Winter11 Webinar Q&A, Part 2: Social IT

[wallymarx]

We had great attendance for our Winter11 Customer Webinar. With so many people participating there was an overflow of conversation. Rather than dump all of it in one post, I'm breaking into sections and posting separately. This blog is all about our new Social IT offering. This is the area we got the most inquiries about. Here's my favorite:

Q: For the chat & Live stream - are there additional licensing costs?
A: No

Many more below. If you have a follow-up question, please reply to the post and I'll get it answered for you.

Cheers,
Wally


Social IT:

Q: A question regarding the chat. Is it possible to view the window of the user by a servicedesk agent, Or is this available in a future release
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Can we also take over the screen of the user when using chat? That would be helpful to Servicedesk agents.
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Are there any social networking integration hooks for sharepoint or sharepoint plugins e.g. newsgator
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Are you able to use any chat software to integrate with Service-now or do we have to use chat software from Service-now
A: In this release, you must use the Service-now.com chat interface, but this integration may be considered for future releases

Q: Can a metric push info to live feed?
A: Yes

Q: can anybody see the INC ticket, by clicking on the INC number in the feed?
A: Anybody with permissions to see the incident

Q: Can files be shared via Chat?
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Can live feeds and chat include users outside the company. Is it as easy as a service-now instance id?
A: Live feeds and chat are available to users with access to the instance. It doesn't matter whether they are inside the company or not.

Q: Can others request to join a room, for example on the priority 1 chat room
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Can the log from a chat room be included in problem ticket history
A: Yes

Q: Can u resume a chat that was initiated 3 days ago?
A: Assuming that the user still has their chat window open, this can be done. But in reality, you would probably create a new chat.

Q: can we integrate service-now chat with microsoft live server
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Can Live Feed integrate with Twitter / Facebook
A: To what end and in which direction? I'm really curious to hear what your use case would be for this integration.

Q: Can you create a ticket directly from chat
A: Yes

Q: Can you have the start of a Change pushed into the feed
A: Yes

Q: Is room chat captured in the Incident that is in the room
A: If a chat room is associated with an incident, the transcript is captured in the incident record

Q: Is it limited to particular browsers
A: No

Q: Can chat only be associated with Incidents? It would be really useful for discussing Change Approval
A: Chat can be used with any Service-now.com application. We provide it pre-configured with Incident, but you can easily extend that.

Q: Is a role, and therefore a license, required for participants to Chat
A: No. They just require access to the instance

Q: Can you launch the company feed in a pop-up window so it can be kept open without having to keep clicking on it in between other work
A: In theory yes, but you'd have to write a few dozen lines of JavaScript to do it. There's no out of box link that will pop up the feed for you (although it's a good idea).

Q: How do you handle language challenges English service desk with German user
A: The product will always render the UI in the user's language, so a German user looking at one of his incidents would see the labels and whatnot on the incident in German (provided, of course you've installed the German language pack). We do not, however, offer any capability to translate text fields between the service desk language and the user's language e.g. a German user would see an English language comment in English.

Q: Can you put the Instant Messenger on a company's internal internet page (intranet) - is there a widget?
A: Yes

Q: Can you restrict a live feed to one (or more) service teams instead of the entire company?
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Does a new chat item around an incident bring a pop up in the Incident management queue?
A: If the incident is part of a room, or you are having chat with it, then a new chat will A) change that window header yellow, and B) play a (relatively muted) chime.

Q: For chat - can you have a chat open while in other applications such as incident, etc.?
A: Yes

Q: Does chat allow integration with 3rd party XMPP/Jabber clients?
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: Does the queue of chat waiting requests relate to the VIP status of the same? ie do VIPs goto the top of the list?
A: Currently they do not, chat queue is ordered by arrival time. I'm unsure what would be required to change the sorting logic.

Q: For the chat room, or even employee to employee chat that is not linked to a incident ticket. Is the chat conversation saved anywhere for companies that need to provide an audit trail for all IM messages?
A: Yes

Q: How do Chat and Live Feed integrate with the Knowledge Base?
A: There is no direct integration, but all can be searched simultaneously using the global search

Q: How do you handle agents supporting multiple clients and chat queues?
A: There's no in-product limitation. If you belong to > 1 chat queue then your chat desktop will display each queue in a separate window and you can selectively accept requests from any or all.

Q: the Social IT be utilize as a standalone tool with out the incident mgmt piece?
A: while it doesn't have to be used with Incident Management, it does require Service-now.com access

Q: how does the chat interface work with the mobile device?
A: The chat client is not supported on any of our mobile browsers. In theory it will work correctly on full client mode on more advanced smartphones (iPhone, Android), but we haven't tested there.

Q: Can the Chat button be hosted on another portal outside of Service-Now?
A: There'd be some plumbing required for things like authentication, but fundamentally yes. Key thing though is that while the link that says "click to chat" can be anywhere, the actual chat window has to be rendered by our server.

Q: How do you manage the live feed as an administrator, for example if someone posted an inappropriate comment is there a way for someone to pre-approve or see everything that is posted real time and have time to react?
A: This would defeat the purpose of a live feed. Inappropriate comments can certainly be removed, but there is no pre-approval mechanism

Q: How is the user notified if they are not signed in... ie do you have to have company feed open to prompt or do you get a pop up to say there is something there which is of use to you ?
A: For company feed, you can be notified via email or text-message

Q: is all this ""Social IT"" domain separated?
A: Yes. It is unique to each instance

Q: Can the ""Company feed"" be per customer?
A: It is unique to each instance. In a future release, we will look to introduce Live "groups" which could allow further segregation

Q: Is chat and live feed available on mobile s-n.com?
A: Live Feed is certainly available. Chat is not currently supported on our mobile clients

Q: Is chat queue searchable inside the incident ticket or outside?
A: The chat transcript is searchable — as it is part of the incident record

Q: Is there a limitation on how many ""feeds"" you can have?
A: Currently, it is one per instance

Q: Is there a possibility to ""clean"" the Chat Activity in an Incident?
A: Yes

Q: Is there a way to moderate the feed (thinking about classic IT flame wars)?
A: There is no pre-approval mechanism. Its all about good social etiquette

Q: Is there translation on the fly in chat?
A: No, but that would be cool

Q: Are chat sessions auditable even if no Incident is created
A: Yes

Q: Can Live feed be consumed by an external application/Portal
A: Live feed can be serialized using our RSS feeder, or alternately its available via our standard web services APIs.

Q: On the friend list, can you add groups as listed already in Service-Now? Like a resolver group
A: This functionality is not available in this release, but may be considered for future releases

Q: so anyone who is logged into service-now.com can start a chat session with someone else using service-now?
A: Yes

Q: Can the chat window/queue be added to the worker dashboard
A: Yes

Q: If there was integration with an event mgmt tool, could you associate a "template" of wording if a given CI throws an event
A: Yes

Q: If your process was to allow users to open and link to the existing incident to known end user impact, is that possible from the posted incident feed
A: Yes

Q: social it - would like a *dislike* button as well.
A: We've heard that before!

Q: Will chat use my AD, or are contacts only my Service-Now users?
A: Chat uses your Service-now.com users. Of course, if you are integrating your AD with Service-now.com, then both!

Q: you can also delete a posting or reply on the company feed right? or delete the whole posting by another users?
A: This can be done by the poster — or an administrator

Q: You can create an incident from a chat - can you also add chats to existing incidents
A: Yes

Q: Will you be using Chat and Live Feed on the HI server
A: Yes

Q: Will the chat activity on a incident record be defined in the sys_audit table
A: Chat activity is currently tracked in a different table, but a business rule on that table could be used to "copy" any chat activity into the audit table.