Mass email communication to clients/users using ServiceNow.

faisal_dadabhoy
Giga Expert

‎03-05-2014 08:22 AM

Hello,

I am just wondering if anyone is utilizing mass email communication to send emails from ServiceNow? As you know ServiceNow has a build in email functionality but does not have a feature to send mass emails so this would be a custom development? In my experience when mass emails are send about outages/changes it is based on datacenter, customers, clusters and etc.

 

High overview of development approach?

Pro/cons?

Any help/feedback will be appreciated?

Thanks, Faisal

  • 15,800 Views
29 REPLIES 29

Uncle Rob
Kilo Patron

‎03-06-2014 11:21 AM

I generally tell my stakeholders that ServiceNow can send emails to a Distribution List.   Then I let me IDM or email teams manage the distribution lists.



You start putting that in ServiceNow, and if you're not carefully you're going to have a massive amount of new data to administer.


0 Helpfuls

faisal_dadabhoy
Giga Expert
In response to Uncle Rob

‎03-06-2014 12:37 PM

Great advice.



Thanks, Faisal


0 Helpfuls

srgillis
Kilo Contributor
In response to Uncle Rob

‎05-01-2014 06:54 PM

Actually - we have been able to use the Role assignment functionality and subscriptions to create the user lists. No extra admin necessary.   Set up the roles (which you have to do anyway if you are using Role management) and then have ServiceNow use these roles to create the mailing lists.  


0 Helpfuls

Uncle Rob
Kilo Patron
In response to srgillis

‎05-02-2014 12:09 PM

Why roles and not groups?   Roles indicate license consumption.


0 Helpfuls

srgillis
Kilo Contributor

‎05-01-2014 06:50 PM

We use ServiceNow to create our mass communications for Major Outages, Release Notes and Deployment/Change Management emails.   We have been able to create very nice, formatted and branded communications. Due to performance issues and load on our ServiceNow instance - What we ended up doing is having ServiceNow send the content in an XML to our email program which then sends the emails.   You could have them sent directly from ServiceNow but we have a large number of employees and send about 13,000 emails every day.



The Pros:


  • The emails are easy to setup.  
  • The emails are easy to automate.
  • You control the formatting and the overall look of the emails
  • You can customize the content so that the emails say what you want them to say.
  • Using templates and pre-canned messages - you make it really easy for your IT people to send emails that look nice and make sense.


The cons:


  • Requires customization


I would be very happy to talk with any one who wants to know how to do this for themselves!   I can share some of our lessons learned and top tips!