Now Learning is excited to add another community author course to its portfolio! A big welcome to Explore Globalized Architecture Solutioning, from Alex Coope. In this new course, Alex explains the techniques of simplifying globalized processes across countries and geographies while lowering technical debt. The course details the important questions to ask in evaluating your proposed solution. ServiceNow implementers will benefit from completing this course before beginning any ServiceNow localization project.
Alex specializes in ServiceNow solution design and architecture. For over 10 years, he has been a leader in global consultation, coordinating international teams, and global ServiceNow projects. In his current role as Director of Globalized Deployment at ServiceNow, Alex focuses on building out a team to define and communicate best-practice for multi-lingual global deployments of the platform. He and the team also help design and build new tools and solutions to assist in localization efforts.
I recently connected with Alex about his ServiceNow journey and his thoughts on ServiceNow application globalization. Read through our full conversation below! You can also learn more about planning your ServiceNow globalization project using the ServiceNow Customer Success Center - Plan your localization site. Thanks for sharing your experience and guidance with us, Alex!
How did you initially get introduced to ServiceNow?
I first heard about ServiceNow from the Customer perspective via Fred’s Knowledge11 keynote on YouTube. Originally I thought it looked a bit Windows 95’ish, but almost immediately I knew I had to be a part of the journey. The next day I accepted a job at the UK’s first partner. That was February 2012 and I’ve never looked back since.
What is the most important thing you did to advance your ServiceNow career?
Looking back, I would say finding a space to become an SME in. Originally I specialized in the ITOM space as I had a background in CMDB and Network Operations. The reason is, I always had this notion of being a jack of all trades was never optimal so I used it as a fear to push me further. As time progressed I ended up having more fun with other areas of the platform so I started to Deep dive into all sorts of nooks and crannies that grabbed my interest. I somehow settled on UI translations and going through that topic beyond what was at face value and learning all of the intricacies of it (how it worked, how it could be leveraged, what were its limitations and how it could be expanded etc) so I could make a plan to use it even going so far as to develop some small apps. Basically, I wanted to get to it’s pure fundamentals and understand what it takes to make it bend to my will, and that takes time, dedication and lots and lots of patience.
What advice would you give someone implementing a ServiceNow application across multiple countries and geographies?
This is a great question, because the answer has nothing to do with the technology. It’s all about the people aspects. In that, on a multi-national / multi-lingual project / program, there will always be lots of voices – potentially overwhelming at times. You’ll have many regional stakeholders who “need” to get their message across and getting everything aligned to the common vision of the Project is the main challenge. Ultimately it comes down to ensuring everyone is given the opportunity to say what they feel is important (this will help with emotional buy-in later on), then getting the entire group of stakeholders to align to a common goal (which means compromises to each person’s personal vision somewhere), and rationalizing all of the various geo-differences into a more common holistic approach in order to simplify things. So, be a good listener, be prepared to offer options, keep things as simple as possible because they can always be iterated on further down the line. That way, when it gets close to go-live, all the regional stakeholders are super engaged, super happy and proactively helping making go-live a lot less stressful. To keep those stakeholders engaged throughout, make them part of a “Pilot Group” for iterative testing, incorporate their feedback in the development process (e.g. the odd tweak of a form based on their feedback etc) because then they feel that they’ve been a part of the design and the solution and will become your champions, directly & positively impacting early adoption.
What is often the most misunderstood aspect of globalizing a ServiceNow application?
Without a doubt, it has to be that there’s an assumption that translations just sit on top of the original design, which sadly just isn’t the case. Depending on the languages being implemented, there could be functionality and / or UI design implications. E.g. imagine a filter for a portal based on letters of the alphabet, which would be great in English but useless in a language like Japanese or Greek because they have different alphabets. Or, even imagery and colour. For example, highlighting someone’s name in red in South Korea implies that person is dead. So it’s super important to incorporate the various geo needs as part of the design from the very beginning because it could expose some legal requirements, or cultural requirements which in-turn might actually impact the design of the solution in some way. And if the design isn’t suitable for the target audience, it will directly impact the adoption post go-live.
What have been some of your favorite changes in the area of ServiceNow globalization over the years?
I think for me, it would be two fairly small features that were added to the Tokyo release and one really big feature added in the Quebec release.
The two smaller features actually took years to design and implement. The first being the change for the “id” field on the [sys_language] table. Originally it was a 2-digit (ISO 639-1) code (imagine “en” for English and “es” for Spanish), which meant we actually had some limitations as to the number of languages we could actually add to the platform. So we changed the design to now be 5 digits and support BCP-47 codes (which basically are “locale” codes such as en_GB being English in Great Britain or en_US being English in the US). This one change means that technically speaking we (and our Customers) can add any language or locale they wish. Such as “Mexican Spanish” which would be es_MX.
The other feature for me is the ability to switch languages when you’re not logged in, which is a huge requirement for the CSM portal. Over the years, I’ve seen people try and hack the “Guest” user, but the problem with that approach is that it causes a contradiction when more than one person needs it at the same time and I’ve also seen some where the Guest user has been deleted entirely (please don’t do this as it will break things). So we went back to the drawing board and rewrote how unauthenticated users leverage languages in the UI and it can now persist if necessary.
The bigger feature added to the Quebec release was the “Localization Framework”. This came about because spreadsheets are horrible when it comes to translations, and knowing how to identify every string that makes up that experience took too much time and was prone to error. If we could rationalize the ask into what we call an “artifact” then we would be able to present what strings (when correctly externalized) make up that experience. The first version came out in Quebec, with each release expanding on it. Now it’s possible to pretty easily translate the entire UI of a Service Portal, Catalog Items, Email Notifications, KB’s, and even Workspaces. Our objective when we were designing it was to make it the central place for any translation activity simply because what-ever it is that you are translating is essentially the same type of activity.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the ServiceNow community?
Oh this is a tough one. I think it might be a 50/50 between everyone is always keen to share what they know for the benefit of the community, vs there’s always something new to learn. Meaning, whilst I have been a part of it for 10+ years, I still find even now that there’s something new I learn every day. Or at the very least I come to the realization that I could tackle an old problem with a new way, whether that’s because of a new feature available or a new technique. But, if I can share what I know and people find that helpful to them, then that’s always a win.
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So, who will be the next Now Learning community author? How about you? Do you have content that would benefit from an expanded reach? Is it something that would complement the existing Now Learning curriculum or help develop different personas critical to the success of ServiceNow projects? Contact nowlearningcommunity@servicenow.com for details on bringing your content into Now Learning to help power the future of ServiceNow training innovation!
