ITSM Highlights in the Madrid Release

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It’s 2019!  Mobile is not an option. DevOps investments are continuing to grow. Service management is not just about routine services, but about delivering stellar experiences. The new generation employees (millennials and Gen Z account for more than 50% of the workforce) expect those stellar experiences as they seamlessly switch between their personal and work lives, and slowing down is not an option either. That is why we are continuing to invest in things that matter to you in order to make your work life easy. Here are the highlights from our Madrid release.

Upgrades!!

Before I dive into the core Madrid highlights, I want to touch briefly on Upgrades.

Our customers spend the time and effort to upgrade to the latest releases, so we are investing in making upgrades easy, painless and quick. Madrid is bringing you Automated Testing Framework. Automated Testing Framework or ATF helps you validate baseline functionality when upgrading to a new release. ATF will make your upgrades smoother, helping validate that your instance works correctly after upgrades. Get on the Madrid release and start taking advantage of this capability for your future upgrades.

Here are the 4 key Madrid updates

1. Agent Workspace
2. Mobile App
3. A new and improved Problem Management
4. Change Management Automation (for DevOps)

1. Agent Workspace

Service desk agents are awesome. They love helping employees and like to multi-task, trying to resolve multiple issues at the same time. However concurrently working on multiple issues means that agents have to switch in and out of various incidents, juggling multiple windows, searching various sources for answers, and sometimes, recreating the resolution for an incident that another agent already solved.  This slows agents down and increases the scope for rework and reassignments. The agents’ effectiveness is limited by a system that is not built for efficiency leaving customers frustrated about simple requests taking several days to get answered. Thankfully, this is completely changing with Madrid. We now have Agent Workspace.

This is a single-pane view of everything the Agent needs to resolve the issue. Take a look at the screenshot below. Let me point to a few important features in this UI.

A.Multiple records: When an incident (or other record) is open, other records such as user details, assets, are opened in sub-tabs, allowing contextual switching between the records.  This greatly improves usability and efficiency.

B. A heads-up ribbon gives agents a quick view of critical incident information such as key user details, the timeline, and SLA achievement

C. Activity Feed presents real-time updates on the issue so agents always have the latest information.

D. Agents get contextual help pulled from KB articles, community, social Q&A etc. In addition, built-in Machine Learning detects Major Incidents or finds similar Incidents that can aid in resolution. Machine learning requires subscription to ITSM Pro.

ServiceNow built this feature based on a deeper understanding of how service desk agents like to get work done. Our design team spent time looking over the shoulders of real world service desk agents in developing this feature.

2. Mobile app

If you have been using our old mobile app, it’s time to upgrade to the new Service Now mobile app – ServiceNow Agent. This new app is built for mobile and lets you take actions with simple gestures and swipes. You can swipe to approve a request, reassign tasks, add comments or take actions on incidents assigned to you. Madrid also comes with ServiceNow® Mobile Studio which makes it easy to build mobile apps without coding. More on Mobile Studio will come in a future blog.

     

3. Change Automation enhancements

For companies investing in DevOps, we are bringing greater automation to change management so it aligns with your pace of DevOps. Speed and agility are important for DevOps, and Change Management needs to align with it to ensure appropriate checks and balances are in place.

• Madrid brings OOB Rest APIs for you to integrate your CI/CD – continuous integration, continuous deployment – pipeline with ServiceNow. This will make it easier for you to integrate your DevOps toolchain with ServiceNow Change Management.
• Change approvals can now be automated with simple configuration. By configuring even normal and emergency changes to not require approvals as long as they meet certain criteria, you can move changes quickly to keep up the pace for DevOps.
• Finally, maintaining that history of changes is critical to better governance. You will have a clear audit trail which is a must for better governance.

Want to go deeper into these change management enhancements. Check out these three blogs by Jason Occhialini, the product owner.

1. Change Approval Policies - Blogs - ServiceNow Community
2. Using Change Approval Policies - Blogs - ServiceNow Community
3. Applying Change Approval Policies to DevOps - Blogs - ServiceNow Community

4. A new and improved Problem Management

We are including more best practices out of the box so you can be effective with problem management from Day One.

• The old version had four states the Problem could be in (Open, Pending Change, Known Error and Closed). The new process has states that more closely reflect the process (i.e., New, Assess, Root Cause Analysis, Fix in Progress, Resolved, Closed) allowing for greater flexibility in the management of Problems
• A single click generates a Knowledge Base article (a Known Error Article) and makes it available to end users to deflect incidents.
• The Problem record seamlessly updates Incident and Change records so everyone is on the same page with respect to the status of the issue.

Note: If you don’t have Problem Management implemented yet, Madrid Problem Management is a great way to start with built-in best practices.

However, if you already have ServiceNow Problem Management implemented, you will receive an update on the migration path for problem management in Madrid. 

If you want to know more about the Problem Management in Madrid, here are three blogs from Matt Lloyd, the Product Owner.

1. Problem Management – The feedback that led to the Madrid baseline
2. Problem Management – What’s new in Madrid
3. Problem Management – Upgrade path for existing customers

Key Enhancements in Madrid

I want to round off this blog with a quick blurb on the key enhancements we are bringing.

• Virtual Agent: The London release in September last year brought one of our most awaited offering – the ServiceNow® Virtual Agent to the market. In Madrid, we are adding more conversations OOB and making it easier to design your own chat bot conversations.
  
• Walk Up Experience: Customers loved Walk-Up experience in London. We added the capability to schedule future appointments in Madrid.
• Continual Improvement Management: We are adding Coaching Loops to enable personnel that are part of the workflow to get prompt feedback and coaching when needed. Coaching Loops automate the process of assessment, coaching and feedback, thereby increasing engagement and improving performance.
• On-call scheduling: The new and improved UI makes it easy for On-call managers as well as members to quickly mobilize resources, manage shifts and schedules and define custom escalations as needed – all from within a single interface.

Please refer to ServiceNow docs for details on these capabilities.  We hope you upgrade soon to take advantage of all investments we are making for you. Please talk to your account rep about Madrid. Feel free to post questions or comments below.

See you soon at Knowledge 19? 🙂

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