Meet Community MVP...
Paul Morris
Hello Paul! So tell us a little on how you got started in your career and when was ServiceNow introduced to you?
What do you do now? What is your favorite part of using the ServiceNow?
I’m currently the Technical Lead for the ServiceNow capability at my organization. My favorite part of using ServiceNow is how easy it is to build proof of concept applications and features on the platform to quickly demonstrate how business needs can be met – then to go away and finish the product.
How did your career evolve?
Once I started building on the ServiceNow platform, I gravitated more and more towards ServiceNow and found myself caught in its orbit. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to do so I decided to pursue a career in ServiceNow development.
How did you get involved with the ServiceNow Community?
I started off using the Community to help solve technical issues I encountered while supporting the platform. As I become more interested in the platform, I began to see questions that I knew the answer too when I was looking for answers myself. More and more I found myself answering questions, quickly climbing the leaderboard. I made it a personal goal of mine to become a ServiceNow MVP, and started writing blogs and spending too much time after work on the forums.
You're very generous with your time. What inspired you to start answering in addition to asking?
I wanted to test my knowledge. See how quickly I could write up a quick function, or find defects from posted code, faster than anyone else. It was an area I wanted to improve in, as it was a weakness I had in university. Helping debug other people’s code also helped me become a better developer, and work towards becoming an MVP. Setting goals are important.
I use the community it as a study tool, to see what technical problems others are having so I can pro-actively solve them and help my team with issues they have. If I am having a technical issue myself, I will login to see if anyone has a solution. Sometimes I might answer a cheeky question or two while I am at it.
Where do you spend your time in the community?
I am a developer at heart, so naturally I spend most my time there.
How else do you participate?
I enjoy writing blogs on how I have solved technical problems I have faced for others to learn from. I try to make them unique, and focus on quality over quantity of content. I also have some applications uploaded to Share, Smart Ajax and Regress ATF Recorder, which I occasionally contribute to.
What would you say to encourage your peers to participate more?
I like to think of it as professional development. There are hundreds of blogs from thought leaders on all things ServiceNow – you can find articles by thought leaders, robust discussions on best practice and code samples, to help further your career.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted a nudge to start contributing?
Start by looking at questions and blogs in an area of the tool you are familiar with. When you find someone asking a question that you think you know the answer to – don’t be shy, give it a go. The community is very friendly and welcoming.
Do you have any stand-out / memorable experiences with ServiceNow?
My most memorable experience was being accepted to speak at Knowledge16 CreatorCon about my project, which resulted in my company funding me to continue developing it and publishing it on the store. This gave me the confidence to do more public speaking, and I followed up by speaking at community events and recently at Knowledge19.
Is there a specific product and/or feature that you just can't believe you ever lived without?
As a developer, Xplore would be the one feature, although not OOB, that I cannot live without. Whenever I log into an instance to do development, I feel paralyzed if Xplore isn’t installed. It is the first thing I installed when operating in any new environment before I get started.
In terms of ServiceNow features, I can’t believe I used to function without Batched Update Sets. It is now much easier to trace requirements to specific configuration by naming update sets after requirement identifiers. Gone are the days of massive merges where requirements trackability gets lost.
Do you have a favorite piece of content on the community?
There is so much great content, it is hard to pick a favorite!
What motivates you to participate? Why do you do it?
To improve myself and help others. I would not be where I am today in my career without the Community forum and I want other to succeed.
Any other interesting tidbits, stories, hobbies you'd like to share?
I once had a colleague ask me a ServiceNow question while I was on my lunch break. By the time I had returned to my desk, he had solved the issue. He found a question on the community forum that solved his issue, that I had answered. Contributing the community can also help your own team/organization, even while you are on lunch break 😉.
I don’t just live and breathe ServiceNow 24/7 – I have hobbies outside of the platform, such as running and music. I’ve been learning piano casually for almost as long as I’ve been involved with ServiceNow but have not sat any exams for it. I’ve recently started training for my first graded piano exam. While I have plenty of experience sitting ServiceNow exams, this one will be an entirely different experience.
Thank you, Paul!
