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October 2024

ITS Service Management Newsletter

October 2024

  • News
  • Hints
  • Project Updates

Happy Halloween, Longhorns! Hook ‘Em 🤘

News

Service Desk SLO

The UT Service Desk has published a new Service Level Objective SLO presenting the services and level of support provided to the University of Texas at Austin campus community.

The SLO details the UT Service Desk’s commitment to the campus by:

  • Documenting the responsibilities of the UT Service Desk
  • Pertinent information about the Service Desk including service description, hours of operation, requesting service, and onboarding services
  • Measurement and reporting of service levels   

New ServiceNow Customers

Customer Support Services welcomes Veteran & Military Affiliated Services (VMAS) and the School of Architecture to the ServiceNow platform.

VMAS has been onboarded into ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management. The first phase includes inbound emails generating tickets in the platform, customized email notifications for cases, and new case subcategories, such as Hazelwood Act Benefits, Military Tuition Assistance, and VA Education Benefits.

The School of Architecture ServiceNow page will soon include forms for department specific processes such as CNC training, Student Hiring, Payment Request, and Non-Employee Travel Authorization.

Improving ServiceNow Internal Processes

In April, the ServiceNow team upgraded UT’s ServiceNow instances to the Washington DC release and are currently planning to upgrade to ServiceNow’s newest release, Xanadu. For the Xanadu release, the team is using the Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) project management tools within the platform for the first time.

With this change, the UT ServiceNow team is using Agile 2.0 on the ServiceNow platform to manage monthly releases, in sprints, to the platform, which are published to the IT Maintenance Calendar. The sprints include weekly milestones for development and User Acceptance Testing (UAT), which is critically important to ensure the customers’ needs are met.

Building the ServiceNow Team

We are thrilled to welcome two new ServiceNow architects to the team! Danish Muhammad in May and Islamiyah Salahudeen, specializing in Human Resource Service Delivery, in August. They have both demonstrated their knowledge and skill in solving complex challenges and will help us meet upcoming service improvements and new offerings for our customers.

Introducing ServiceNow AI Search

The UT ServiceNow team recently implemented ServiceNow’s AI Search tool to improve search capabilities for students, faculty, and staff at UT. AI Search, using natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and genius results, improves the user experience for both fulfillers and end users.

This configurable product has been initially implemented in the “Next Experience” (sometimes called the “fulfiller view”), the HR Agent Workspace, the CSM Workspace, the Service Operations Workspace, and the Service Portal. With AI Search enabled, ServiceNow delivers more accurate, context-sensitive, and personalized results, offering suggestions and recommended content based on user roles, and recent activities. Since it is internal to ServiceNow, this upgrade delivers better service at no additional cost and with no risk.

We invite all knowledge owners to review the ServiceNow best practices for formatting knowledge for AI success to take advantage of this new capability. This is the first release, and we will provide future updates to expand its use.  

Hints

Incident Management Knowledge Base Updated

A new Incident Management Knowledge Base article has been published to provide a single resource for easily finding relevant information about Incident Management and includes links directly to ServiceNow’s product documentation, which is constantly being updated. Out-of-date and inaccurate local knowledge articles were retired in order to reduce confusion.

Project Updates

ITSM Roadmap
  • ServiceNow Major Incident Process: In Progress
    • Development work continues. The application has been restructured to allow a ServiceNow Major Incident to launch a new Teams channel automatically. Current work is focused on engaging with Twilio to trigger automated invitations to the Teams channel.
  • Service Catalog and Request Management Phase 2: In Progress
    • The Service Onboarding Knowledge base article and templates have been sent to the ServiceNow team for review and publication.
  • ServiceNow Walk-up Experience: In Progress
    • In partnership with InSource, this project will launch the Walk-Up Experience, which will create a smoother customer experience, improve our metrics collection and allow appointments to be set and maintained in ServiceNow.
    • Our next steps include completing the kiosk configuration and improving SMS texting capabilities from ServiceNow. 
    • Lead: Jessi Tuomala
    • Target completion Spring 2025
  • Virtual Agent and Chat: In Progress
    • ServiceNow Virtual Agent has been chosen as the option to facilitate ServiceNow automation. Once complete, the ServiceNow Virtual Agent, along with the platform’s AI capabilities, will be able to leverage the workflows to interact with and guide customers through requests.
    • Lead: Mark Winkleman
    • Target Completion Winter 2024
  • ITS Platform Analytics: In Progress
    • The ServiceNow team is working to deliver final enhancements such as interactive filters and access to the metrics incident table.
    • Lead: Liz Litsinger
    • Target completion Spring 2025
  • CMDB Phase 1 Implementation: In Progress
    • Work has restarted to implement the service graph connectors (SGC) for MECM and JAMF and CSDM. A proposal for the SGCs is being developed in collaboration with the Dell Medical School.
    • Lead: Michelle McKenzie
    • Target completion Fall 2025
  • Knowledge Management Enhancements: Complete
    • Focus on identifying enhancements to knowledge management in ServiceNow that can be unlocked and implemented in current or future product releases (e.g. Converting knowledge notifications to incidents). CSS will continue developing knowledge dashboards and best practices to share in collaboration with other departments interested in knowledge onboarding.
    • Lead: Sophie Corless
    • Completed Oct 2024

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