is the second most important factor. They are not selected just because they are available.
Change Agents need to be represented at every level of the organisational hierarchy to avoid ‘black holes’ of communication and support.

Written by –
Mark Galgsdies
Organisational Change Manager
Tribe – OCM

Events

That’s a Wrap – Now at Work Sydney

November 6, 2019November 19, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

In 2019, ServiceNow leads the work of work with innovative ways to get work done.

The ServiceNow team promised to bring together extraordinary people focused on transforming the world of work. With attendees learning how people like themselves are delivering modern digital workflows that unlock productivity and transform the employee and customer experience.

Now at Work Sydney – What’s new and what’s next in the world of work

ServiceNow helps comapnies deliver great employee and customer experiences. Now at Work was the place to learn, connect and get inspired to deliver on those experiences. The event was a mix of customer, partner stories and experts from ServiceNow all giving insights on how to run a company with efficiency and heart.

Increased demands for efficiency and productivity – ServiceNow showed us how to combine both in a workplace where employees feel good, comfortable, developed and stimulated.

Hosted at the ICC Exhibition Centre in the stunning Darling Harbour, the event was geared up to be the biggest event in the Australia Pacific calendar, and it delivered on that promise.

In Sydney, the Enable team came in full force with a contingent of more than 30 Enablers networking, presenting, conducting demos, learning and generally having a blast.

We have 6 well-attended presentation sessions hosted at our Diamond Sponsor booth covering such things as ‘New York Release – all the features you wanted and more’ and ‘The Enable Way – expert ServiceNow Project Delivery Methodology’. We also provided a very exciting demo of Enable Labs award-winning application Toolbox and we were excited to co-present with our amazing customers Optus, iCare and Dreamworld.

We were a very proud Diamond Sponsor of the event and had a wonderful time meeting with the rest of the ServiceNow community.

Suzanne Gerrard, Enable General Manager for Australia, mentioned “The event was a huge success for Enable and ServiceNow. With over 2200 attendees it was a great opportunity to connect with our customers and to gain invaluable insights into the future of the platform. It was great to hear firsthand the customer success stories from organisations who have transformed their business through the adoption of the ServiceNow platform.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Events

That’s a Wrap – Future of Work Singapore

October 28, 2019November 6, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

In 2019, ServiceNow hosted a tour, known as the Future of Work, across the globe.

Promising to deliver new ways to inspire innovation, create excellent customer and employee experiences, and unleash productivity at work, then the Future of Work is the event for you.

FUTURE OF WORK ASIA

What’s new and what’s next in the world of work
Increased demands for efficiency and productivity – how do you combine it with a workplace where employees feel good, comfortable, developed and stimulated? It’s a challenge that is key for creating the Future of work. At the FUTURE OF WORK – we take the challenge and with customers and partners in focus, we will give you real examples on how to create an innovative attractive workday for the Future.

ServiceNow helps you deliver great employee and customer experiences. Future of Work is the place to learn, connect and get inspired to deliver on those experiences. The event is a mix of customer and partner stories and experts from ServiceNow giving insights on how to run a company with efficiency and heart.

Hosted at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre the event was geared up to be one of the biggest events in the ASEAN calendar.

In Asia, our incredible Singapore team headed up by Singapore General Manager Krist Yong along with Hong Kong General Manager Raymond Ho, CEO Bruce Hara and Head of People and Culture Rachel Sparkes, attended the event armed with bundles of energy ready to inform attendees about Enables products and services. MAs well as provide a plethora of gifts and giveaways. We also sponsored our first ever Robot Cafe keeping attendees fuelled up and entertained with their caffeine hit.

Sachin Bhasin and Wei Chuan presented at the main theatre, Enable the latest offering, CASE, while the team chatted to attendees at our Platinum Sponsor Booth.

The evening prior to the Future of Work Expo, Enable were also recognised as a “Top Service Provider” in the ASEAN region.

Krist Yong mentioned “At Enable, we are thrilled to sponsor ServiceNow Future of Work 2019 in Singapore. Support of Future of Work is proof our dedication and laser-focused expertise in the platform and our customers. We would like to delight our customers in solving their business problems for years to come!”

Events

That’s a Wrap – itSMF Expo

August 29, 2019August 29, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

In 2019, the itSMF community held Australia’s 22nd Annual Service Management Conference!

Established over two decades as the Australian learning and networking epicentre of everything IT Service Management and beyond – Service Management 2019 is a Conference for thinkers, not just doers.

Attracting delegates and influential speakers from across Australia (and the world), Service Management 2019 – We design the future will revisit a storied past, and make strides towards the future of the Australian ITSM industry – in style!

Enable became a sponsor of the event, and spent the two days enjoying mind-expanding sessions, stand-out presentations from distinguished keynote and invited speakers and enjoyed a glamorous Gala Awards Dinner where industry award winners were recognised and celebrated.

Herman Taljaard, Head of Customer Success for Enable mentioned that:

“Enable’s sponsorship of the recent ITSMF national conference in Brisbane was a great success. During the 2 day conference we had the opportunity to discuss the convergence of IT Service Management and Enterprise Service Management as the majority of organisations are currently exploring a shared services or corporate services model to streamline service delivery. Several of our existing ServiceNow customers have embarked on this journey and we look forward to working with a number of new companies who stopped by our exhibit during the conference.”

As a sponsor of this event, we were certainly in good company and look forward to meeting and working with contacts we met on the day.

Here is the list of my favourites:

Some Considerations for Upgrade:

Want More?

This may not be breaking news to you…

but to us it’s still pretty special!

Product Line achievements

CSM and Enable

Don’t take our word for it

What Makes Enable Different?

Experience Matters

In 2019, ServiceNow leads the work of work with innovative ways to get work done.

Now at Work Sydney – What’s new and what’s next in the world of work

In 2019, ServiceNow hosted a tour, known as the Future of Work, across the globe.

In 2019, the itSMF community held Australia’s 22nd Annual Service Management Conference!