Tag: ServiceNow

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/

Uncategorized

Creating custom Scoped App via Studio

July 1, 2020July 1, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Scoped App Vs Global App

Scoped applications are sandboxed into their own application, thereby heavily restricting their ability to cause any performance issues to other running applications.

In the past with a global application, you could write some bad code which could also impact other processes because you can reference the, for example, the incident table and cause major issues to other processes. With scoped applications, they are much more restricted and are therefore considered safer to install on an existing instance with virtually no chance of any side effects to other existing applications.

They are also more secure in terms of who can access them, for instance, the new Scoped HR Application is locked down in order for HR only users to be able to access HR Data, not even admin can access the scoped application.

Steps to create a custom app

1. Go to STUDIO >> Create Application

2. To create your custom application, you need to provide:

a. Application Name
b. Description
c. Logo (not mandatory)

d. Any custom role if needed

e. Formats for the application

f. Tables you would want to use for the app.

Click on “Done with apps” and wohoooo. you are done with your first application!

Written by –

Sarfraz Nawaz
Senior ServiceNow Consultant
Tribe – ITSM

Follow Sarfraz on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarfraz-nawaz-363ba7160/

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

ACS Hackathon

April 20, 2020June 1, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Enable are pleased to be a part of the ACS Hackathon

The team entered a Hackathon run by the Australian Government and the Australian Computer Society (ACS) with a theme of #FlattentheCurve.

Over 2,400 competitors from around the world entered what’s been described as ‘the biggest hackathon in the Asia-Pacific’ last weekend.

The ACS “Flatten The Curve” hackathon saw more than 200 teams compete for $50,000 in prize money with 43 shortlisted across five categories: Education, Assisting Health Care, Protecting the Vulnerable, the Future of Work, and Wellness and Mental Health.

“The scale was larger than any held in APAC before, with so many competitors, mentors and partners from so many backgrounds and time zones,” said Steve Nouri, hackathon organiser and ACS Head of Data Science.

“With the hackathon totally online, we anticipated challenges in forging trust between teams, communications, accountability and team creation, but the mentors and teams rose to the occasion and delivered a great result.”

One of the categories was: Identifying and Helping vulnerable people/at risk. The ENable team built a platform called Neighbourhood Foodbox using CSM, VA, Mobile, Communities and Events. Our application allows Local Governments, Communities or Not For Profits to crowdsource food from people’s veggie patch, fruit tree’s or excess shopping and distribute it to those in need. As we know with COVID 19 there will be many more people at risk of not being able to secure enough food due to loss of income. The platform has quite a bit of automation and uses the communities event capability to organize pick up/drop off, allowing people to contribute while still keeping up social distancing and helping to #FlattentheCruve What is really amazing is that the team built a full-blown platform in a day, no smoke and mirrors.

Really amazing effort with the now familiar sounds of children in the background, dogs barking, food mixers etc.

The team created something that can help people contribute to their local communities with what they already have, strengthen their community bonds.

To take you through the app here is the silky tones of Ian White, narrating up as our Chatbot, Harry the Helper – https://youtu.be/46t14pRybCQ

News

Free building visitor registration app

April 14, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

“As part of the Enable Covid-19 response, to assist companies safely managing their workplace we are offering our VisitUs application, developed by our Enable Labs division, for free during the crisis. Enable is doing all we can to help organizations keep the lights on and keep them running through this time. As an example, we have repurposed our application VisitUs (available on the ServiceNow store).

This building visitor registration application now improves the safety of essential workers or people who still have to go into offices and workplaces. And there are many millions of people in this situation! Using the application, companies can track who enters their premises and who they meet onsite. The application’s new features as part of our safety response include ‘no touch’ check-in and check-out via QR code for pre-registered visitors, and a temperature check/recording option. These features help provide visibility of hosts and visitors who may come into contact with someone who is later identified as infected. In other words, VisitUs is a viable track and trace system for building management.”

To install VisitUs for free you can click on the ServiceNow store link https://bit.ly/3cmj998

News

Integrated risk management solution in one platform

April 13, 2020April 15, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Enable Professional Services is partnering with LexisNexis, to offer an integrated risk management solution on one platform

Enable Professional Services is excited to have partnered with LexisNexis on integrated risk management (IRM) and governance risk and compliance (GRC) solution. For Enable’s IRM/GRC clients, this partnership will improve their workflow processes, increase efficiencies and enable improved productivity, so they can keep up with the pace of regulatory changes.

Enable CEO, Bruce Hara, said, “We’re delighted to work with the trusted global brand LexisNexis. Our partnership offers real business value to our shared customers, who will have better visibility and better processes for making decisions in a compliance heavy landscape”.

Specifically, the partnership means Enable’s IRM/GRC clients can easily access comprehensive regulatory content developed by LexisNexis, via an easy-to-use dashboard and workflow platform powered by ServiceNow.

As a result, IRM/GRC clients will have greater control of their compliance obligations and be able to streamline their compliance management. Not only will they be alerted to the latest regulatory obligations, but they will have the content (authored in plain language) and tools to manage, monitor and demonstrate their compliance.

LexisNexis is a leading global provider of legal, government and corporate information solutions, providing computer-assisted legal research as well as business research and risk management services.

Enable is an Australian owned Elite partner of ServiceNow, with the unique capability to onboard the rich regulatory compliance content from LexisNexis. Using this content, and ServiceNow’s suite of GRC and IRM products, Enable can automate a customer’s GRC processes, and manage work across IT and shared service functions such as HR, Finance, Legal and Facilities.

Enable’s Director of Strategy and Innovation, Paul Thomason said,

“By collaborating with ServiceNow and LexisNexis, we have developed some truly differentiated capability. Our customers are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of regulatory changes. But the enhanced content from LexisNexis combined with ServiceNow’s capability fills out a solution stack. Along with IoT/SmartOps, it helps customers meet the challenge of continuous IRM”.

LexisNexis Executive Director of Emerging Markets & Corporate, Myfanwy Wallwork, commented, “LexisNexis is excited to welcome Enable Professional Services as a key strategic channel partner. As market demand for LexisNexis Regulatory Compliance grows, it is important that we partner with technology providers, like Enable PS, that provide customers with best-in-class IRM/GRC solutions”.

News

CASE helps you meet evolving challenges head on

March 30, 2020April 9, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

CASE really supports our agility and the skills we need when we need them. The service also provides commercial flexibility and great value for money. An example would be leadership through our strategy and roadmap sessions, which has provided guidance to sequence and prioritise capabilities. The entitlements for CASE such as health check really help to support the ServiceNow platform.

Foxtel: Mark Strachan (Director of Technology Services)

We really listened to customers, to tune this service to be a ‘no brainer’ proposition. The value delivered is proven through feedback and the metrics we’re seeing, with a typical return on investment of 216%. CASE is getting this success because it’s based on proper collaboration.

Ian White, Head of CASE for Enable

Realise value and save costs with CASE:
Customer Advisory and Support by Enable

Right now, organisations need to be agile. They need ways to deliver their services while reducing costs. Hiring freezes will be prevalent, and teams will need to do more with less. Enable is working hard to help customers innovate, find cost savings, and grow value. In March 2020, for example, our team partnered with AIIA to release the Australian Business Continuity site

With CASE, we can help you too.

WHY CASE

Value realisation: Reduces fixed cost for your business, and achieves more outcomes with less time and often less cost

Flexibility & efficiency: Offers resource flexibility with access to expert advisory and ServiceNow capability

Strategy & innovation: Delivers strategic roadmaps for ongoing investment, ideas and innovation accelerators

Culture & collaboration: Proactively encourages a combined team approach and upskills your team

Rich service inclusions: Has inclusions that provide fantastic value and protect the platform investment in terms of health, security, licence alignment and more.

Our CASE advisory service will augment and support your teams.

Our assistance ranges from taking on work holistically to mentoring, training and even recruiting to build capability. Essentially, it’s what you need when you need it. At the same time, a range of entitlements keep the platform secure, healthy and upgraded, so you can focus on adding value and keeping costs down.

WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY:

When we looked at the return on investment, we discovered CASE has delivered a 150% return on investment. So, for every $1 spent on CASE we are seeing more than $1.50 back into the business.”, “The attitude, proactivity and outcomes of Enable are second to none as they help drive our strategy and roadmap. I would recommend the CASE service to ANY ServiceNow customer
Enablis: Jon Evans (CEO)

The value we get from advice and guidance cannot be overstated. Being able to draw on the expertise required means we can be more efficient with our own resources. The value we got from the health check and the upgrade readiness plan alone have paid for CASE. The leadership show to assist with our go-forward strategy and roadmap has been excellent
PWC: Ross Economy (ServiceNow Product Manager)

Within a short space of time, an idea turned into a plan that became a project that turned into a solution that would hopefully benefit many Australians yearning for business continuity. Enable were critical to this and their name was a true testament to what they do and that was to enable the idea to come to life. What was truly inspiring was the way the entire team managed to work remotely and virtually without missing a beat. No traffic jams, planes to catch or meeting rooms to source. With a couple of clicks, we were all in one virtual place, collaborating and getting the job done. The experience was a terrific one.
AIIA: Ron Guici (CEO)

Contact Enable today for a conversation
about CASE and how we can help protect
your ServiceNow investment

News

Press release – Enable Professional Services is partnering with…

March 26, 2020June 1, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Enable Professional Services is partnering with LexisNexis, to offer an integrated risk management solution on one platform

Enable Director, Bruce Hara, said, “We’re delighted to work with the trusted global brand LexisNexis. Our partnership offers real business value to our shared customers, who will have better visibility and better processes for making decisions in a compliance heavy landscape”.
Specifically, the partnership means Enable’s IRM/GRC clients can easily access comprehensive regulatory content developed by LexisNexis, via an easy-to-use dashboard and alerting solutions powered by ServiceNow. As a result, IRM/GRC clients will have greater control of their compliance obligations, and be able to streamline their compliance management. Not only will they be alerted to the latest regulatory obligations, but they will have the content (authored in plain language) and tools to manage, monitor and demonstrate their compliance.

LexisNexis is a leading global provider of legal, government and corporate information solutions, providing computer-assisted legal research as well as business research and risk management services.

Enable’s Director of Strategy and Innovation, Paul Thomason said, “By collaborating with ServiceNow and LexisNexis, we have developed some truly differentiated capability. Our customers are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of regulatory changes. But the enhanced content from LexisNexis combined with ServiceNow’s capability fills out a solution stack. Along with IoT/SmartOps, it helps customers meet the challenge of continuous IRM”.

LexisNexis Executive Director Emerging Markets & Corporate, Myfanwy Wallwork, commented, “LexisNexis is excited to welcome Enable PS as a key strategic channel partner. As market demand for LexisNexis Regulatory Compliance grows, it is important that we partner with technology providers, like Enable PS, that provide customers with best-in-class IRM/GRC solutions”.

News

Tech sector & Government back Australian SME’s

March 24, 2020April 7, 2020
by Nicole Bailey

Tuesday March 24th, the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) went live with a new website (built by Enable on the ServiceNow platform) to help Australian businesses through the current challenges of continuing operations as employees work from home.

The site was launched by two Federal Ministers and the AIIA Tuesday morning. It will act as a hub for organisations to get help and support, including access to offers of free services from tech companies affiliated with AIIA.

The Morrison Government welcomes the launch of a new website brought together by the technology sector to support Australian businesses with staff working remotely during the COVID-19 outbreak. Australian Business Continuity – by the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and its technology partners – provides free practical tools to support the continuity of Australia’s small-to-medium businesses, including advice on how to best use teleworking services.

Read the full release on here

The new hub sees industry working together to keep our businesses running, with the AIIA partnering with Microsoft, Cisco, ServiceNow, Adobe, Telstra, Google, Facebook, SAP, Salesforce and others to provide guidance and free access to tools for video-conferencing, virtual meetings and other remote business services.

The development of the site, www.australianbusinesscontinuity.com.au/aiia, took four days and was completed remotely by three different business in six different locations in two countries by a team of developers and partners, many of whom have never met before.

AIIA’s new hub complements business.gov.au – the Government’s existing comprehensive website for small to medium enterprises. business.gov.au is a whole-of-Government digital entry point for information, services and support to help businesses succeed in Australia, simplifying access to important information, tools and advice across all levels of Government, particularly during this difficult time.

Here at Enable Professional Services, our team worked tirelessly with AIIA and ServiceNow to provide this valuable website to support small/medium businesses across Australia, and we couldn’t be prouder.

Enable CEO, Bruce Hara, is delighted Enable Professional Services could help AIIA support businesses to keep operating and keep staff employed. He hopes the project also shows how the ServiceNow platform makes remote working so much easier. ‘We delivered a highly effective public website within four days. But our team never met the AIIA or ServiceNow teams face to face, at any point of this project. What’s more, all of our team worked from home, not from our offices. Using many of the platforms and services showcased in this site, in an urgent timeframe, we can get a service up and running from wherever we are, and wherever our client is. This outcome is what many organisations will be seeking,’

Bruce Hara,

Chief Executive Officer, Enable Professional Services

“Within a short space of time, an idea turned into a plan that became a project that turned into a solution that would hopefully benefit many Australians yearning for business continuity. Enable Professional Services were critical to this and their name was a true testament to what they do and that was to enable the idea to come to life. What was truly inspiring was the way the entire team managed to work remotely and virtually without missing a beat. No traffic jams, planes to catch or meeting rooms to source. With a couple of clicks, we were all in one virtual place, collaborating and getting the job done. The experience was a terrific one.”

Ron Gauci GAICD,

Chief Executive Officer, AIIA

Tag: ServiceNow

Here is the list of my favourites:

Some Considerations for Upgrade:

Want More?

Realise value and save costs with CASE: Customer Advisory and Support by Enable

WHY CASE

WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY:

Contact Enable today for a conversation about CASE and how we can help protect your ServiceNow investment

Enable Professional Services is partnering with LexisNexis, to offer an integrated risk management solution on one platform

Realise value and save costs with CASE:
Customer Advisory and Support by Enable

Contact Enable today for a conversation
about CASE and how we can help protect
your ServiceNow investment