ITSM - Locking down Employee Center to the ticket page and survey page?

[snowdev8]

We're migrating from our old ITSM tool to a new one with a tight timeline, but aren’t ready for customers to use Employee Center yet due to organizational and timeline constraints . One is that with the tight timeline, our UI UX resources aren't available until later this year to brand it for user adoption even though it would be basic. Other is that eventually,  we want to drive users towards Teams integration with Virtual Agent + Now Assist, so we don't want to overload end users with too many changes

For now, the idea is to have customers contact the Service Desk, which is what we do with the old tool . And then, SD  will  handle interactions, requests, and incidents etc on SN. 

However, the out-of-the-box ITSM notifications include links to Employee Center, like "Take me to the incident" and survey emails. I’m looking for ways to:

1. Restrict access to only the ticket page in Employee Center.
2. Remove the "Take me to the ticket page" link without heavy customization.
3. Find other process solutions or  technical solutions to address this challenge. Is it okay to have a soft launch after all?

Any input is appreciated!

[Mark Manders · Accepted solution]

You either want to use the portal or you don't. If you only want to show the ticket page, you will have to inactivate everything else. It would be better to just create a custom portal with only the ticket page and route your users there. You can then implement ESC later from an OOB portal, instead of a completely customized one.

The 'take me to ticket' is just an email script. Remove it from your notifications so the link doesn't show (or adjust it to get your custom portal).

Point 3 is the most important one: the best solution for this is to stop. The fact that 'branding' can only be done later is ridiculous. With a couple of hours you have your ESC branded. If this team is so important that it needs to be involved, than just stop it all together and wait. 

Your solution to not enable the portal and have the servicedesk do the work is completely back to the middle ages. The portal, including knowledge, catalog items, record producers, announcements, etc. is there to enable self service. Automatic notifications, alerting, etc is all there to make the work of all employees/customers easier. 

The use of teams/va/now assist will add functionality to the portal instead of replacing it. You are talking about customers. Not all of them will enjoy using teams/va and long for a form they can fill on the portal. 

Proceeding will implement technical debt before you are even live and bring the worst possible user experience to your customers and employees. It will be 6 steps back and will create no value at all. It will be frustrating and in half a year everyone will be asking why ServiceNow replaced the old tool. 

[snowdev8]

Thank you Mark. I needed to hear this from someone like you!
Glad to hear we are on the same page. Thank you so much.