Ideas for Tip of the Month?

[richelle_pivec]

Every month we send out an email to the rest of the IT department letting them know what our team has done and what we are planning to do in the coming month. At the end of each of those emails, I add a "Tip of the Month." I confess I am running out of ideas for tips to share with them...here's what we've done so far. (I removed the screenshots and just left the content in). Do you have any ideas for things everyone should know how to do? Thanks!

January 2014

Keep a Pop-Up Window Popped Up

If you mouse-over an icon that pop-ups information and you'd like to keep that pop-up window open on the screen, hold the shift-key down and mouse over the pop-up window. It will stay on the screen until you close it with the box in the upper-right corner. This is a great way to copy/paste information from one of the pop-up windows.

February 2014

A quick an easy way to convert a Task, Incident or Problem to a Change Request

Right-Click on the gray bar at the top of the task, incident or problem and choose Create Change.

March 2014

Quick and easy ways to sort when looking at a list:

Right-Click on any of the column headers…and choose sort

Or right click on a value within the column…and choose sort

April 2014

Export a list to PDF or Excel

Open the list you want to export (Incidents, Requested Items, Tasks, etc…). Right click on any of the column headers and choose Export. You can choose Excel, CSV, XML or PDF (most commonly Excel for editing and PDF for displaying as is).

May 2014

Quick Filter/Search in Reports

You can quickly find the report you are looking for by using the Text Filter box at the top left of the reports page. Just click on View/Run Reports to open the Reports page and start typing any word that is in the report title. ServiceNow will automatically filter on that text. (See our example where all the reports with "incident" are filtered for you to choose from.

June 2014

View more than 20 rows per page

To change the number of rows you view per page, click on the drop-down arrow next to any list title (Requested Items is used in the example below), then click on Show and then choose the number of rows per page you'd like to see when you view lists. The system will remember your preference.

July 2014

Change which Columns Display on a List

On every list you open, you can change what order and which columns display. Click on the gear in the upper left corner of the header row. Move the columns you want to see from left to right. Move the fields up and down in the right side column to choose the order the fields display. Then click OK.

August 2014

Choose a Different Dashboard

There are two dashboards (homepages) for you to choose from in ServiceNow. One of them, My Bucket of Work, is for your day-to-day work. The other one, Smart Goals Scorecard, shows which items on your day-to-day list are past due (haven't been updated in the last 7 days). You can easily toggle between the two dashboards.

Click on the "Switch to page…" drop-down in the upper right corner of your ServiceNow window to toggle between the dashboards.

We recommend using the "My Bucket of Work" page as your primary page and looking at the "Smart Goals Scorecard" at least once a day to make sure your work is up to date.

September 2014

Switch to the New UI/Bookmark Your Favorites

ServiceNow has a New User Interface that adds a navigational bar to the left of the screen. This bar has some really cool new features. Use the bookmark button to bookmark any page you visit frequently (reports, tasks, catalog items, etc…)

In the upper right corner, click on "Switch to the New UI"

A navigational bar will appear on the left side of your screen. Click on the Bookmark button to bookmark a page you use frequently. A new button for that bookmarked page will appear on the navigational bar.

October 2014

Add a Gauge to your dashboard

Click on "Add Content."

Click on Gauge. Next choose which type of gauge it is (Catalog Task, Incident, Change, etc.); then choose the gauge itself. Finally, select where you want to place the gauge by clicking "Add Here" in the boxes below. The gauge will add at the top of that box. You can then drag it to wherever you want on your dashboard.

November 2014

Here are three new features for you in Eureka:

1. You can choose the color theme you prefer. The theme drop-down box is in the upper right corner.
2. In the View/Run Reports, you can now "Export to PDF" with the click of a button. Just run the report you want to export and the button is now on the right in your button choices at top.
3. There is now an Edit button in front of each report that will open the report criteria without running the report. This will allow you to modify the criteria without having to wait for longer reports to run first. It is to the left of each report name and looks like a pencil.

December 2014

Tag and Track

You can create a tag to easily follow any changes made to a Task, RITM, Incident, Change, or Problem.

1. Right-click on the header for whichever item you want to track and choose "Assign Tag: New."
2. Type a name for your Tag, and click OK.
3. The Tag will now display in the upper left corner of the navigational menu:

• You can click on the hyperlink to quickly open the RITM.
• You can click the "X" next to the item when you no longer need to track it.
• You can also click the Tag name (Track) to open it and delete it when you no longer need it.
• If the hyperlink is blue, you know someone (other than you) has made a change to the item.

January 2015

Quick Search on the Navigational Bar

At the top of the Navigational Bar (on the left of the screen) there is a little box that says "Type filter text." This box allows you to quickly locate any application or module in ServiceNow, so you can easily get to Incidents, Requested Items, Reports, etc…

Type in what you are looking for, and the filter will find it for you.

[Bryan Campbell]

We are actually doing something similar but the only difference is we are just sending out "tip of the month" but call them ServiceNow Tips since there are case where more then one can go out for the month.   My job here is the Process Architect but i'm also certified as a SNow Admin so i work closely with our current admin on development work.   The tips we send out not only include tips on the tool but also reminders on the process.   Right now we are focusing on IT but we also plan on sending on user friendly tips to our Self Service community.

One of the tips we sent out to IT was "Fill out an Incident ticket- Distinctions between fields".   We noticed that technicians weren't correctly filling out their tickets as   they worked on them so we wanted to address it some how.   So we explained what the Description, Short Description, Works Notes, etc are used for.   At the end of each email we do empower them to submit a tip or question they may have so we could review it and possible include it in our next communication.

On stop of sending these out we created a category in our knowledge base called "ServiceNow Tips" where we have them posted for future reference.

Our next few tips will include tips on Creating Reports, Filtering list (this includes what you already mentioned but also the right mouse click function and the filter options available in the list view) , Global Search Vs. Target Search, Saving a record vs Updating a record, etc.

[richelle_pivec]

We are planning to put them into our knowledge base...and maybe that would be a good time to transition them out of the monthly email update. It would allow us to add more or less per month as needed.

I like the idea of asking others to give good tips. I'll have to add that language to the bottom of the email.

Maybe this month we should do a process tip. We have "open labs" twice a month for users to come in with ServiceNow questions, and for the most part they always come in with process questions.

thanks for the ideas, Richelle

[jason_siegrist1]

I like all of these ideas.  

Have any of you played around with how to get this in the header bar for the fulfiller side of things?

Also,   We are new to the ServiceNow platform (6 months ago) and any tips that will help us avoid pitfalls that you have already seen would be greatly appreciated!

[richelle_pivec]

Hi Jason, I'm not sure what the "this" is that you are referring to for the header bar for the fulfiller side of thing. Do you mean the tips themselves? I actually created knowledge articles for all of them and added a KB Search gauge to everyone's home dashboard.

Richelle