March 2023

ITS Service Management Newsletter

---

Helpful Hint: Parent-Child Incidents

The parent-child relationship allows you to link multiple related incidents. For example, an email outage results in numerous incidents from different users. You can attach these incidents under a parent incident.

When the Service Desk detects an incident trend, they collaborate with level 2 Technical Customer Support to identify a parent incident. Then all reports of the same issue are linked to a parent incident.

Hint:  To link a ticket to the declared parent ticket, enter the parent incident number from the related records tab of the child ticket.

• ServiceNow Knowledge Article: Parent and Child Incidents

Benefits:

Activities that occur to the parent incident record automatically to the child incidents. 

When you close the parent record, all child incidents are automatically closed. The Service Desk can quickly gauge and report on the event’s impact. What a great time saver!

ServiceNow Upgrade to Tokyo!

The ServiceNow upgrade to Tokyo is currently planned for deployment to production April 19.

Tokyo has been rolled out to all development environments, and is expected to be available in QA from April 3-7. Service Owners are encouraged to test Service Portal forms and the accompanying back-end workflows for service offerings and integrations so keep an eye out for communications with testing instructions over the next couple of weeks.

What’s Changing?

This upgrade provides significant improvements to back-end tools for the ServiceNow developers to more efficiently configure and maintain applications, leverage integrations more fully, and maintain the Service Portal with less customization. It also comes with enhancements to Major Incident Management, Service Portal, Customer Service Management, HR Service Delivery, and Virtual Agent.

The Tokyo upgrade comes with a new back-end user interface (UI). The new UI simplifies and modernizes the layout and navigation and allows for more detailed user-specific customization. The ServiceNow team will provide knowledge articles outlining the UI changes ahead of the upgrade, and you’re also welcome to attend one of our virtual training workshops for hands-on experience with the new UI. The workshops will be held on April 14 and April 21 from 1-2pm. Look for details via email soon!

Tokyo UI screenshots

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management has been officially onboarded as an ITSM Process!

Publishing the ITS Knowledge Management Standards and Guidelines was a collaborative effort between individuals from ITS Campus Solutions (CSOL) and ITS Customer Support Services (CSS). The initial drafts relied heavily on input from Susan Roy, director of CSS, Gary Ward, Senior IT Service Management Analyst, and Michelle McKenzie, ITSM Process Manager for CSS. Michelle contributed to the format and content of the standards and guidelines by sharing her expertise, editing meticulously, and providing guidance. Additionally, Terry Gibson and Liz Litsinger from the CSS Service Delivery team provided valuable insight into knowledge reporting capabilities by confirming which key performance indicators (KPIs) the knowledge process will utilize in its current state. They will continue researching and expanding the use cases of knowledge reports with updated tools in the ServiceNow platform. 

Contributing members from ITS Campus Solutions included Catherine Camillone, Associate Director of Campus Solutions; Chris Parker, Technical Writer/Editor; Jenn Coast, Project Coordinator; Elista Street, Training Coordinator; and Mallory Walker, Manager of the ServiceNow team. Jenn, Elista, and Chris contributed to developing knowledge management roles and workflows while creating the knowledge standards and guidelines. By analyzing knowledge hierarchies, the group confirmed how specific knowledge roles would interact and their place within the knowledge process. Chris, Catherine, and Mallory also assisted with translating ServiceNow workflows into documentation and ensured the product was cohesive. As with any endeavor, it takes a village. Many thanks to those who participated in the knowledge management standards and guidelines project. It would not have been possible without your hard work and consideration.

Service Management Project Updates

• ServiceNow Major Incident Process: In Progress
  • Project Charter
  • Major Incident Management plugin installed in subdev2 (on Tokyo).
  • Currently working on Major Incident Process Design.
  • Project Manager: Jennifer Andress
  • Target completion Sept 2023
• ServiceNow Asset & Configuration Management (CMDB) Design: In Progress
  • Project Charter
  • Welcome and Kickoff meetings completed.
  • All workshops scheduled.
  • Individual interviews being scheduled.
  • Lead: Michelle McKenzie
  • Target completion May 2023
• Service Desk Transition to Amazon Connect: In Progress
  • Project Charter
  • Amazon Connect includes:
    • 22 Call Flows for 9 inbound numbers
    • 20 queues, including English and Spanish
    • Email Service to create incidents in appropriate ServiceNow queues
    • Option for customers to receive a callback
    • Call Quality Evaluations
  • Lead: Mark Winkleman
  • Target completion April 2023
• ITS ServiceNow Metrics: In Progress
  • Will recommend the approach and implement ITS ServiceNow reports and metrics available to the campus community
  • Foundational dashboard complete
  • Lead: Terry Gibson
  • Target Completion June 2023
• ITS Performance Analytics: In Progress
  • Will provide the CSS Service Delivery team with enhanced ServiceNow reporting capabilities to reduce the time it takes to produce quality metrics and reports
    Bringing in InSource to assist with training and functional understanding of PA to automate reporting
  • Lead: Liz Litsinger
  • Target completion July 2023
• Service Catalog and Request Management Phase 2: In Progress
  • Project Charter
  • Project Manager: Gary Ward
  • Target completion November 2023

---

Please submit your questions or comments for the Service Management Team