Overview

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ServiceNow is a subscription-based Enterprise Application-Platform-as-a Service. Core ownership, maintenance, and development of the platform rests with IT Services, but as the platform is extensible, many other IT / non-IT units have expressed interest in using the system to help manage their work. The following information is intended to be an introduction to the platform and communicate our basic tenets in managing the program.

Steps to Take

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The following explains how to join the UC San Diego ServiceNow Instance:

In order to determine the scope, timeline, and feasibility of entry into the system, we ask some basic initial questions of groups interested in joining the system. Please review this collab page before submitting.

Please provide the following information about your organization on the Contact ServiceNow form:

• Primary contact (name, phone, email)
• Group(s) or department(s)
• For licensing purposes, please provide a list of fulfillers (agents) you would like in the system. If the total list is uncertain, please provide an estimated number.
• Please describe any additional expectations you have outside of standard case management
• Current platform for this workflow (Kayako, ZenDesk, Outlook emails)

The Now Platform

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At the core of ServiceNow is the NOW platform, the collection of core services, user experiences, and development tools used for service management.

UC San Diego makes use of Customer Service Management (CSM) and the core IT Service Management (ITSM) suite of applications:

• Customer Service Management
• Customer Contact (Triage of incoming customer emails and calls)
• Incident & Major Incident Management
• Service Request Management
• Knowledge Management
• Problem Management
• Hardware Asset Management
• Performance Analytics

Service Portal	Agent View
The Service Portal is an end-user focused view. Clients can log in, view their tickets, peruse the knowledge base, and use the request catalog to order things. The service portal is designed to deliver clients the information they need in an easy to use, mobile-friendly format.	The Agent view is where agents work and respond to tickets. This view is not accessible to customers and contains a lot more detail. Agents can make use of custom lists, reporting, and visual charts to see their work.

Important Considerations 

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Cost

ServiceNow licensing fees are on a per-agent basis based upon the total number of agents in an organization, and can be discussed prior to onboarding.

Configurations & Customization

The ServiceNow team has configured ServiceNow to a baseline. If you are looking to start using ServiceNow, the team will work with you to determine how well this baseline fits your current business process, and what sort of modifications may need to be made in order to ensure your business process aligns with the tool and the other groups using it. There are two categories of modifications in ServiceNow: Configuration, and Customization.

Configuration is the preferred method of modifying ServiceNow. Configurations include modifying the visibility of fields of the form, showing a different set of categories, showing differing branding on notifications, applying organization-specific SLAs to incidents, and are additions to the underlying structure of the ServiceNow application.

Customizations, unlike configurations, are fundamental changes to how a ServiceNow application functions. As a general rule of thumb, we do not customize the tool, as this breaks security patches and platform upgrades on the component we customized. These modified components must be tested manually, and as more and more components are brought online, this exponentially grows the testing load.

For more information about the baseline state, and what can / can't be modified, please see the following information:

• User Manual - Support.ucsd.edu Knowledge Base

Open Door Policy

Through experience, we've determined that attempting to restrict visibility to tickets that are assigned to other organizations creates more problems than it solves. The default state of ServiceNow allows visibility throughout all groups using the system, and places restrictions only when absolutely required.  

Platform Upgrades

As a cloud platform, ServiceNow currently releases two major platform updates per year. Platform updates often include subtle changes to the User Interface, addition of new features, etc. The admin team looks at release notes and does their best to determine if any of the modules we're using will be affected by a platform update but we are often unable to catch everything. We invite our agents and partners to assist us with testing prior to major releases.

The ServiceNow team currently schedules updates as soon as they are available to remain current and ensure the most up-to-date features for our users and agents.

Governance

As a shared tool, we need to be mindful of the configurations we make, as they have the potential to affect other groups. To that end, we have a governance framework in place that we use to evaluate requests for changes to the tool and prioritize development work. As a partner, you will have representation on the governance panel.