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.

[Jan Vromant1]

Recommended outlet = Demand Mgt

[Keith Couch]

Does the benchmarking mentioned at the beginning of the day include CMDB metrics?  Is it possible to see benchmarking data based on size of organization?

[Jan Vromant1]

Yes, there are some CMDB metrics.  See this link:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/benchmarks/concept/c_Be...

[KennethPaz]

Aaron mentioned he strongly advises against having end users initiate requests via email compared to the other methods. Can someone explain why this is? And which of the other methods would work the best? Referencing page 152 in the booklet.

[ChristinaMiller]

Ultimately we want to be able to deflect incident creation and enable the end user to resolve their own issues and answer their own questions as much as we can. (Think "Shift Left"!) When we allow users to send e-mails and avoid interaction with the portal / platform, they are missing the opportunity to see related knowledge articles that may possibly meet their needs and deflect the creation of a record all together. This saves time for both the end user AND agents.

Best case scenario, all end users start at the portal to look for the answer to their question. If they are unable to find it, then they submit an appropriate request / incident. 

[User192788]

Hi Keith. Yes, number of users (size of the organization), geography and industry of the companies are the ones that are taken into consideration for your benchmarks: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/benchmarks/concept/c_Be...

[Jan Vromant1]

Kenneth, 

1. When you send an email, it may or may not be picked up by the right person, and you miss an opportunity to nail down the begin time stamp;

2. When you send an email, you don't get an opportunity to bundle things (e.g., if somebody needs a desktop, that person will also need a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse), and you may get into a set of emails going back and forth to fully understand and complete the request.

3. Generating a request via the portal enables the end-user to query the status of his/her request without having to call the service desk.

The method that works best is to channel the end-users to the portal.  

[User192788]

Thanks for the insights Christina! Apart from what Christina mentioned, you have to script the inbound email action using the "Cart" script include if that's your requirement. But, then again, that will lead you to a customization path. 

[bwilliams77]

have engineers monitor My Work and add columns for Updated and updated by.  When those change then you know to check it.  Also then supervisor can monitor My groups Work the same way.

[User192788]

Hi Keith, good morning! Attached is Aaron's white paper on the use of "On-Hold Status".

[Aaron W_ Smith]

Steve, Grab me at break or lunch today to expand on your question.  I want to be sure I understand what you are trying to solve/accomplish before I try to provide a response. Thanks!

[James _J_R__ Mc]

Hello all, was in and out due to travel and lodging issues but here early and ready to learn today!  I am the IT Manager for Support Services for Cook Medical in Indiana.  We are currently in an SCSM environment with third party front end.  Ready for the future with ServiceNOW!

[deanarrington]

Dean Arrington - Eastman Chemical

Service Catalog question. If I build a catalog item for a 840 laptop and offer different options. Can I have vendor links in the catalog item for different options that I want to offer? The goal is to not have to complete a request for each option and to all the options selected in one request.

[deanarrington]

Further clarification. Link catalog item variable options to a specific vendor item.

We want to us variables on the catalog item to link to the correct vendor item associated with the model. 

[Jenner Guzman]

In some scenarios, the line between Incident and Request is very thin. Aside the case of password reset that we discussed in class, how should we classify "How to" questions, for example, "How can I set the printer area in Excel?". There is no troubleshooting involved to answer that question but just a series of steps to follow.  Is it a Request or is it an Incident?

PS: Please do not start the answer with "It depends 🙂 "

[deanarrington]

How are companies tracking work to help customers configure a headset, etc. These are not incidents and we wouldn't want them entered as requests. This is people calling the Help/Service Desk because they may perceiving something is working right, when really they just need help setting it up or using it.

[User192788]

Knowledge Management is the best application that can handle these types of questions. You can create different knowledge articles providing the step-by-step procedures to assist your users.

[Todd Schlett]

Great suggestion.  Thanks.  Go Broncos! 😉

[Jenner Guzman]

Yes, of course Knowledge Management serves this purpose as so does Learning. However, even the most robust Knowledge Base and Learning Program will not filter out the totality of "How to" questions raised to the Service Desk. In this sense, my question is from a pragmatical perspective. We still need to define whether "How to" questions are Incidents or Request begins. That is my question.

[ChristinaMiller]

In baseline ServiceNow, there is an incident category of 'Inquiry / Help'.  A lot of organizations use this category and have the agent immediately mark the incident as resolved. 

There is also an option of having agents create call records which can be thought of as an interceptor of sorts. It allows for an agent to track & document the interaction with the customer and then decide if an incident, request, etc. should be created from that interaction. To learn more about Service Desk Call, check out our product document site: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/service-desk/concept/c_...

[ChristinaMiller]

Hey James!

You are more than welcome to post comments and questions here, but I believe you are actually in 505 🙂 Here is the community page for our room:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=89707332db01ff04200f0b55ca961...

[ChristinaMiller]

In baseline ServiceNow, there is an incident category of 'Inquiry / Help'.  A lot of organizations use this category and have the agent immediately mark the incident as resolved. 

There is also an option of having agents create call records which can be thought of as an interceptor of sorts. It allows for an agent to track & document the interaction with the customer and then decide if an incident, request, etc. should be created from that interaction. To learn more about Service Desk Call, check out our product document site: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/service-desk/concept/c_...

[Michael Lee1]

Curious to know what others are doing in the way of notifying fulfillers that the caller of a request has commented the RITM? When you assign SCTASKs to fulfillers as opposed to RITMs, there is no specific fulfiller to notify on the RITM. Is there a best practice way of handling this? 

[Keith Couch]

Problem Management - what did Aaron say about a Madrid plugin?  I didnt follow that...

[jason_marcell]

Simple answer for my company is we assign the RITM and the SCTSK to the person doing the work.  Where this gets grey are RITMs that have multiple SCTSK assigned to different people.  One person owns the RITM and we put the "workers" on the watchlist of the RITM.  The owner of the ticket is responsible to respond back to the user or find out the answer for the users question or update.

[James _J_R__ Mc]

Thanks!  

[Mark Maness]

The 3 C's of Data Maturity

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=228da669dbd0dbc01dcaf3231f9619fb

[JonathanJacob]

In the Madrid release Problem has quite a number of new features. See https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-release-notes/page/release-notes/it-service-management/pro... for a complete list of all of the new features/changes/and how to activate the new functionality. 

[jonathandrury]

I would argue that this is an incident as from the users perspective it is broken, and doesn't work.  I would create an incident, and put it into the  'Inquiry / Help' category.

[User192788]

List of Components installed with the Problem Management application for Madrid (includes the list of problem roles): https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/problem-management/refe...

[Jan Vromant1]

The comment that was raised about "does it give a 'black eye' to IT?" is spot-on.  At the end of the day, incident management metrics will point to end-user productivity lost because of IT issues and thus becomes an indirect IT score card.  A password reset or a request or an inquiry about "how to" are not pointing to "poor IT" and should not be classified as incidents. 

The comment of Christina points to the need to control these different types of calls.  

[M F]

Rather than it depends how about you decide? 😉 We tend to align requests with something with a predetermined outcome that is repeatable. How to questions rarely fall into this category.

[M F]

This is the best response to this question I have ever read. Thank you!

[deanarrington]

How does the Kepner_trgoe plugin help with problem management?

[ChristinaMiller]

Keep in mind, you can build your reports to filter out Incidents > Inquiry / Help so they don't impact your incident metrics. Similarly, you can have separate metrics specific to Incidents > Inquiry / Help to still track that interaction. 

I think the answer depends on the volume of those types of calls and interactions your organization gets. If that's the majority of the volume of incident records, then the focus should probably be on how to train our customers to leverage the knowledge base and being able to solve their own problems, versus worrying about which record type we are using to track it.

[deanarrington]

Any feedback on this question?

[JonathanJacob]

The "The Kepner Tregoe - Structured Problem Analysis plugin" is now legacy now as of Madrid. 

Per the docs: 

The Problem Management Best Practice — Madrid (com.snc.best_practice.problem.madrid) plugin is updated to provide a better baseline for problem management. The changes are not compatible with the Structured Problem Analysis plugin. There is no migration path from the Structured Problem Analysis plugin to the new Problem Management Best Practice — Madrid plugin. If you have activated the Structured Problem Analysis plugin, you can continue to use the Structured Problem Analysis application. If you have not activated the plugin, it is no longer available.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-service-management-for-the-enterprise/page/product/structu...

However if you subscribe to the methodology of "Kepner Tregoe", they have a Certified 3rd party Application that can be installed via the ServiceNow Store. 

https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/5590c0fb0fdf310072f987ece1050e...

The details of the methodology and how it can advance and assist problem mgmt. can be found here:

https://store.servicenow.com/appStoreAttachments.do?sys_id=81663ee1db3e2f40231df3251d96199a

https://store.servicenow.com/appStoreAttachments.do?sys_id=19667ee1db3e2f40231df3251d961905

https://store.servicenow.com/appStoreAttachments.do?sys_id=59663ee1db3e2f40231df3251d9619d6

https://store.servicenow.com/appStoreAttachments.do?sys_id=e1667ee1db3e2f40231df3251d96193c

[ChristinaMiller]

I am not sure I am following completely, but I think the answer would be to use an order guide for this. Perhaps Aaron can give a demo of that on a break or at the end of the day to see if that answers your question. 

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/service-catalog-managem...

[User192788]

Hi Dean! Sorry, I missed your question. Are you referring to a bundled request? Or just simply having some variables that are hyperlinks which will lead you to another item?

[Brian Harris]

I believe you can also incorporate some of KT's PSDM into the layout of how you gather/sort information on the Problem form but it would be nice if we can customize the Work Notes area to simulate the Spec sheet (IS/IS NOT..).

[mvenema]

Is it possible to add variables like a which are there on a catalog item to a 'predefined' change (the change which is available via the service catalog) to ask extra questions which the requester can add to the request?

[User192788]

In a standard change, what happens is that as soon as you pick a specific type of Standard Change template in your Standard Change Catalog, it will already populate the fields based on your template and lead you to the Change form. You can change/populate other values before you submit the Standard Change.

[mvenema]

You mean, before you submit the form you can add extra values? But is it possible to add extra questions like variables, with answer dependencies on other questions in the same form as like a catalog item? In our way we provide these predefined changes to the end user who is requesting this change via the Service Portal.

[User192788]

Thanks for letting me know that you'll be doing that in the Service Portal. The one I mentioned earlier is the scenario if you'll be submitting a Standard Request in the Platform view.

May I know your reason why you prefer to have this setup? Will you be mapping the responses that we have from the variables to the fields in the Change Request? We have some sort of a workaround for you to add some variables but I would like to make sure that I'm offering the best answer that we can provide depending on your rationale.

[User192788]

CAB Workbench Overview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeHl2q4RZs4

[User192788]

ITSM Value Realization Webinar Episode on the CAB Workbench: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmnXoxPc-QQ

[deanarrington]

No worries. I mean having variables that are hyperlinks which will lead you to other items and add to the request.

[Keith Couch]

Question on CAB - does OOB provide support for multiple CABs - eg for infrastructure versus various application groups - or does it assume one CAB for the entire instance?

[Todd Schlett]

Can someone provide the inclusive list of snow releases, in order?  I can see the release notes on what's new in each, but not the order in which they became available.

[User192788]

You can have multiple CAB in your instance. Go to your "Change > Change Advisory Board > CAB Definition" and you can create multiple CABs from this module. You can then define the occurrence of the CAB meetings for this definition and dynamically filter the Changes that will be discussed per each meeting.