K19 ITSM Fundamentals Class - Cassanova 605

[ChristinaMiller]

If you are in the K19 ITSM Fundamentals class in room Cassanova 605, please post your comments and questions here using the COMMENT link. Classroom staff will be monitoring this conversation during class on May 5-6, 2019 and will answer to the best of their ability.

[Royal Sirrine1]

We use CALL as well and we have a direct relationship between CALL and INC (related option) and track our SLA's at the CALL level.

[Royal Sirrine1]

We use CALL as well and we have a direct relationship between CALL and INC (related option) and track our SLA's at the CALL level.

[deanarrington]

Dean Arrington

Eastman Chemical

I am currently leading a project to launch Problem Management. Is there anyone currently using Problem Management? Do you have any recommendations of do's and don'ts during the implementation process?

[balcells]

Hi, for the Lab 1.1 answers, they don't all match the book, right? A few of them have different results.

[User192788]

Hi Todd! Based on my experience, some customers rely on those since you do already have a lot of built in reports in those "Overview" dashboards for each application. Others modify the dashboards though to include some of their custom reports in the dashboard.

[ChristinaMiller]

I wouldn't read too much into the demo data. In ServiceNow baseline, assignment group is not a required field, which is why there are blanks in the demo data. I would advise to make that field required. Often times the Service Desk / Help Desk ends up being a "catch-all" and can help assign incidents to the correct group. Auto-assignment rules can also be built to ensure there are no incidents left behind!

[Jan Vromant1]

Problem Mgt will be covered; CSI will not.

[Jan Vromant1]

!Bienvenido!

[mvenema]

Hi, I'm Marcel Venema, working for KPN BV a Telecom company in the Netherlands. This is my second Knowledge event. The first one was in Frankfurt, Knowledge11. We've started working with ServiceNow when there were only releases like Spring and Summer. That was in 2009. Now we are busy to do a technically refresh of our instance, Greenfield it's called, to go back to 'out-of-the-box'. Of course with our own customization's.  I'm responsible for Data Quality and Request Fulfilment.

[User192788]

Hi! That's fine for now. There are cases that the number of records in the instance is not the same as in the Answer Key or screenshots. In case you encounter more issues in the labs later, let me know so that I can give you a new instance.

[Jan Vromant1]

Welkom!

[baronvonimel]

RE: Impersonation

We're operating like an MSP in that we'll be using ServiceNow for our customer facing ticketing application. At times, our staff will need to impersonate customer users and take actions for them - is there any way to configure who the actions appear to have been done by? Aaron said that the actions will seem to have happened by the impersonated user, but we'd like to show that an employee did the action on behalf of the customer's user.

[Keith Couch]

instructor said that system records beginning of impersonation but not actions taken while impersonating.  Does system record end of impersonation session?

[Jerry Enstrom]

Hi Keith,

Yes, the system tracks the start and end of each impersonation:

System Log >> All

Search the "Message" column for "Impersonation"

[User192788]

Hi! Unfortunately, we cannot track the actions done in behalf of another user. You can check the time stamp of the impersonation start and impersonation end as a workaround. Go to "System Logs > Events" and search the "impersonation.start" and "impersonation.end". You'll see the time stamp in the "Created" field. Parm1 will give you an idea which user performed the impersonation while Parm2 will be the username of the impersonated user.

[charris-greatam]

I would like to know this as well.  I heard it will "start" the log saying the impersonation was implemented but from an audit standpoint, is it in the future to add on each log that the impersonation was done by "someone". I feel that would be helpful in an audit standpoint.

[baronvonimel]

RE: Favorites

We'd like to create pre-defined favorites and saved filter sets for our staff - how do we set up defaults or add favorites into a user's default views

It would also be nice to tie these pre-configured sets to a user group so when we add a user to something like 'tier 2 server management' they get assignment groups, favorites, filters, permissions, etc.. all set up for them

[Tim Wainwright]

Hi Dean,

Be clear about the baseline process and see if you can make that work.

Make sure that you progress aged problems or otherwise problem becomes a dumping ground for unresolved incidents.

I have implemented PM in a bank and am happy to have a chat

Tim

[Keith Couch]

slide 38 has a relationship between request and incident (says record producer) - what is the nature of that relationship?

[mvenema]

I hope you don't do these actions on your production instance? In my company it is only possible to impersonate an user in read-only mode in the production instance. On the sandbox instance we can impersonate the user, knowing that we don't harm the record of the end user. The sandbox will be cloned every week.

[User192788]

Awesome question! So, you can actually go to "System Definition > Bookmarks" and add a new record. Make sure you have ticked the "Auto add" checkbox. But that will only be applicable for users created after you have defined that new Bookmark record.

If you want to add bookmarks to existing users, you'll need to add the sys_id of that user to the user field on new records. You can automate that creation of those records thru Background Scripts. You need to be familiar with Server Side scripting though.

[User192788]

End users do not have access to the modules available in the Incident Management application since they do not have any roles. Incident Management application is only visible for users with the 'itil' role. Now, in case they need to create a new incident, they can go to the Service Catalog/Service Portal and, from there, find a record producer to create the incident. 

[User192788]

Hi Dean! Before I answer your question, I would actually recommend you upgrade to the Madrid release. There is a huge improvement in the baseline functionality of the Problem Management application in Madrid. If you're using past releases of ServiceNow, you need to reach out to ServiceNow Professional Services to handle the migration of the Problem Management application from legacy to the current version.

[User192788]

Hi Marcel, this feature is available in production. This is usually not removed since you can use this functionality when you're fixing some defects. But I agree, you need to orient your admins not to abuse this impersonation feature to mess up your live records.

[Keith Couch]

sounds like a special request used to initiate an incident, is that it?

[Keith Couch]

sounds like a special request used to initiate an incident, is that it?

[Todd Schlett]

Interested in this.  Not working for me.

[Jerry Enstrom]

A record producer is basically a way to have a Service Catalog "look and feel" to create task-based (in this case incident) records. There is no request created in this case -- once the user submits the record producer, the Incident is generated.

[Brian Harris]

Brian Harris, IT Service Desk Manager for LogistiCare - the nation’s largest manager of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) programs for state government agencies and managed care organizations. The Company’s services include NEMT ride management, call center management, transportation provider network development and credentialing, and vendor administration. 

We are currently migrating our IT Ticketing system from FootPrints to SN with a GoLive date planned for mid-June 2019.

[User192788]

Yes, a record producer is a special type of item existing in the Service Catalog/Request Management application that you can use to create any task-based records like incidents. Please check this link for more details: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/service-catalog-managem...

[Todd Schlett]

Never mind... got it.  Thanks.

[User192788]

How to prevent gaps in your auto numbering of records: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-platform-administration/page/administer/field-administrati...

[Keith Couch]

so what is shown on page 57 is not "out of the box"?

[Tim Wainwright]

Tim Wainwright, IT / Business Process Analyst for UBS (swiss bank but working in UK). 10 years doing Incident, Problem, Change and some custom applications. Attending Knowledge 19 to network and identify new opportunities.

[Keith Couch]

Instructor says he has a white paper / rant on use of "on-hold" status.  Can we get a link?

[baronvonimel]

I missed my opportunity to ask this in context - but why are 'business service' and 'configurable item' different things? You can configure services and have outages on services just like CIs - to further complicate this, how does 'Asset' play in these concepts?

[User192788]

For Asset Management, we have a discussion on that in Module 3. In essence, each CIs can have their own asset records (thru a reference field) which will contain physical, financial, technological aspects of those CI records.

Business services are considered as configuration items in ServiceNow. You attach Service Levels to the Business Services instead of doing it for configuration items. You need to define the commitment for Business Services.

[Famous1]

Hi!  Fame Hale - Univeristy of Kentucky ITSM supervisor, just here to learn!  Second Knowledge event, going great so far!

[JonathanJacob]

A question was asked around ‘redactions’ to the activity log. Have a look at this as a potential solution:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=beb58321db1cdbc01dcaf3231f9619d6

Also consider a ServiceNow product Edge Encryption, tokenization:

https://developer.servicenow.com/app.do#!/creatorcon/CCW0413/creatorcon_18_CCW0413_configuring_tokenization

[mvenema]

I heard Aaron say that an end-user does not have any roles. In our instance every end-user has the role snc_internal. Where does that role come from?

[User192788]

Yes Marcel. That is correct. End users do not have any roles. However, we have this Explicit Roles plugin enabled in the instance that's why we do have the snc_internal roles in users. Please check this documentation for more info: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-platform-administration/page/administer/contextual-securit...

[Keith Couch]

understand that the priority matrix is 'OOB', but linking urgency to the CI requires configuration.

[Steve Taczala1]

Would be interested in speaking with others who have adopted the Email Function within the Incident form, in how you might be able to avoid using outlook to retain the topic thread between the end user and the engineer.  

[Todd Schlett]

In the email function -- is there something that indicates that the customer has replied?  Looking for something that could be configured as widget to draw attention of engineers that customer has responded.  (in many cases we are gated and ticket "on hold" until customer replies, but there is nothing other than looking thru tickets... with over 80k tickets per month).  Any ideas? 

[User192788]

Hi Todd. We do have a baseline auditing for all messages coming in to the platform thru the System Mailboxes. However, you would have to manually examine a notification if it was a reply from a notification sent by ServiceNow. What you can do is set up a custom inbound email action and from there you can then fire some notification or any activity that will alert you that a reply was already sent.

[Keith Couch]

Looks like Major Incident Management is not covered in this class... how can i learn more about that "plug-in"?

[User192788]

Hi Keith! You can check out the documentation for Major Incident Management in the docs site - https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/london-it-service-management/page/product/incident-management/con.... Hope this helps!

[Brooke Lemley]

How are integrations typically captured in the CMDB? I assume they are set up as CIs? Can they be represented as a relationship between two applications?

[Keith Couch]

Instructor counsels against the generic/open ended request.  We have issues with this in our current system - teams need a place for inbound requests that are non-standard.  What is the recommended outlet for this if not in a "generic" request?

[ChristinaMiller]

Hi Keith,

You can also find a free eLearning course on Major Incident Management on our Learning Portal: https://servicenow.sabacloud.com/

Your Community credentials should work here. When you login, search for Major Incident Management.