Custom Component creation for Agent workspace

[americo]

Hi all,

It has been great that in Orlando we can now built custom components for Agent Workspace. This may be an obvious answer but I would like to know to what extend you can still get help from ServiceNow support team if you happen to have issues with the custom components that you create for agent workspace. Would they say that sorry this is custom and we cannot help or would depend on how we address questions for help like hey I have created this but how can I do this way in a custom component? 

This may still new and perhaps Paris would have more improvements for agent workspace or new features that we can use.

[DrewW]

This is a concern that I have brought up to several people at ServiceNow. I did not really get any help from support for the one case I filed but I closed it after I figured it out on my own which took less time than there initial response so the case really did not go far.  But there initial question of "Please include the steps to reproduce the issue" was not something I could really do. Most of the help I have gotten has been from the people that our sales rep has put me in touch with.

I have put some posts on the community and there have been some by others but for the moment it seams that if the community cannot answer your question or help you that you may be stuck. I hope that this is not the case in the future and that ServiceNow offers better support similar to MSDN where they will help you thru things you are stumbling on but not build it for you and include X many case a year for this kind of support.  Having to always go to a partner or there solution services people will get frustrating and for some may not be an option.

[Tommy Jensen]

I have a meeting with ServiceNow tomorrow with the Now Experience experts. One of my questions to them will be how we can get better support for this.

When I posted my first question here about components and nobody had answered for a few days I got an (automated) email from ServiceNow suggesting me to open a case in Hi on that subject. Initially I did not because I know that the standard answer for development help is to contact PS.

But after more time with no answer I eventually did create a HI case from the post here. But as you probably guessed: No help and case closed.

My reasoning for even opening the case was:
- Now Experience is new

- since I have never received an email like this one before I thought that they had special attention to Now Experience and therefor suggested me to create a case so I went ahead and did it.

[americo]

Thanks Drew, that is exactly my thought , I really hope this new feature of building custom component gets more momentum as we progress through new releases of ServiceNow as well as the documentation and the community. Certainly Orlando was the catalyst to allow developers to try new custom features that aren't available OOB for agent workspace. I really liked the fact that you can code in your local machine and then deployed it to your instance as well as it uses React JS which is neat.

[DrewW · Accepted solution]

As I understand it these components are going to take over the functionality of Service Portal and Workspace, its going to be a few years but they want it to be how people customize the interface.

The issue I have with local dev is that if someone leaves the company and people do not realize that they need to make sure that the save the local code then you could loose your ability to update a component.  Yes you can use GitHub or some other source control but not every customer is going to understand that and there is risk there that needs to be understood.  With Service Portal everything is saved in the instance in a way that allows anyone to edit it.  Its a shift that some will understand and others will not.  I have also found that at the moment not everything works locally and to test things you need to push it into an instance which gets frustrating.

Also as a side note the components do not use ReactJS in full, they just use JSX.

My last comment is that I really hope that ServiceNow does not choose to use the community as there primary support option for this.  Don't get me wrong the community is great but I do not want to have to spend lots of time coming thru posts to find my answers.  I would like detailed documentation and the ability to get guaranteed support if and when I need it for a project.