Request Approval not requiring a Business Stakeholder Licence

[Amanda Pharaoh]

I am looking for some information on how approving a request directly from an email does not require the use of a Business Stakeholder Licence. We are new to ServiceNow but i was told that this can be done which would be a large cost saving to us.

Any Help, Advice or Guidance would be gratefully accepted  

[Scott Hemmings]

It's also seeing what over tools you have at your disposal.

An idea I had a while back was creating an integration into the MS Teams Approval app so the approval user in ServiceNow would be a service account, but adding a comment on to the RITM to show who we'd asked to approve the request in Teams.  Then have Teams (via Power Automate) send a response back once approved so you can progress with the task creation.

Not sure if there's anything about that method that ServiceNow would exclude in your contract terms.

[Kevin DSilva]

I would add that those sorts of license avoidance methods (service accounts and email based license avoidance etc) will get pulled up in SN Use Verification reports. 

@Amanda Pharaoh, My advice is that customers should have a conversation with their ServiceNow account team and as opposed to routes such as these.

[Kevin DSilva]

@Joe Humphries should be able to help you @Amanda Pharaoh 

[Ryan Duce]

One way I have often seen this done is to include a "My line manager has approved this request" checkbox on each catalog item that requires it, along with an optional attachment field for the employee to upload the manager's approval email.

This is not a licence avoidance practice so is completely above board, but is obviously not as good an experience as providing business stakeholder licences to approvers so they can approve using the native UI / notifications and full visibility of what is being requested as standard.

Another strategy is to take a "my line manager approves by default" assumption to IT catalog requests.

I crunched the numbers on one client in the past and got a 97% approval rate for requests approved by a direct line manager, who often approved from the service portal homepage without looking at the request in detail.

Often the rejections came from a second-line approval, e.g. an application management or L2 service desk team, who have itil by default and are more aware of backend processes and data to make an informed decision on whether to approve.

[Aly Skidmore1]

Hi all, SNUG committee here.

We love the fact that you are using the Community site to support each other’s problem solving, but please bear in mind that your licenses represent a legally binding agreement between your company and ServiceNow.

We strongly recommend that any further discussions regarding the terms of licensing for approvals is taken up with your account team of or, if you are an Impact Customer, your Impact squad.

Thanks and have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes Aly