ServiceNow on AWS

My main use case for ServiceNow  is whenever my work starts, we have a scrum call, and in that scrum call, we generally open the ServiceNow  dashboard to check the number of incidents and number of PRBs that are present. We use ServiceNow to track incidents or resolve most of the tickets that were raised by the user and find out the root cause and provide proper analysis. If anything requires a code change, we let the user know and convert that to a PRB and work on it while applying a patch on it.

ServiceNow helps me track and resolve incidents effectively. For instance, recently, we received a ticket where a person was creating an online claim through an online claim submission portal, but when he was creating it, he did not give an appraisal name, even though an appraisal role was created when that claim was created. That is not a procedural logic that we had written. The user raised an incident stating that the logic was created even though he did not mention the appraisal name. When we checked our integration flow, I found out that it was flowing through Evas' integration flow where if collision coverage was not there, then Evas' integration flow would automatically assign an appraisal name. If an appraisal name is there, then an appraisal is getting created. There is no condition to stop. I told this to the user and then the user agreed and we closed the ticket. ServiceNow allows us to talk with the user, and if anything comes up, we reach out to him via Teams or drop a mail or drop a message in ServiceNow while tagging his name.

There are many things that ServiceNow helps us with. When the morning scrum call starts for us, we check the status of that incident, whether it is assigned or it is on hold waiting for the user or on hold waiting for change, depending on the requirement, and decide what and who should handle which incident so that we can reduce the incident count by the end of the day. I have covered everything that we use ServiceNow for in my main use case and how ServiceNow fits into my daily workflow.

The best feature ServiceNow offers is knowing the status of the incident because whenever we do not really need to go inside that incident and check the messages to identify where we are if we are stopping the work midway and starting that work on that incident on the next day. Knowing the status of that incident is really good. Another interesting feature is if an incident is resolved and we close the ticket, it moves away from our dashboard, which allows the user to reopen the ticket if they think that it is not correct and they want to check more into it. Reopening is what I find very helpful for the users so that they do not have to create new incidents or new tickets; they could just continue with the existing ones. It saves us a lot of time just looking at the dashboard.

The dashboard helps me save time because when we have any call or meeting, most of the delivery leads open up our dashboards and check how many incidents are there, give us target incidents, and make sure that if it is more than the target incident, they ask the reason. Finding out the root cause is very easy because if there are multiple incidents with the same cause, we close the incidents and track them under the parent incident. ServiceNow helps us, and it helps the leads as well to check the status of an employee, such as if every team member is working properly or not because we assign it on their name. We know who is working on which incident today and how many incidents a person has closed. It saves us a lot of time when we are doing this.

Since using ServiceNow, our team efficiency and productivity have increased a lot because we have an evening production support standup call where we tell how many incidents each person has solved, which makes it very easy for the leads to check what the person has done throughout the day in my team. Our efficiency has increased.

On average, if we get fifteen or twenty incidents today and we have four team members, we divide it among ourselves and assign each incident to our name. As soon as it is assigned, the workflow starts, and each person works on their individual task rather than working on another. Without ServiceNow, it might be that two developers are working on the same incident, but they might not know that the other person is working. ServiceNow helps us by assigning to that particular developer's name, so that conflicts do not happen between team members. We save a lot of time by making the developers focus on their related tasks and incidents.

I wish ServiceNow already provides us with a visualization format, but that visualization format is not that well developed; its display quality is a little less compared to what its competitors offer in the market, and the pricing and setup cost are also a little expensive compared to its competitors in the market. I wish it was a little cheaper.

I wish that when the incident is resolved, and if the user does not know how to reopen the incident, whenever they try to message in that closed incident, we would not know because that would have moved from our dashboard. I wish there is some kind of feature where it would ask the user if they want to type a comment in that closed incident. It should ask whether they want to reopen or not. That pop-up feature would be really good because it helps the closed incident to reopen and come back to us rather than them creating another incident.

Everything is really good, but I believe ServiceNow should improve the pricing. If they are costing that much, they should not have any server crashes because we occasionally face server kind of issues when we are moving from one environment to another. Server crashes are expected, but we face server crashes, and the price itself is a little high.

I have been using ServiceNow for over a year.

I occasionally face server downtime issues where I cannot open the dashboard itself, so we often contact customer support.

ServiceNow is very scalable because whenever we get an influx in the number of incidents, it takes it in properly and we are able to sort out. It is able to take in most of the input from the user, so ServiceNow is scalable based on our growing demands.

The customer support from ServiceNow is helpful and responsive; we reach out to customer support often many times, and they are pretty responsive. They even showed us the documentation that they have initially provided so that any of the minor issues that we face could be solved instead of always calling them.

I did not previously use a different solution before ServiceNow; from the start, we were using ServiceNow itself, so we did not really use any other product.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that everything was pretty much smooth because my manager has another management team where they deal with the pricing and licensing, setup costs, and everything. Everything was pretty smooth; we never really faced any sort of issues apart from it being expensive.

ServiceNow offers a great return on investment because it saves us a lot of time and increases the efficiency of team members to complete their tickets and work on the PRBs to solve the root cause. Additionally, we can also identify employee activity from ServiceNow, depending on how many incidents they are trying to solve, which saves a lot of time.

Before choosing ServiceNow, my team did not evaluate other options because we knew that this was a good product and it was best in the field, so we proceeded directly with it instead of wasting time searching for it. We went through proper reviews based on other projects' perspectives and moved ahead with this.

My advice to others looking into using ServiceNow is that if a project or if a project member or any person is trying to solve user issues, you should go with ServiceNow because it is an interactive dashboard that a user can understand easily. It also provides proper, meaningful visualizations so that you would know the status of many incidents, how far in the past month, and how many you resolved. This is the best tool that is in the market.

ServiceNow is really good, and while it might be expensive, it is very beginner-friendly as well because even a new joiner or a fresher could easily understand what is going on by just opening the incident and reading the comments. I find its flexible features such as work notes and comments intriguing because work notes are only visible to developers, while comments are visible to users as well. There are many flexible features, and this is a really good product. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

I use ServiceNow  to manage incident management, change management, enhancements or development needs, and service request management from business users. I use ServiceNow  to manage all incidents, change requests, and service requests to check whether we are performing activities without escalations, acknowledging, assigning tickets, and working tickets according to the priority assigned by business users so that there will be very little chance of any misses in reported issues and to complete tasks within the provided SLAs.

We mostly use ServiceNow for user access requests, approval of workflows, and creating reporting dashboards. One of my recent activities involved automating the process of incident creation in ServiceNow for every job failure received from Control-M . When a job is an important job related to a priority one job, the system automatically creates an incident in ServiceNow. I worked on a job failure related to an audit ID issue. ODS jobs run multiple times a day in our project. For every ODS job triggered, a unique audit ID is created in the audit table. Once the job is completed and its workflow is finished, the audit ID needs to be closed. However, in some cases, due to network issues or server integration issues, the audit ID cannot be closed after the job is completed. If an audit ID is not closed from the previous instance, the next instance automatically fails. An incident was created for me to work on this audit ID issue and automate the process. I used ChatGPT for assistance and created a pipeline in SnapLogic  that connects to the audit table to check whether all audit IDs are closed. This pipeline runs multiple times daily to check audit ID status. If any audit ID is not closed, it automatically triggers a mail alert so I can close the audit ID manually. The Control-M  team created this incident to check on the failure, and later a business user also reported that ODS jobs were failing more frequently due to this audit ID issue. I worked on that and automated the mail integration part from SnapLogic . I have monitored all metrics and SLA resolution metrics while updating work notes daily to inform the user of progress and closing the incident before the SLA is completed after taking confirmation from the user so that there will be no escalations in our project.

For my day-to-day work, I use ServiceNow for incident management, change management, and service request management. My use cases are mostly job failure-related incidents, user access requests, or workflow-related enhancements for service requests for Looker  dashboards, Essbase , or free form reporting tools.

One feature I appreciate about ServiceNow is the SLA notification system. If there are any SLAs that have not yet been met and are completed, for example in our project, when the SLA reaches 60%, I automatically receive an email from ServiceNow indicating that the SLA of a particular incident is at 60%. This allows me to put the incident on hold by taking confirmation from the user or work on the incident as soon as possible to resolve it before any escalation occurs. In this way, there are no issues with the business users in our project. I appreciate how ServiceNow has automated the process of notifying users if SLAs are not met. Additionally, the user interface is very easy to use. If someone is using ServiceNow for the first time, by viewing an incident, they can understand what the incident is, which team it is related to, why the incident was created, the priority, the impact it is creating, and the description. By reading the description and short description, someone can easily understand what type of incident it is. By going through work notes and resolution notes, we can easily understand the current progress. If an incident was resolved one year ago and the same incident is happening now, but the person who resolved it previously has left the team, we can easily go through that incident's work notes and work on the same conditions to resolve the current issue. The history of incidents stored by ServiceNow is something I value.

The SLA integration is particularly valuable. Once any incident or change management meets its SLA and reaches 60%, I receive an email notifying me that the task has been in a waiting period for more than 60% of the time. I then work on that priority to ensure there are no escalations. In this way, ServiceNow helps me manage my tasks based on the priority and impact each incident is having, allowing me to work on tasks in the appropriate order so that it will not impact any reporting or analysis being done by business users. The interface is very user-friendly, and any person with minimal knowledge and no technical background can use ServiceNow.

Without ServiceNow integration into our queue, we might miss some emails. There would be numerous emails from business users, and we would not know the priority of what items to work on immediately and what items we can work on later. Priority-wise checklists could not be maintained properly, and SLAs would not be defined for each incident, which would sometimes result in escalations from business users. With ServiceNow, all incidents, the time we spend on each incident, and the time we take to update notes and resolve incidents are tracked. We can update work notes in ServiceNow so that users can see the current progress. In this way, ServiceNow helps our team.

Productivity has increased since integrating ServiceNow because SLAs have been met in almost 99% of cases. In one or two incidents, the SLA has gone into escalations, but 99% of the time, the SLA has been met, due to which business users have a positive review of our work. Resources cannot be misused, and they are tracking how much time we spend on each incident. I believe that because of ServiceNow integration, the tracking and working on incidents because of the defined SLAs have enabled us to work effectively.

I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good.

The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

I have been using ServiceNow for the past one year.

Recently, I wanted to add a new DL to our ServiceNow queue and reached out to customer support. Within a few hours, they contacted us back and deployed the new DL and added new members so that incidents could be assigned to them. I have already mentioned the SLA emails we receive when SLAs are reaching 60%. Customer support has helped us with these two things recently. I think the customer support is very good for ServiceNow. The documentation part is easy for simpler tasks, but for some complex features, the documentation needs to be updated properly.

ServiceNow is mostly user-friendly, and any person with no technical background can go through the basic features of ServiceNow. I would request that anyone using the tool go through the SLAs of each incident daily and update work notes daily so there would not be any escalations. Work on items based on the priority and impact they are creating, and go through the description and short description very carefully before starting work on an incident. Once going through the documentation, anyone can easily understand ServiceNow. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

My main use case for ServiceNow  includes ITSM  and ServiceNow  App Engine, and then we use ITBM, strategic portfolio management, as well as ITOM Discovery and Customer Service Management. These are the main modules that I work with.

One specific example of how I use ServiceNow day-to-day with those modules is that ServiceNow App Engine is a platform where we can build custom applications end-to-end. We built one application where we take the input from the user via email, with the IMAP setup reading it into Excel in ServiceNow. We send the data provided by the user for validation in ServiceNow, and if duplicates are found in the ServiceNow database, those records fail. Otherwise, the passed records go to middleware, and from there, it goes to P20, with the ultimate goal of creating the invoice in SAP automatically based on the user input provided.

The best features ServiceNow offers mainly revolve around having a smooth workflow tool that integrates with other platforms, leading to its reputation as a platform of platforms. It is easy for different personas to come into various places in the workflow, ensuring the goal is to meet stipulated tasks within timelines and SLAs, which can be configured within the platform. The inbuilt SLAs allow for total configuration, and the end-to-end workflow gets accomplished. Another standout feature is the recent introduction of the AI control tower, which will significantly shape the future of AI, positioning ServiceNow as one of the front-runners in this area.

One standout aspect I appreciate is the seamless approvals flow in ServiceNow. Users can approve requests via email, mobile, or desktop, providing flexibility regardless of how a request is raised. The modified UI for agents, with workspaces and UI Builders, offers a significantly better interface as well.

The positive impact of ServiceNow on my organization began with ITSM  as the core component. Initially, we started there, but we later realized the potential of low-code, no-code solutions, allowing us to build custom applications with the App Engine and utilizing modules such as Customer Service Management. We even acquired a new instance specifically to serve custom needs for our customers using the CSM module, which is definitely helping the organization effectively.

ServiceNow can be improved primarily in terms of licensing. When discussing with customers, we notice competition such as Microsoft Power Apps  offering lower prices, despite not being as platform-oriented. Given ServiceNow's pricing approach, we face a challenge, as each module requires separate payment, leading to overall high costs, especially as the number of modules increases. If there were potential concessions in pricing, it would definitely help organizations gain more use cases from ServiceNow.

The pricing and licensing model for ServiceNow is quite complex. For example, with the App Engine, even if we can create many application tables, tracking costs across different business units is challenging, as it is not a one-organization setup. We struggle with distinguishing costs when users are part of multiple applications, complicating financial management. However, the new subscription management feature in the Washington release offers helpful tracking of user licenses and transaction consumption, which is beneficial for monitoring.

I have been using the solution for thirteen years.

ServiceNow is stable.

ServiceNow's scalability is good, as the configurations we apply accommodate constant changes. We can define custom tables and utilize script-type fields to handle dynamic requirements for new setups with minimal customization.

Customer support is generally prompt; they typically respond quickly to tickets. While there are occasional delays with specific tickets, overall, I find customer support to be quite good.

We did not use a different solution prior to ServiceNow; we relied on manual processes and RPA  bots for invoice creation. The previous management of this was handled by a partner, but now we have integrated the solution within our organizational structure, providing better management.

We definitely see a return on investment, particularly regarding time saved. With automation, we have succeeded in moving invoices to customers much faster than before, where previously it took five to ten days from creation to dispatch. Now, thanks to ServiceNow's end-to-end automation, we save five to ten days of cycle time for each invoice.

We did not explore many alternative options, mainly validating ServiceNow from a workflow perspective due to concerns about UI.

My advice for others considering ServiceNow is to assess their needs for multiple workflow applications. If your organization requires several applications, I recommend viewing ServiceNow as a unified platform where you can certainly see the ROI. With the App Engine, a single license can cover multiple applications, allowing users to fulfill roles across projects, leading to increased efficiency and ROI.

ServiceNow's integrations are significant for my team as we have Integration Hub, and for custom integrations, we create scripted REST APIs for inbound connections and REST messages for outbound connections, making it easy to connect to any system with web service REST API support. In the past, we used SOAP, but now we focus on REST. We connect with third-party REST APIs, and for inbound requests needing extensive coding, we utilize scripted REST APIs. Otherwise, we use our import set APIs with staging table data retrieval, updating the target table based on transform maps. Regarding AI, we use Now Assist for ITSM and Now Assist for Creator; the Build Agent for Creator is a game changer, allowing coding with cursors outside the platform while syncing back, and enabling the building of global and scoped applications, which is very helpful.

One of the main outcomes from using ServiceNow is the integration mentioned earlier. We created an application for generating invoices in SAP where users wish to verify what they sent, as they cannot log in daily to see the data they provided and the invoice created. ServiceNow UI provides a more user-friendly solution, particularly for attachments required by customers, which prompted the need for this solution. I rate customer service at a level of three.

My main use case for ServiceNow  is ticket management.

I use ServiceNow  for ticket management by working on problem tickets when we have issues with the batch, and we also work on incidents if there are failures.

I have a main call setup for any critical issues, so we have a critical incident ticket in our environment on which we will be working on a priority basis.

ServiceNow offers excellent features including a self-service portal, different types of tickets for different types of issues, requests, or changes, and workload automation with workflow automation as well.

Reporting in ServiceNow is very good, and integrating it with automation reporting is a valuable feature.

ServiceNow has positively impacted my organization because initially we were not using ServiceNow and were working manually on email or through chat communications. After integrating ServiceNow, we have automation with failures and automated tickets that get generated when there is an issue in the environment or services. It has eased our workload and serves as a time-saving mechanism with automated processes.

The features I am using are very convenient and ServiceNow's offerings are already satisfying.

I have been using ServiceNow for almost ten years.

ServiceNow is stable in my experience.

ServiceNow's scalability is very good as it can be deployed in each environment and providing access to ServiceNow is very convenient.

Customer support for ServiceNow is very good. We have 24/7 support for ServiceNow with very quick response times. If we have any issue, we reach out to customer support and we get instant assistance.

I did not previously use a different solution before ServiceNow.

ServiceNow is deployed in my organization on a private cloud.

We use Microsoft Azure  as our cloud provider for the private cloud.

ServiceNow was the first implementation I evaluated.

I have seen a return on investment with saved money and saved time.

ServiceNow's pricing is fine. We have accounting for each headcount for ServiceNow, and the pricing is actually good.

My advice for others looking into using ServiceNow is that it is very flexible and scalable, and deploying it is very easy. There is excellent customer support for ServiceNow, so everyone can try ServiceNow in their environment.

I have saved time and we have a platform to manage everything so that everyone can have visibility on that. We can manage which team is working on it and what the next step will be, so we can document everything on ServiceNow tickets.