'Tis the season and no matter how you celebrate, we want to help you keep your ServiceNow instances going strong. The holidays can mean different things to different ServiceNow administrators. Some instances do extra work during the holidays and some have slower traffic. Perhaps maintenance or an upgrade is scheduled. Often, key people are taking time off so those on duty must perform new or unfamiliar tasks. We have put together a list of resources that can help you quickly manage a variety of situations.
Instance holiday emergency prep kit
- Understanding the change freeze
- Scheduling upgrades
- Resolving HI password issues
- Downloading ServiceNow mobile
- Searching for answers and resolving issues
- Reaching out to customer support
Change freeze
Our standard ServiceNow procedure is to implement a change freeze during the holiday and New Year time period. For 2016-2017, the change freeze is scheduled for Monday, December 19th through Tuesday, January 3rd. During this time, there are no ServiceNow initiated changes, but customers can continue to initiate changes on their own instances, including upgrades. For more details, see ServiceNow Holiday Change Freezes.
Upgrade info
Over the holidays, you can still schedule upgrades, even during the change freeze time period. Use the standard procedure of navigating to the Hi Service Portal and selecting Manage Upgrades. You'll see a list of all your instances and, for each instance, the upgrades that are available. Just pick an instance, select a version, and click the Schedule button. For complete upgrading information, see Upgrade your instance and the Upgrade planning checklist.
Resolve HI password issues
HI is the ServiceNow customer service portal where you can obtain information, schedule upgrades, log incidents, and manage your instances. HI password issues are pesky, but easy to resolve. All HI users, including ServiceNow customers and partners can reset their own password from the login page. Here are links to more information for different kinds of users:
- Customers and partners
- United States government customers
- Customer administrators (designated users that have extra powers on their instance and in HI to manage users and help with issues like resetting passwords)
Download ServiceNow mobile
If you are on the go during the holidays and working from a location other than your desk at the office, give the ServiceNow mobile app a try. You can access your instance from a web browser on your mobile device or from the native mobile app. iPhone users can obtain the app from the iTunes store and Android users can get the app from the Google Play store. Two notes:
- To use the Android app, your instance must be on Geneva patch 6 or a later release
- If you do not have access to the mobile platform, contact your administrator
For complete information about installing and using the mobile app, see Access an instance from the mobile app and Get started with a ServiceNow instance on your mobile device.
Search and solve
If you have an issue and want to try and find a solution yourself, check out these resources:
- Complete information about how to use ServiceNow can be found in our Product Documentation
- Troubleshooting tips and tricks are located in the HI Knowledge Base - trying starting with one of our Resource Pages
- If you are a "show me" kind of person, you'll find our NOWsupport YouTube channel useful
- You can also get support info to your Twitter, G+, and LinkedIn feeds.
- Since you are reading this blog post in the Community, I'm guessing that you already know how valuable the Community is when you have a question and are trying to solve an issue!
Contact customer support
Rest assured, you can obtain customer support from ServiceNow over the holidays just as you do the rest of the year. Our normal support processes are in place during the holidays and the change freeze.
- Full details about self-serving and contacting ServiceNow can be found in Customer Support
- If you are an Express customer, see ServiceNow Express Support
- If you are a United States Government (USG) customer, see Customer support for United States Government customers
If you have a vision for some big or custom changes to your instance, consider contacting ServiceNow Implementation Services. At that link, you'll find a services datasheet and, for inspiration, a couple of case studies showing some good work done at RedHat and Kingfisher.
Happy Holidays! May your days be merry and your instances speedy!
