As the community moderator and your personal tour guide of our fabulous town of information, I often receive questions regarding the best way to "get my hands dirty" with the our service. Little do people know that ServiceNow offers a ton of free and interactive resources. ServiceNow and its partners have created webinars, videos and specific instances to help you improve your process and broaden your knowledge.

Our last Community Maven Appreciation Day saw two of our biggest CMAD veterans reach the top again for the second week. This time, a newcomer from the Netherlands has been up and active helping those with questions on the community and has surpassed some of our CMAD veteran champions.

Due to Knowledge13 last week, I was unable to tally-up and put together a CMAD post for all of you, so this one is a week late. So for the next CMAD post, it will be two weeks from today. I took into consideration questions answered from the past three weeks since I was unable to get you guys the stats on time last week Friday.

Now lets have an obligatory stadium stomp for our Community Mavens….

You know the saying, "don't judge a book by its cover?" Well, regardless of how popular that phrase is, we all do it. On the Community, your profile is technically your cover. People often overlook the importance of a quality profile on social networks and the Community. Think of your profile summary as your table of contents, and your activity on the Community as the pages within. There are a few small things you can do to enhance your Community profile and make sure you are capable of connecting with as many people in your network as possible.

Last time, Community Maven Appreciation Day saw three of the Community's members come out on top to be crowned Community Maven. With Knowledge13 almost here, everyone on the community has been buzzing with questions and providing answers. I am honored to recognize our Community Mavens for the outstanding participation and handwork to make the Community the go-to place to have all of your ServiceNow questions addressed.

May I have a drum roll for our honorary Community Mavens….

Less than two weeks ago, I had the honor of being a speaker at HDI Conference 2013, held in Las Vegas. It was the first time I attended that particular conference. I learned a lot and had a blast.

I've spoken at various venues before, but in terms of events in our industry (IT Service Management), Knowledge12 was my debut, and since then, I had the opportunity to present at the Excellence In Service Management event held in August and the November San Diego LIG meeting of itSMF USA. HDI 2013 was definitely the first big, non-ServiceNow hosted, conference I've spoken at. The theme of the conference was "License to Learn". I learned a lot, and hopefully contributed to other people's learning as well.

HDI 2013 featured several keynotes by big name speakers (such as Steve Wozniak), but there's no need to summarize those here since their work is already well known and easily available.

There were several ServiceNow customers who presented at the conference as well, and I wanted to highlight one in particular:

I don't know about all of you, but Community Manager Lawrence and I are very excited for Knowledge13 in May. We hope you are just as excited as we are. As suggested by ServiceNow Product Manager John Roberts, we've put together some signature banners for all of you who are going to attend Knowledge13 in Las Vegas on May 12-16.

Because we believe in giving you options, we have created 2 banners for you to choose from.

HTML:
<a href="http://knowledge.servicenow.com"><img src="http://community.servicenow.com/files/shared/k13-signature01.png"></a>

That is short for Community Maven Appreciation Day, in case you were confused. Our last Community Maven Appreciation Day celebrated some of our top commenters for the week or so. What a crazy two weeks it has been. You have all done such a splendid job of helping each other out, but only a few can make the ranks.

Forums have a bad reputation of being the dinosaurs of the social media world, having been around since the earliest days of the Internet. With profiles, avatars, usernames, the ability to chat and comment on people's thoughts, updates and opinions; forums are essentially the prototype for sites like Myspace and Facebook.

If there is one thing my dad has taught me is sometimes new doesn't mean better. My dad has a love of all things 80s and early 90s; he revels in music by Michael Jackson, Elton John, Culture Club, and The Bangles. He continued to use a typewriter well into 2009 because he liked the feeling of the keys hitting the paper. He continues to pay his bills by mail, rather than online banking, and his cell phone has a QWERTY keyboard and no picture messaging. It is safe to say, though, that my dad might be on to something. With technology always evolving, sometimes keeping it basic is more beneficial for the user.

"Internet troll," "spammers" and "bots" are all forum terms I am familiar with, but forum lurker is relatively new to me. Apparently, a forum lurker is the type of forum member that sits back and watches what everyone else posts but never posts, likes, or comments within the forum. Sounds like you? You are not alone. I was once a group discussion lurker..

Our last Community Maven Appreciation Day celebrated some of our top commenters for the week or so. I have come up for a system for this holiday in that it will occur every other Friday and I will consider all of the questions marked as "answered" from the last Community Appreciation Day to the day before the post goes up (Thursday).

I don't know about you but it always makes me a tad bit giddy knowing I am being recognized for something. So here are our Community Mavens ! Give them a cyberspace round of applause!

In the age of ever-changing social media platforms there seems to always be a new "it" social site to be a part of. Yet through the ages, the one form of social networking that has held its own has been the internet forum. Forums are simply a realm for people to chat, discuss, pose questions and assist others about topics they are interested in. For the veteran members of the ServiceNow Community, it is easier for you to grasp the necessity of the Community and utilize it appropriately.

Hi all,

Recently, we changed the way our public demo system ( https://demo.service-now.com ) works, and it has prompted numerous questions on the Community.

Here's some information regarding the change, posted on behalf of my colleague Keyvan:

Effectiveas of March 22, 2013, the ServiceNow public demo system (demo.service-now.com) has been implemented with security access controls to improve the demonstration experience for our first time and returning visitors.

Thank you,
Keyvan Berenjian
ServiceNow Product Marketing

Dear ServiceNow Community,

We want to thank you for all of your responses to this thread. The feedback we received on this topic has provided us with visibility that we had very little of before. The public demo site (demo.service-now.com) fulfilled a valid need for our customers.....in simply the wrong location. You all understood the reasoning behind our decision to regain control of our website presence, and made some great suggestions on how to solve the sandbox issue, all of which we placed on the discussion table.

Through the ServiceNow community, demofeedback@servicenow.com, and various other channels, we reviewed each and every one of your comments and suggestions, and determined that we will be returning sandbox access to you. This new customer sandbox will NOT be available through demo.service-now.com, but through another location to be determined.

We understand that easy access to a sandbox environment empowers you to be ServiceNow champions within your organization, and we appreciate your involvement as a member of the ServiceNow community.

We have prioritized this project and will provide further details very soon.

If you have any questions or comments in the mean time, please feel free to reply here or e-mail at demofeedback@servicenow.com.

Cheers,
Keyvan Berenjian - Product Marketing
ServiceNow

Hi Community!

My name is Bianca Vaccarini and I am going to be your guys' new online community moderator, taking over for Katharine Sohler. Katy has taken on a new role as our videographer. I will be working with Lawrence Eng to help make your experience using ServiceNow a good one.

Hi all,

For a long time, we've been enforcing a policy requiring that prospective community members should not use free email accounts when registering on the ServiceNow Community.

We screen all account requests before approving them, which has greatly minimized the amount of spam present on the site. Some of the screening is automated using email blacklists. Since a very high volume of fake account requests have recently been coming from gmail.com addresses, I will be adding gmail.com to the email blacklist.

In addition to preventing new users from using gmail.com addresses, existing members with gmail.com addresses won't be able to log in. As there are a significant number of members from way back who use gmail.com addresses (i.e. before the policy was put in place), we understand this is a significant change. We will flip the switch, disabling gmail.com access at 5pm PDT, Monday, March 11th.

We may do the same in the near future for yahoo.com and other free email providers. Watch the comments below for further announcements along those lines.

If you find yourself unable to log in, please use the contact form here to reach us. If you provide an alternative email address, we can update and unblock your account.

Sorry for any inconvenience that is caused, thanks for your patience, and thank you for your continued participation on the ServiceNow Community.

best regards,
Lawrence

Calling all innovative customers integrating with Event Management systems today!

We are looking for a few of our great customers who would have a dialog with the product management team on what you have done or want to do integrating with one or more event management systems with a focus on:

• Correlation of events to alerts, incidents and problem records in ServiceNow
• Driving ServiceNow’s Orchestration(AKA Runbook Automation) from events
• Dashboards and analytics across events, alerts, incident, problems and changes

Dear ServiceNow Community members,

We are proud to announce the launch of our new Support Portal ( https://support.service-now.com ), a one-stop shop for ServiceNow users to get quick access to our support-oriented web properties: specifically, the ServiceNow Wiki, Community, Knowledge Base, and Technical Support. The site also features a combined documentation and community search.

The portal is fairly simple at the moment, but expect it to evolve into the ideal first destination for getting the answers you need, including (but not limited to) new video tutorials, knowledge content, and known error reporting. To access the portal, look for the top menu link called "Support Home" on the Wiki and "Support" on the Community.

If you notice anything that seems broken, please send me an email at lawrence.eng [at] servicenow.com

Thanks!
-Lawrence

Each week or so, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

It was standing room only at ServiceNow’s recent job fair. Last Thursday night found prospective employees sitting on tables, leaning against walls, and peeking in through the doorway as Fred Luddy, ServiceNow founder, and Arne Josefsberg, ServiceNow CTO, gave their presentations. The speakers shared the story of ServiceNow’s founding, its growth over the years, and introduced the visitors to the ServiceNow platform itself.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

ServiceNow is having a Job Fair!

ServiceNow is having an invitation only open house and job fair at our San Diego headquarters. Fred Luddy, ServiceNow founder, and Arne Josefsberg, ServiceNow CTO, will join us to share the ServiceNow story, market opportunity and to discuss ServiceNow cloud operations and the powerful ServiceNow platform.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

To help you make the most of the Community, we have added a list of Recent Solutions to the right sidebar of the Community. This feature gives community members with a quick way to view the solutions shared by the confirmed answer providers below!

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

To help you make the most of the Community, we have added a list of Recent Solutions to the right sidebar of the Community. This feature gives community members with a quick way to view the solutions shared by the confirmed answer providers below!

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Just a quick heads up:

Earlier this week, we had some scheduled downtime. During that window, we moved the ServiceNow Community onto better hardware in one of our new datacenters. We expect the move will make this site faster and more reliable, and allow us to apply some upgrades we've been planning. Everything else has been kept the same.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

The following is an interview with a community member mentioned on last week's Confirmed Answer Providers list (http://community.servicenow.com/blog/katharinesohler/confirmed-answer-providers-july-27th-2012) .
Can you correctly guess who it is, based on his answers to the interview questions below?

Question one: what is unique about you and your company?

Answer: An indefatigable desire to innovate and make things better.

Question two: if you could do anything you wanted with ServiceNow what would it be?

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, we look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

This month has been a very exciting time for the ServiceNow community. This June, not only did we surpass 25,555 forum posts, but we also surpassed 10,000 users!

Since May of last year, the community has doubled in size.

Congratulations to amirdf for being our ten-thousandth user!

It's been a long time coming, but the Community finally has new badges for ServiceNow employees, partners, and moderators. The purpose of the new badges is to let everyone more easily identify who is writing what on the community.

^*

*We're asking that ServiceNow partners, in particular, should specify which company they're with in their community signature and the "Company" field in their user profile, accessible via the "My account" link in the left sidebar. If anyone needs help with that, please contact me. If you were mistakenly assigned (or not assigned) a badge, we can help you with that too.

cheers,
Lawrence
(contact me)

Each week, I look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Your feedback helps us better serve you! Please take a moment to take the search function poll below.

If you have additional comments about your experience searching for content on the community, feel free to post them below.

Each week, I look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note: Not every question that gets answered on the community is marked as "Answered", but hopefully more people will be encouraged to do so. It provides a very quick way for readers to see if a question requires further work, and whether the person who asked it is satisfied with the response(s) he or she received. Furthermore, it allows us to better recognize the generous and hard work offered by our peers on the community.

Each week, I look at the 20 questions most recently marked as "Answered" and compile a list to see who has been answering them.

Note 1: Leading up to, during, and after the amazing madness that was Knowledge12, we took a break in compiling these stats. Many of the ServiceNow experts who typically answer questions were, like myself, preoccupied by the conference--which was essentially the biggest ServiceNow Local User Group meeting in the universe. A few weeks after Knowledge12, it looks like forum activity has returned to its normal levels.