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, Filed Under: Newsletter

June 2023

ITS Service Management Newsletter

June 2023

  • Helpful Hints
  • Announcements
  • Service Management Project Updates

Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin at the Blanton Museum

Helpful Hints

Knowledge Management

The goal of Knowledge Management is to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness by ensuring that the right information is available to the right people at the right time. If you’d like to review the capabilities of the ITS knowledge management process, discuss the organization of your knowledge base, or learn more about knowledge management in ServiceNow, the ITSM team is here to help!

Approving Knowledge Articles

If you are a designated approver but you don’t do it very often, please review “Approving Knowledge Articles to Publish or Retire” for a refresher on the process.

ServiceNow Dashboards

With the recent upgrade of ServiceNow to Tokyo, the deprecation of homepages for dashboards have been a popular topic. Please review the Creating and Editing Dashboards in ServiceNow knowledge article for more information.

Dashboards provide significant improvements over the retiring homepages. Benefits include:

  • Reduced loading time.
  • Drag and drop functionality makes designing a dashboard easier.
  • Sharing dashboards can be completed in three easy steps.
  • More display options allow you to show the information that is most pertinent to you.

Announcements

New Process Owner for Incident Management

We are excited to announce that Liz Litsinger has assumed responsibilities as process owner for Incident Management! Liz works with service owners to maintain the Major Incident Checklist and she continually seeks opportunities to improve the process. Using her experience with metrics reporting and working with the UDC operators, she has provided valuable insight into the Major Incident project while testing the module in ServiceNow.

Updated Major Incident Checklist

An updated Major Incident Checklist has been published as of 6/13/2023. Please replace any printed copies with this new version.

2023 – 2024 Blackout Dates

Blackout dates for fall rush and spring rush have been updated on the IT maintenance calendar.

New Standard Change Template

Thanks to Scott Richardson for working with the Change Advisory Board (CAB) to create a new standard change template for vendor driven service changes that meet the criteria for a standard change as described in the Change Management Standards and Guidelines. Vendor driven service changes are defined as updates implemented or enforced by a third-party to a service offered by UT. Examples would include updates within the AWS or Azure platforms that UT Service Owners are aware of in advance of their implementation. Service Owners are expected to create a change request to record the change and inform the community. Instructions on how to use standard change templates to create a standard change for your service, please review The Standard Change Catalog: KB0018318.

Service Management Project Updates

  • The CMDB Design and Strategy Phase 1 engagement, led by Michelle McKenzie, is complete! Our vendor partner, InSource, has made the following general recommendations to solidify the foundational aspects and improve the health of the CMDB. The ITSM will be pursuing an SOW with InSource to implement these improvements in the coming months.
    • CMDB Health
      • Enable Health Jobs
      • Ensure Hardware CI’s contain Serial Number
      • Implement Data Archiving using Data Manager Policies
    • CSDM
      • Begin CSDM Implementation Methodology Best Practices
    • CMDB Data / Configurations
      • Identify and configure Principal CI Classes
      • Enable Multi-Source
    • CMDB Governance
      • Identify CI Class Owners for all Principal CI Classes
      • Modify Internal procedures to ensure that CMDB processes are following CMDB Process Guide.
    • Integration Upgrade for SCCM
      • Implement the SCCM (MECM) Service Graph Connector store app and disable the deprecated SCCM plugin
    • Ongoing CMDB Population
      • Establish regular updates to the CMDB through multiple data source integrations
    • Reports & Dashboards
      • Establish Data Quality Report(s) and Use CMDB View Dashboard
    • Change Management
      • Ensure Change Management uses Configuration Item (e.g., Retirement)
  • The Service Desk Transition to Amazon Connect led by Mark Winkleman went live May 8! Amazon Connect includes:
    • 22 Call Flows for 9 inbound numbers
    • 20 queues, including English and Spanish
    • Afterhours voicemail is attached to email with a transcription and creates an incident in appropriate ServiceNow queues
    • Option for customers to receive a callback at their number or enter a different number
    • Call Quality Evaluations and aggregate reporting in QuickSight
    • Holiday checking handles holiday calls as voicemail. Holiday and afterhours voicemails go to UDC
    • Additional feature testing is underway for call evaluation improvements and scheduling
  • ServiceNow Major Incident Process: In Progress
    • MIM module UI and functional testing progressing
  • Service Catalog and Request Management Phase 2: In Progress
    • Gathering requirements for building ‘Service’, ‘Service Offering’, and ‘Request Item’ templates
    • Project Manager: Gary Ward
    • Target completion November 2023
  • ITS ServiceNow Metrics: In Progress
    • Will recommend the approach and implement ITS ServiceNow reports and metrics available to the campus community
    • Publication of the ITS dashboard is pending Sr Staff review and feedback.
    • Lead: Terry Gibson
    • Target Completion Sept 2023
  • ITS Performance Analytics: On Hold
    • Will provide the CSS Service Delivery team with enhanced ServiceNow reporting capabilities to reduce the time it takes to produce quality metrics and reports
    • SOW with InSource on hold pending ITT budget review
    • Lead: Liz Litsinger
    • Target completion Dec 2023

Please submit your questions or comments for the Service Management Team

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