Introduction to ServiceNow

Overview

ServiceNow is capable of managing many dimensions of IT Service Management, but OIT is deploying it piece by piece as we have time and staff to explore, develop procedures and functionality, and train OIT in its use. So far (since 2014), OIT has deployed these pieces:

• Incident Management
• Request Management
• Project Management
• Knowledge Management
• Change Management
• Reporting, Metrics, and Dashboards
• Contract Management
• Time Cards
• Customer Self-Service (in progress)
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
• Surveys

Depending on your role in OIT, some items may be more relevant to you than others. Here are some quick explanations for the terms listed above:

• Incidents are general questions and/or break/fix situations (e.g. a customer calls and reports a service is not behaving as expected).
• Requests are a mechanism for customers to ask for new things, submit information to OIT, or otherwise ask OIT to perform some sort of service. Requests work on an "ordering from a service catalog" model.
• Projects are any collection of related tasks to achieve a specific goal—each division uses projects in their own way, but there are generally standard procedures for major projects.
• Knowledge is documentation—so users can solve their own problems, and OIT can take advantage of the expertise of their peers.
  
• Change is the process used for thoughtful alterations to an active service.
  
• Reporting asks questions of the ServiceNow database so managers and directors can make decisions.
  
• Customer Self-Service is a collection of tools (including self-reporting of incidents, making requests, and exploring the knowledge base) to empower users to make better use of our IT services.
  
• Configuration Management Database, usually referred to as CMDB, is a special database listing all our equipment and services, as well as their inter-dependencies. For example, the CMDB will hold records that show which applications run on which servers, which physical power supplies the servers rely on, etc.
  
• Surveys are a way for OIT to send out questionnaires and receive data that can be analyzed. 

Understanding each of these components and how they interact is crucial to using ServiceNow effectively, as well as provide you with the correct vocabulary in order to talk to customers and others in OIT.

Personal Developer Instance and Training Programs

ServiceNow offers a personal developer instance (PDI) to users of the platform in order to give you an opportunity to practice developing applications and get used to the Service-Now environment. In addition, Service-Now offers more in-depth training tracks that give a better look at building applications and administration. Follow the below instructions to obtain a PDI:

1. Create an account on the ServiceNow developer site here.
2. Log in using your newly created account.
3. Navigate to the Learn menu tab, and click the Learning Plans menu item.
4. Click Begin on the New to ServiceNow training plan.
5. The first page should be an overview of ServiceNow basics. Follow the instructions on the next few pages, using the right-arrow button in the bottom-right corner of the window to navigate to the next page.

These next few pages give you a fairly detailed description of getting around in Service-Now, as well as obtaining your developer instance. Use these training plans as well as this training documentation in order to get up to speed on ServiceNow, specifically its function within OIT.

OIT ServiceNow Instance

After logging in to your OIT ServiceNow Instance you will be confronted by a homepage that can be broken down into three components:

• Banner
• Navigation
• Content Frame

These three components will be discussed in greater detail, but no matter where you navigate in ServiceNow, the page will structurally remain the same. The content frame while on the homepage displays Your Dashboard.

The Banner

The banner is the thin bar at the top of the page that resembles a normal navigation bar. In the upper-left hand corner, you will see a UCI OIT logo. To navigate back to the homepage from any other page, click the logo and it will navigate you back. For a more detailed guide on your banner and settings, check out this guide: Your Banner.

In the upper-right hand corner, you will see a few items:

• User Menu - Here you can visit your profile, log out, and if you have administrative access, impersonate another user.
• Search - Toggles a global search bar to search all of ServiceNow, whether it is an incident number, knowledge base article, or another record.
• Connect Sidebar - Toggles the connect sidebar and filter.
• Help Sidebar - Toggles a help sidebar to search ServiceNow documentation.
• Settings - Using settings is very important. Here you can change your global settings, theme, lists, forms, notifications, and with developer access, change your current update set among other functions.

Navigation

On the left of the SN display there are additional controls which are useful.

They are broken up into three tabs:

• Application Navigator - The most left-hand tab displays all applications (which expand when selected to show their individual modules.)
• Bookmarks and Favorites - The middle tab is a place where you can store links to all tasks and modules you use frequently.
• History - The most right-hand tab allows you to navigate to pages you recently viewed.

For a more in depth guide to navigation, check out the guide Navigation in ServiceNow.

Content Frame

The content frame displays content after you select a Module in the Application Navigator. There are quite a few ways this content can be organized as shown below.

Your Dashboard is a form of this content, and the first thing you will see displayed after logging in with your OIT credentials to the OIT ServiceNow Instance.

Your Dashboard

Your dashboard is home base in the ServiceNow space, and you can navigate to it at any point in time by simply clicking the OIT logo in the upper left hand corner of the page. The dashboard is designed to efficiently present your work and your priorities, and you can customize your dashboard to show different kinds of information based on your needs.

Everyone's needs in a dashboard will be different, but in general, two of your most commonly used dashboard items will be My Group's Work and Assigned to Me. My Group's Work will present every item that your team is working on, whether it be catalog tasks, projects and project tasks, incidents, etc. Assigned to Me is where you will find the work that you have either assigned to yourself, or been assigned to you by your manager or team.

Lists

Looking for a more detail? Check out the Using Lists guide.

My Group's Work  is an example of a list in ServiceNow, and you can use list-control techniques wherever Service-Now presents a list of related items. There are six principal features of lists to be aware of:

1. Sorting: Left clicking on a column header will rearrange a list (low-to-high or high-to-low) according to that column.
2. Paging: There is a small control to the lower right of a list (and sometimes upper right) which allows you to go forward and backward by "pages" of 20 list items, to the first or last record, or even to type in the list item number to jump to.
3. Filtering: Right-clicking on a field will allow you to select matching records or exclude matching records. For example, you can narrow your focus in My Work to just Incidents, or exclude records in a particular wait state.
4. Editing: In some cases (for security reasons, some fields cannot be edited in this manner), you can double click on a field (the surrounding space of a field, not the data element) to do in-place editing of a value, rather than opening the record.
5. Links versus Data: Fields whose elements are underlined are links to a record somewhere else in the database; fields that are not underlined are static values.
6. Customization: The blue gear is your tool for personalizing a list display—you can add and remove columns, or change the order of the columns shown. You can also enable or disable other features of list displays.

Forms

Forms are another type of display in the content frame that display fields and values for a single record from a database table. They can have a 1-column layout, 2-column layout, or both. Forms are opened by clicking the associated record's number in a list.

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