We Need Your Help! What Office Hours topics should we cover?

D van Heusden · ‎06-03-2020

We need your help

Well, this is kind of embarrassing. We've run out of ideas and topics to present in hour by-weekly office hours (here) and would really love to hear your thoughts on what we should cover!

You can name just about anything although we prefer it has a direct relationship to NOW Intelligence products such as (Performance) Analytics, Reporting, Dashboards, Metrics, NLU (Natural Language Understanding), Predictive Intelligence or the Virtual Agent.

Ok, I might have been exaggerating a little but we really would really welcome your input. If you would be so kind as to leave a comment with a (short) description and some context then we can add that in a list and start ranking it based on likes and our own thoughts, preferences, skills and experience.

Last but not least

Please go through the other comments and like those that you would also see covered!

Thank you!

Pierre P_ Mouri · ‎06-07-2020

One topic I'd like to see covered are Real-time scores.

There is information in the docs, but I'd like to learn more about use-cases, as well as the collection process and the potential impact on performance or other things to keep in mind.

Thanks!

ginnyk991 · ‎06-10-2020

There is a specific use case I've been struggling with and haven't had any luck finding solutions from the community. I'd like a trend report showing changes that caused incidents (monthly) and analytics on the % of changes that caused one or more incidents.

audrey13 · ‎06-10-2020

One of the most common pieces of advice people give out is to "go to office hours", likely so your professors know you and can later be a reference or give a recommendation. Right now I have pretty much nothing to say to my professors, and I am really confused with it and the whole concept in general. Kodi nox

If I have no questions for my professor, what am I supposed to do at my professor's office hours? Some people have said just introduce yourself, but I wouldn't this come off as awkward and or a waste of the professor's time if I have nothing important to say?
How often should I go to office hours, so the professor knows me well? Do I just continuously show up asking the professor random questions about the content?
How do I keep up a relationship with a professor after I finish their class so they don't forget about me?
How many of my professors do I need to actually go to? I have 5 this semester, and I'm going to have many more throughout college. I doubt I need to know more than a dozen professors well throughout my college career.
Are first-year professors as important as later year professors for references/recommendations? Are major-related professors more important?

Paul Walters · ‎06-16-2020

Tips and tricks for newbies. Like how to limit the list of assignment groups to just a few for a dashboard or widget using a breakdown.

John W5 · ‎06-24-2020

At my company, we are leveraging ITBM -- PPM component and run mainly Agile-based projects.

But we also are starting to use Waterfall for a couple of projects.

For Waterfall, you can establish a Baseline for the work. Does a report and/or PA exists that allows for comparison between the baseline and current work completed? And could we leverage any existing Dashboards that are Agile-oriented . . . and tweak the reports/graphics there for any Waterfall-based projects?

For Service Catalog, it would be useful to see reports / trends like the following:

Catalog Categories and individual items -- usage analysis of items requested/ordered by our colleagues. Could also do a trend analysis overtime (as there could be "seasonal trends" in a given year that might be interesting to note.)

For ServiceNow . . .

Incidents / Stories tied to a Change Request -- Incidents that were resolved by a Change Request; Stories that were included in a Change Request; Defects that occurred after a Change Request was implemented.

W-I-P (more to come; just initial thoughts)

maggieo · ‎06-24-2020

Breakdown relations

Interactive filter to bring the Record ID, from incident, change, release, problem tables

Indicator groups, why should we use or not use them!

Unloading dashboard issues

stephenrodgers · ‎07-01-2020

Related List Conditions in reporting.

I've been using ServiceNow since Calgary, and I still haven't figured out how those work in a way that makes me remotely confident that I could explain it to someone else, or extrapolate principles from one situation to another. In other words, the few times I've gotten it to work, it might as well be magic. I have no idea what it's really doing.

It's also possible I may have missed it, but I've never found any documentation on it either linked off the landing page https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/use/reporting/re... or in the advanced topics section https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/use/reporting/co...

Bryan18 · ‎07-01-2020

Creating Custom Charts

How to Create them
What are the use cases for the? Why use them?
Roles Required

What are Summary Sets Used for?
KPI Composer
Creating dashboards using Service Portal Designer

Adding PA components, such as widgets and breakdowns
Adding tabs
Resizing widgets
Creating dashboard for Mobile vs Desktop View

Diagnostic Log:Dashboard tab does not have a valid page reference

Unloading dashboard does not seem to add the page reference for dashboard tabs
When promoting our update set to production, the page reference for the tab is missing and needs to be manually added

Dario Marquez · ‎07-01-2020

Custom Interactive Filters

Share some basic scripting framework that we could leverage to create filters that we can customize for different fields and tables.

Chris W1 · ‎08-19-2020

An overview/dive into Text Analytics would be great.

I even have a specific use case, if its helpful? We use the 'generic' request a service item in the catalog as a catch-all for when the user can't (or won't) find the specific item for the service request they need.

Our catalog manager is trying to use the data in these requests ahead of a project to redesign/re-architect/re-index our catalog and he'd love to get text analysis of the description and short description from these 'request a service' requests. Ideally, with the ability to breakdown by fulfillment group.

stephenrodgers · ‎10-21-2020

Something I never see...best practices for long(er)-term customers. Or how to wrangle an instance that goes back to the mists of time.

PA has changed over the various releases, sometimes a lot. And some of those changes might have snuck up on us. It would be great if there was a list of "gotchas", possibly broken down by release to release, that we could use as a sort of checklist to catchup and make sure our instance is conforming to the newest recommended practices.

Examples off the top of my head:

I installed old content packs by activating plugins. Now there are newer versions. How can I determine IF I have the latest version, and how do I update my content? Because spinning up a dev instance and manually comparing record by record is SUPER un-fun. Plugin versioning in general, nightmare that it is.
I installed newer content packs from the store. Now I'm told there are new versions. How do I get those? How can I tell what version I have? Content versioning in general (not as awful as plugin versioning, but still a pain).
At some point, data collection jobs suddenly have run as values. What are the best practices for this? What should I do with the blank ones? The ones where the default value is different from one with another default value? I mean, most of these are System Administrator, but a few OOB ones haves roles I don't even immediately recognize.
What plugins are now activated by default on a fresh install or zboot, that might be turned off? Looking at you, PA Admin Console! (Also, even if it's on, it's jobs might not be collecting! How do I know?)
What is the best "default" set of parameters for data collection? Because a lot of our instances pre-date text analytics, and we want to make sure that we're not setting resources on fire, but also that we're not shooting ourselves in the foot for the future.
Dashboards, "requires roles," and "restrict to roles." Yes, this again. Because it's confusing and a clear path forward of 'ok, ignore the past but the best thing to do now is xyz' would be welcome.
Maybe this is just my paranoia, but do properties change, and if so, can we know more about that in case we changed something in 2017 for a valid reason, but SN sneakily fixed it behind our back and now there's no longer a reason for us to hold to that customization?

That's just off the top of my head, and I'm sure I'm oblivious to a ton of others.

maggieo · ‎10-28-2020

Breakdown rollup scripts

Creating breakdowns based on String fields

I have been trying to create a breakdown on States (location) and City. I found a reference in the community that I need to create breakdown by location then use a breakdown rollup script to roll the locations up to cities/provinces/countries/etc.

Kavya2 · ‎03-25-2022

Usage of Methods in formula Indicators

maggieo · ‎03-25-2022

Creating workspaces

Use Cases

Accessing pages built in UI builder and components

Dario Marquez · ‎03-25-2022

I would like to learn how to build Staging Tables. Like views of tables where you can customize the columns and add logic ( like grouping values). Those are really useful and it takes ServiceNow to the next level. I know they require a lot of code, but maybe we can be provided with some generic code that we can modify to our needs.

Other topic that I would like to see is advanced logics with Formula Indicators. When it comes to formula indicators, since my coding knowledge is limited, I had struggle to achieve some not too complex calculations, but I was surprised that I was able to accomplished them. Meaning that there might be many useful calculations that can be done with Formula Indicators that may not be very known or that we are not aware but can add tremendous business value. For example: How to get the absolute difference between one period an another. I was able to calculate this by having an indicator for 1 for current score, 1 for the previous score. And in the formula did the difference from each other and if the result is negative, multiply it by -1, if not just show the positive result. This was my work around but maybe there other easier ways?

Dario Marquez · ‎03-25-2022

Also, the invitation to the recurring meeting (pic), has not been working for me, not sure if I am the only one, but I haven't been able to join the call, I have added the outlook file to my calendar, and when its time, I get to the Zoom website and I join from the browser, and it says the meeting will begin soon. And after 9am PST, it says there has been a problem, and this had happened like for the last 4-6 sessions. The link I use is the following:

Please click this URL to join. https://servicenow.zoom.us/w/98069524463?tk=X3uM5Xza8Ks4QBf3NErxae56e1uioLSjzC7YXum2QWQ.DQMAAAAW1WYv...

maggieo · ‎03-28-2022

Addressing Healthscan findings. Help identifying issues and remediate them.