ServiceNow Tutorial

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Introduction

The change is constant in any field. The process which we used yesterday may become outdated tomorrow. We have seen so many disruptions till now.  Technology is one which changes regularly to become a better version of itself. In the mean process, many industries would be disrupted. Technologies disruptive technologies are automation, machine learning, IOT, Blockchain etc. It becomes quite difficult for the companies to survive with the outdated technology; it slow downs the process. Other activities like IT incidents, HR cases, customer requests all together will add more slow down to the process.

To automate all these processes, we need a tool to eliminate all these problems and to speed up the workflow. ServiceNow is one such kind of technology which contributes to achieving your business goal. In this ServiceNow tutorial blog, we are going to cover up with different concepts of this cloud platform. Let’s get into the details without wasting much time.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is a software platform which is designed to support IT service management (ITSM). It enables the organizations in automating the IT Business Management (ITBM).  This cloud tool is developed based on Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) guidelines.

ServiceNow is being developed to focus on service-oriented tasks, process and activities. It uses machine learning as an ingredient to leverage data and workflows and to speed up the various methods, which enables organizations in heading towards the attaining business goals.

It offers the flexibility, power, and dependability which helps organizations in solving the problem associated with IT management.  Today ServiceNow is equipped with the Apps for IT service management process, and IT Enterprise such as Security management, HR Management, and Project Portfolio Management (PPM), etc.

Below mentioned are the features which made it famous.

• Easy customisation
• Instance-based implementation
• Real-time analysis and reporting
• Cost effective and tremendous support      

History of ServiceNow:

Fred Luddy found ServiceNow in 2004.  Before he started ServiceNow, he worked as CTO for Peregrine Sytems and Remedy Corporation. ServiceNow is headquartered in San Diego. CA  offices throughout the US, Asia, Australia, and customers from around 48 countries.

Historical milestones:

• Named as ServiceNow in 2006
• In 2007 they opened their first Silicon Valley office    
• In 2011 they made a partnership with Accenture
• In 2012 it became a publicly traded company with US$ 210 million IPO.
• In 2017 ServiceNow acquired a Telepathy a UX UI company.

Release cycles:

ServiceNow typically has a 10-12 month release cycle.  Every time it comes up with the new cycle it launches new UI, apps, and updated features.  They also facilitate the hotfix patch release to address maintenance issues.

Why companies require ServiceNow?

It is a very powerful tool which enables the organization in designing future-oriented patterns to eliminate the outdated ones. ServiceNow platform creates a place where every employee, customer, or machine which related to a company can request by using this single cloud platform. Different departments who are working on these requests can assign, prioritise and collaborate to identify the issues and to gain knowledge to find the problems creatively.  It brings improvements in employee performance, and your service levels will spike eventually. serviceNow makes your work Faster and better than ever before.

Areas of Implementation

Below mentioned are the areas where ServiceNow being implemented in an organization.

IT:

ServiceNow takes your IT services to the optimal level by transforming the old consolidated tools into modern cloud technology. It improves the agile tradition so that the flexibility factor will increase automatically.

Security:

ServiceNow acts as a guard for the security with the help of collaboration of security concerns with IT.  It uses Structured response engine to identify and to resolve the threats based on service impact.

Customer service:

Customer service helps in decreasing the no of cases to down and increases customer loyalty in companies products and services.  It always checks the product quality in real time and works across the departments to quickly resolve the customer related issues.

HR:

It enhances the HR related activities with Self-Service portals, which enables them to get the insights out of it to make continuous improvements in service delivery.

Building business applications:

ServiceNow helps all kinds of departments to build applications fastly, and it also automates the processes by eliminating the redundancy. It inserts enables the departments to think creatively to innovate new process.     

Now Platform:

Now the platform is very transparent and readily applicable to any organization. It uses a single data model it eases the process of creating contextual workflows and automates any process. It doesn’t demand any professionalism to operate it; any one from user level to professional can quickly build the applications at light speed. Now platform ats as a user guide for the people who ever engage with the applications in any form, one can easily find the information in the knowledge bases and notified with the information, that they are looking for. It enables the Various departments, workgroups to easily identify the areas where issues arise and construct the actions plan to solve. Now platform contributes its part in making your business fast enough.   

Non-stop Cloud:

The ServiceNow cloud always in on mode and it’s never taken down for any reason. Its multi-instance architecture makes sure that each customer is able to customize their clouds services and performs upgrades on their schedule. It is highly secured and satisfies global compliances.   Its industry-leading high-availability infrastructure makes sure redundancy in between two datacenter clusters in a geographical area, to meet the needs of large enterprises.

Who uses ServiceNow?

Below stakeholders are the ones who use this service now to achieve their goals.  

Administrators:  ServiceNow helps the management administration user access, responsibilities and privilege management.  

Employees: they use it to request their IT-related business services.

Developers: These people use this to create new functionality with scripts to work beyond the standard configurations.

Implementers: These people use this to deploy the various applications and features that fulfil the needs of an organization.  

IT support Team: These people use this to manage the incidents and service request.  

Products of ServiceNow:

ServiceNow delivers the range of products which are designed by keeping the various requirements of an organization in mind. Let’s discuss what are the products of ServiceNow in detail.

• IT service automation application
• Business Management application
• Custom Service Management
• HR Management
• Enterprise Security Response Engine.

IT Service Automation Application:

This ServiceNow product brings transparency into the system into End-to-end business services by understanding the relationship with underlying resources. It also enables the organizations being aware of the service health and brings down the Event loss time by instantly identifying the system.

Business management application:  

IT Business management tool is a strategic planning tool. It will let you focus on the areas where development is required, and it allows planning time and resource to develop that particular process.

Customer service Management:

This tool Integrates customer service with various other departments to identify and resolve customer related issues for achieving customer satisfaction. It reduces the costs that are associated with customer handling and thereby improves efficiency.

HR Management:

This tool is specifically designed for meeting the needs of employees. It allows organizations to improve employee satisfaction. It is the single most point of access for delivering personalised services to an employee. HR management tool delivers services such as examining various services like improving HR productivity, streamline employee transaction and service delivery.  

Enterprise Security Response Engine:

This performance analytics tool integrates all internal security tools in an organization. This will in return helps you in acting fast enough on the vulnerabilities of your business. This tool boosts the efficiency of security concern. Security response engine reduces the time spent on performing the necessary tasks.  

ServiceNow Capabilities:

Below listed things are the capabilities of ServiceNow which separate it from other similar tools and place on the top of all.  

Authentication:

It has the Single-Sign-on (SSO) same like any other similar tools, but this tool is built with multiple provider SSO features. An organisation can use several SSO IDPs (IDentity providers) by using the ServiceNow tool to maintain authentication. SSO allows authentication to a candidate into the system without requiring User ID and password.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

Companies use active directory every commonly for various purposes, such as maintaining outlook distribution list or providing access to applications, etc. It is considered as a piece of cake of ServiceNow tool, and the best feature is that it doesn’t require to code for anything.  Here in this, it is quite easy to make configurations with this tool.

Orchestration       

ServiceNow helps the organizations with a capability to orchestrate or to automate the simple or complex tasks which have to be performed at remote locations.  After implementation of orchestration in an IT company the complex functions are eliminated and can be managed by the less skilled people. It automates various tasks such as Microsoft Exchange mail servers, VMware, etc.

Web Services:

ServiceNow platform allows the organizations with a capability of consuming or publishing API at the same time.  WSDL, REST, or SOAP API’s are the protocols supported by this platform. It is up to you whether you want to create codeless API or Scripted ones.

Enterprise Portal

Web portal plays a vital aspect of any organizations, it enables the user to request access, support or service. It acts a powerpoint to various organization.  Nowadays organizations are using ServiceNow tool to develop their own ServicePortal to showcase their capabilities. ServicePortal replaced CMS, and it was the old version of the portal, but it is not capable enough like ServicePortal.

Mobile Ready

It is challenging to find a person without a mobile phone, and the organizations are taking this as an opportunity to delivers their products and services. Companies want an enterprise application/service/solution which is a mobile-friendly.  They need an application which should have the capability to make changes on the go. ServiceNow fills this requirement with its mobile-friendly applications and enables publishing directly to the mobile directly without making any changes done for mobile.  ServiceNow supports web-based applications for IOS and Android.

ServiceNow Certification:

ServiceNow has gained popularity as one of the leading ITSM tools available today. It takes care of the IT infrastructure and manages the business. As its applications are increasing the career opportunities rapidly as well. The industry needs candidates who have the skills to manage it effectively. Having certification in ServiceNow makes you out of the crowd in getting the job.

Best Practices of Using ServiceNow:  

Below are the aspects that one should have in mind before implementing ServiceNow technology in their organization.  

• The primary motive behind implementing ServiceNow is to automate the all business process.
• You should be ready to cope up with the new work environment after implementing the ServiceNow.
• The main focus should be to improve the business structure and automate the workflow to attain the efficiency in service delivery.
• You are required to replace emails and spreadsheets with ServiceNow collaborative workspaces.

Benefits of Having certification:    

1. Companies are in search of people who have certifications to witness smoother deployments and can be able to handle the ServiceNow.  
2. Certification takes you next level in your career growth and helps in contributing to the success of an organization.
3. Having certification in ServiceNow will make you professional, gives you industry recognition, higher productivity, and results.

Types of Certifications in ServiceNow

• Certified System Administrator (CSA)
• Certified Implementation Specialist (CIS)
• Certified Application Developer (CAD)
• Certified Application Specialist (CAS)

Endnotes:

Till now we have seen the various applications of ServiceNow and how it can solve multiple problems of an organization.  ServiceNow is continuing its journey to contribute its share for the IT and thereby to solve the problems of organizations in the possible effective way. I hope this tutorial has given you a brief idea about what is ServiceNow and what it is used for. Happy learning!