Michael Hansen
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

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If you’re willing to settle for a one-time snapshot to address a single dimension of your IT environment, there are any number of point solutions willing to sell you one. If you need to provide trusted technology information from a system of record that synthesizes real-time visibility, events, and health logs, you are likely already considering the industry leading ServiceNow AIOps.

 

If you need all that . . . and must also put those data points at the fingertips of your entire IT staff . . .to drive multiple, simultaneous mission critical services—from planning risk-free changes, to triaging convoluted alerts, to resolving ongoing incidents—you’re certain to have already selected ServiceNow AIOps. Welcome aboard! Rest assured knowing you’ll be getting all this function from a single platform, using a secure LLM, and based on a common, interoperable data model.

 

We didn’t get here by sitting still. We are proud to announce the following innovations in the Washington family release and Q1 2024 updates for ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM) Health. Taken together with innovations in the last two releases, these features represent a significant, strategic overhaul of our ITOM Health offerings—delivering both a sleek, built-to-purpose user experience and a day zero operational monitoring and triage capability.

 

 But unlike perpetually immature, snapshot-based point solutions which anxiously avoid a fully operational CMDB, ServiceNow confidently guides you from full initial function and value through quickly maturing processes to transform your digital operations. Enable your employees to do more than merely triage alerts to perform true event management based on full intelligence, grounded on trusted data from a bullet-proof system of record and action that can answer any audit and meet any regulatory requirement.

 

Here's a breakdown:

 

Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM)

 

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Now Assist incorporates generative AI to both summarize jargon-laden alerts and to analyze them, providing simplified, human readable descriptions of issues with clear context. And because these simplified alerts can be accessed from the comprehensive and powerful Express List view by agents and operators across your IT organization, Now Assist effectively upskills your entire staff to perform as highly experienced engineers and take simple, coordinated, and effective actions to respond.

 

In the background, Now Assist uses secure, private, and purpose-built LLMs (Large Language Model) to process your operational data, so you can sleep easy, unconcerned that your operations queries could eventually show up in the training of a public LLM. You can also exchange your liberal allocation of Assists with complementary generative AI functions in IT Service Management and Customer Service Management, among others. Because the results are consumed internally, Now Assist for ITOM is a fantastic way to show a quick and tangible return on a generative AI investment without any risk of the inherent risk of public-facing Gen AI content.

 

Requirements:

 

Metric Intelligence UX Update 

 

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Metric Intelligence features have received a user experience overhaul. Users can now navigate more intuitively through the metric rules environment, creating and managing metric rules with ease. This update simplifies the process for newcomers and is supported by a guided setup, making the creation of metric rules more straightforward and accessible.

 

Requirements:

 

Express List Enhancements

If you haven’t adopted the elegant designs and powerful functions of the Service Operations Workspace Express List available since the Utah release, you’re driving your ServiceNow AIOps stuck in second gear.  Shift into fifth and enjoy the performance!

 

The Express List has been further improved in Washington to include predefined views, removing the need for manual filter setup and simplifying administration across different teams.

 

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This latest enhancement further streamlines an operator’s view by focusing on alerts relevant to their own team, facilitating easier onboarding of new team members and reducing noise from adjacent groups. 

 

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 Meanwhile, we have added historical and technical context to the Express List side panel.  Not only can operators see alert trends, they can also easily access related changes and incidents, enabling more informed diagnoses and therefore faster, more satisfactory, and lasting resolutions.

 

Requirements:

  

The Alert Automations application centralizes and streamlines alert automation capabilities enabling faster time to value on event management, whether a customer has a mature CMDB. By enabling out-of-the-box alert enrichment, alert grouping, and an automated escalation process, the Alert Automations application quickly supercharges operations even with a relative lack of contextual intelligence. But unlike competitors, its returns do not diminish with increased context; they multiply. Alert Automations is now available from the ServiceNow store.

 

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Alert enrichment allows any team to add context to alerts via tags and/or parsed fields, even without admin privileges.  When configuration data is relatively immature, these tags and process can bring important context to alerts, providing value from the very start of a ServiceNow event management system. As our customer’s configuration data matures, the potential sources of alert enrichment multiply and the reliability, consistency, and auditability of the data also increases. Where competing solutions lose incremental value with configuration maturity, ServiceNow’s value and applicability dramatically increases.

 

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The alert enrichment and alert grouping automations both come with simpler setup and more intuitive user interfaces.  Group alerts can be created on multiple fields or tags using exact matches, patterns, or even fuzzy matching.  Grouping rules reduce noise by reducing the number alerts and ensures that action on alerts is efficiently coordinated and routed.

 

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A redesigned and simplified interface also characterizes the Alert Escalation automation.   Customers can define whether an alert should produce an email notification or be escalated to a full Incident with a simple set of transformation rules.  These rules do not require admin privileges.

 

Requirements

  • ITOM Professional or AI Ops Enterprise
  • Washington Patch 1
  • Alert Automations Store Application

 

These features collectively will streamline operations, reduce resolution times, and magnify the effectiveness and ease of user input within the ServiceNow Event management. They shorten time to value and strengthen our competitive position in the market.

 

But we are not done yet. We have more exciting features coming over the horizon to help pave the way to mature data. Starting March, customers with event management can access a new view from Express List that presents related alerts in a graphic interface. 

 

Link View (Innovation Lab)

 

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Link View introduces a tag-based map visualization for alerts, offering an expandable alert panel for a comprehensive view. This feature shows potential alert impacts within its surrounding technical context and supports faster value realization in CMDB maturity journeys. Perfect for customers who are in the early phases of maturing their CMDB.  Link View is compatible with the entire Vancouver family release and is available through the Innovation Lab.

 

Requirements

  • ITOM Professional or AI Ops Enterprise
  • Vancouver

Link View Innovation Lab Application (not available yet for production)

 

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