Exciting news, the Madrid release upgrade is now available! We’ve compiled some best practice tips for upgrading your instance, taking advantage of new functionality and ensuring success. Check them out below.After several upgrades with no negative impact, it’s easy to start thinking you don’t need to do any testing or preparation. But it’s still important to prepare no matter how many smooth upgrades you’ve had. You never know when you’ll have one that sidelines you when you least expect it.Here’s a great example of this: I was leading an upgrade event and the vendor scheduled the upgrade with less than two weeks between upgrading the test environment and the production environment.
During the testing window, we discovered a critical issue with a business process the customer depended on. Fortunately, we were able to make the business case and the vendor agreed to delay the upgrade until the defect was fixed.When preparing for an upgrade, I often think back to that event. What would have happened if we had been complacent and not tested ahead of time (especially since we had so many successful upgrades with that vendor)?One advantage with ServiceNow is the ability to schedule upgrades when it works best for you.
The vendor doesn’t set the schedule, you do. Preparing well is another advantage, which is also in your control.To prepare for your next upgrade, plan to upgrade your test instance(s) first. Allow for an adequate testing period and then upgrade the production instance. To help with the planning, I recommend using an internal upgrade checklist. Once you have a checklist created it can be reused with small modifications for each subsequent upgrade.A checklist should include: the task, a status, the person responsible for the task, the planned dates to start and end each task and the actual completion dates. Determine the dates by counting backward from the date you plan to upgrade the production instance.The following are suggested items to include in your ServiceNow upgrade checklist.Review Release Notes and Known Errors.
Review the upgrade documentation and webinars provided by the vendor. These are invaluable resources. Make note of any enhancements or known issues that may affect the features your company uses.
This should be integrated into your overall checklist. Make note of any new features you think would benefit your business. Share the information with the business stakeholders and subject matter experts. For new features you want to implement, prioritize the list and add them to your roadmap for post-upgrade projects.Update Test Scripts. Have regression test scripts ready.
These can be created once and reused with small modification for every upgrade. Test scripts should cover the business processes and any integrations. If you can, use automated test scripts. These can be a huge time saver.
If there are new features, create or modify the existing test scripts to include these. You’ll want to know what the impact is for your business.Testing Window.
Schedule the testing window well ahead of the planned upgrade. Typically, the testing is performed by your company in a test environment. Involve subject matter experts, power users, governance, change process resources and the Change Advisor Board.Communications Plan.
Sending an upgrade announcement to internal users a week ahead of the scheduled event is helpful. Include details about enhancements identified during testing that users should be aware of. This will reduce user questions and tickets to IT post-upgrade.
It’s also a good idea to include who to contact or where to submit a ticket if there are issues after the production upgrade. It is a good practice to send a reminder the last working day before an upgrade. If you have external facing users or integration partners, communicate your planned maintenance event to them.Commit or Backup. For any in-progress development or configuration work, either get it committed in your production instance or complete exports before the upgrade.
As you may know, the newest addition to the ServiceNow family “Madrid” will be released sometime this year. In addition to a new interface, bug fixes, and enhancements, it’s also expected to include several new updates to Service Portal.
In this article, we will go over some of the changes to Service Portal as well as some of the new mobile features available in Madrid. New Service Portal Features. Mobile App. Defects & Enhancements by ProductHighlighted FeaturesSCSS Support in CSS Includes — By far the most exciting new feature in Service Portal is SASS support within CSS Includes. Up until now, SASS has only been available for use within the Page, Instance, and the Widget but I would argue that the most relevant and needed place for SASS is within the CSS Includes on the theme. So, I’m very excited to finally have this feature supported in Service Portal, and it will certainly make it easier to develop turn-key themes for Service Portal.Multiple Catalog Support — Enables requesters to browse and search for items across multiple catalogs by adding these catalogs to the Catalogs related list when configuring a portal. This has been a long requested feature, but honestly I’m not a fan of how it was implemented.
It certainly checks the “multi-catalog support” checkbox, but in my opinion, this is not an intuitive implementation. Users of the portal don’t know what a Service Catalog is, so how are they going to understand when and why to change catalogs.Multiple Knowledge Base Support — Enables users to browse and search for articles across multiple knowledge bases by adding these knowledge bases to the Knowledge Bases related list when configuring a portal. Similar to the multi-catalog support it’s nice to see this finally supported, but I don’t think portal users really care to browse through multiple Knowledge Bases just to find an article.My Requests Page — Enable requesters to view open or closed requests, incidents, and tasks in Service Portal using the My Requests page.
It’s nice to finally see this page finally improved, and I like the support for combining various ticket types, including Incidents, Requests, and HR cases. The widget can be configured by using the “Service Catalog My Requests Filter” module.Request Cloning — Clone a submitted request by selecting multiple users in the Also request for list of the Additional Actions section.La Jolla Branding — Activates the latest ServiceNow branding, which includes WCAG-AA compliance for contrast. Not really much of a feature, but it does update the stock portal theme to reflect the new branding colors.Multifactor Authentication— Adds a two-step verification requirement in which users enter more than one set of credentials for authentication of an instance. This second layer of authorization is generated by a token from the user’s mobile device using the Google Authentification mechanism as the token provider. Users can require multifactor authentication for their own login credentials.
Administrators can require multifactor authentication for any user login credentials.Additional Reading:.Mobile AppAlthough not Service Portal per se, perhaps one of the most exciting features of the Madrid release is the new mobile capabilities. The ServiceNow Agent mobile app is a native app for both iOS and Android, and by default lets users manage incidents, collaborate, respond to approval requests, access the knowledge base, and receive push notifications.But the most exciting feature is the ability to configure and write custom applications within the app.The mobile app is built on a hierarchy and you can have several applications for the mobile app and limit user access by roles. Each application contains folders to help separate applets. Applets are miniature applications that contain various screens with more information.
Data items determine the information that appears in each applet. For example, an applet for My High Priority Incidents would have a data item that pulls information from the system to create a list of incidents that are only assigned to that user and have a priority of Critical or High.Additional Reading:.Defects & Enhancement by ProductIn addition to all the new features, the Madrid release includes well over 200 defect fixes for ServicePortal. Below I’ve highlighted just a few of the changes, broken down by product.Service Portal. The activity log section overlaps the variables section after an upgrade.
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Madrid Release Notes In Servicenow
As the general availability ofServiceNow’s Madrid release approaches, I analysed the release notes to determinewhat new features can be expected.In this latest release, ServiceNow offers a significant number of excellent new features to its customers. I used ServiceNow’s public docs site as an information source for this blog post, which includes my favourite picks from the new features of the Madrid release.More info about the Madrid release: 1. Similarity FrameworkThe Now Platform’s machine learning capability has been further developed. It introduces a Similarity Framework, which will help users find records related or similar to the ones they work with as soon as those records are logged, thus, reducing resolution time.
Servicenow Madrid Release Date
More info: 2. Mobile StudioWith the Madrid release, there are more no code tools available for mobile with the new Mobile Studio. More info: 3. Antivirus ScanningThe Antivirus defence related to ServiceNow record attachments is also a brand-new feature. It is expected that the antivirus will make the general use of the Now Platform more secure. More info: 4.
Instance Security CentreWith the new instance, security centre feature the main security settings and status of the Now Platform can now easily be monitored and actions can be taken where necessary. More info: 5. Embed an approval request and survey within the Outlook email clientOutlook users can now approve records and take surveys using Outlook only. More info: And: 6. Customer Service Management integration with ITSMThe long-awaited out-of-the-box integration between CSM and ITSM is here covering record creation and updates, so there is no need for custom solutions anymore.
More info: 7. Automated Test Framework – Quick Start TestsAnother long-awaited feature is here! Quick start test templates in the Automated Test Framework are now available, which will make it easier to conduct regression tests after changes and upgrades. More info: 8. Support for platform subscriptions that include custom table allotmentsServiceNow license usage tracking is also made easier in Madrid, making it possible to track custom table usage. More info: 9.
Test Management Version 2A brand-new test management application with a useful test board is now part of the ServiceNow service offering too. More info: 10. Agent WorkspaceAfter the limited availability release in the London version of ServiceNow, with the Madrid release, Agent Workspace is now generally available and helps fulfiller users especially Service Desk agents to have all the information they need in one place. More info: About the AuthorZalan Heil is a ServiceNow expert with over a decade of experience with consultancy practice management, business development, project management, business analysis, solution architecture, and technology development.
He has worked in multinational teams from the EU and the USA.
Contents.What's New in this ReleaseThis release:. Provides a minor performance improvement when retrieving query results from ServiceNow. Enhances the and by including the business-service 'parent' field in determining the hierarchical relationship between business services. Previously, only relationships defined in the table 'cmdbrelci' were considered.How to UpgradeIf you have both a test and a production data source, you'll need to repeat these steps for each instance used with Explore Analytics. Chandrayan pidu mp3 free download. It's good practice to apply it to the test environment first.Download the Explore Analytics Update Set by following these steps:. In the Explore Analytics user interface, select 'Add a new data source' from the 'Data' menu.
Select 'ServiceNow'. In the dialog, you'll find a link to download the latest update set (XML file)Once you have the update set XML file, apply it to your ServiceNow instance (or instances) that use Explore Analytics.
The steps for applying an update set to ServiceNow are documents by ServiceNow. This generally follows along these lines:. Login to your ServiceNow instance. Go to System Update Sets Retrieved Update Sets.
Below the list of update sets you'll find a link to 'Import Update Set from XML'. Upload the update set XML file that you got from Explore Analytics. Locate the update set, the name is 'Explore Analytics' and the date is 2019-05-01.
If you have more recent update sets, the 'Explore Analytics' update set will not be listed at the top of the list. Preview the Update Set. Commit the Update SetSupported ReleasesThe update set supports the Kingston, London, and Madrid releases of ServiceNow. Support for additional releases may be added as these releases become available.If you require support for older releases of ServiceNow, you may request an older Update Set by contacting.Release Notes for the Previous Release.
In this episode, Darius Koohmarey talks with product manager Jason Occhialini about the Change Management application, which helps organizations govern the introduction of changes to improve their capabilities and services with minimal risk and impact to operations. Jason tells us about:The value of change management to an organizationChange types: standard, emergency and normalManaging the risks of changesThe Change Advisory BoardFor more information, see:Product Documentation: Change ManagementProduct Documentation: Change Management release notes for MadridVideos: Change ManagementYour feedback helps us serve you better. Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment!To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures.
In this episode, product manager Darius Koohmarey tells us about the ITSM Walk-Up Experience in the Madrid release. London streamlined the walk-up experience for people requesting IT service. In Madrid, the focus is on the fulfillers, and Darius tells us about the highlights. He also gives us some tips for migrating Walk-Up from London to Madrid. This episode covers:New features for requestorsAgent Workspace for walk-up techniciansAdvanced Work Assignment for routing workTips for smooth migration to MadridFor more information, see:Product Documentation: Walk-Up ExperienceProduct Documentation: Walk-Up Experience release notesVideo: ITSM Walk-Up ExperiencePodcast: Episode 45: The Walk-Up Experience (London)Your feedback helps us serve you better. Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment!To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures.
In this episode, product manager Manjeet Singh talks about the new Coaching application on the Now Platform. Coaching helps you train service desk agents and other employees at critical moments in their job processes, with conditional automated virtual coaching right when they need it. This episode covers:Roles: coach and traineeThe coaching processVirtual coachingBuilding coaching into a workflowIntegrating other ServiceNow capabilitiesFor more information, see:Product Documentation: CoachingProduct Documentation: Coaching release notesYour feedback helps us serve you better.
Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment!To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, product manager Josh Russ talks about the mobile platform and Mobile Studio, an easy way to bring ServiceNow apps to the mobile world. This episode covers:Mobile capabilities and featuresUsing native phone functionalityUsing Mobile Studio to create mobile appsUsing Virtual Agent on the mobile platformRoadmap for the futureFor more information, see:Product Documentation: Mobile navigation and configurationProduct Documentation: ServiceNow mobile release notes - MadridYour feedback helps us serve you better. Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment!To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures.
In this episode, Michael Slabodnick and Jake Burman talk about Flow Designer, a simple way to create automated workflows using natural language - no code! This episode covers:Flow Designer vs WorkflowIntegrationHub for integrating third-party APIsEvolution – past, present, and futureNew features for the Madrid releaseFor more information, see:Product Documentation: Flow DesignerProduct Documentation: Flow Designer release notes – MadridCommunity blog post: Best Practices for Flow DesignerYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, Michael Thompson and Grant Hulbert talk about using the powerful capabilities of IBM Watson in applications you develop for the Now Platform. This episode covers:What can Watson do for you?How is Watson integrated into the Now Platform?How to start using WatsonWatson use casesFor more information, see:Community blog post: Easily Connect ServiceNow to IBM Watson ServicesCommunity white paper: ServiceNow Integration with IBM Watson Conversation ServiceDownload at ServiceNow Developers Share: IBM Watson ServicesYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful?
Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, Darius Koohmarey and Daryl Rodrigues talk about the the walk-up approach to IT support and how the ServiceNow Walk-Up application can support that approach. This episode covers:What is a “walk-up”?What is a walk-up like for users and technicians?How does the Walk-Up application support a walk-up operation?How do you set up a walk-up operation with the Walk-Up app?For more information, see:Product documentation: Walk-Up ExperienceBlog post: Utilizing a walk-up contact channelYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful?
Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, Sree Subramaniam talks about new codeless Discovery patterns for discovering new resources and delivering new content through stores. This episode covers:Using patterns for codeless discoveryDelivering new discovery patterns faster through storesNear-real-time discovery for Kubernetes containersNew Discovery content for S3 storage, cloud resources, and moreUse case: Discovery and Software Asset Management (SAM) deep diveEvent-driven discovery for Kubernetes containersFor more information, see:Product documentation: DiscoveryYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, Darius Koohmarey and Nathan Holm talk about Virtual Agent (VA), a ServiceNow chatbot that streamlines the interactions between a company and its customers and employees.
This episode covers:What does VA do?What does VA look like to users?How do developers build VA into their systems?How about natural language capabilities?How do customers get started with VA?For more information, see:Product documentation: Virtual AgentYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures. In this episode, Manjeet Singh talks about the Continual Improvement Management application to help organizations manage their continual-improvement efforts.
This episode covers:Challenges of managing continual improvementSpotting opportunities for continual improvementDifferences from change management and demand/projectIntegration with other applicationsFor more information, see:Product documentation: Continual Improvement ManagementYour feedback helps us serve you better! Did you find this podcast helpful? Please leave a comment to tell us why or why not.To catch clips behind the scenes with our guests and hear about new episodes before they’re published, follow @NOWsupport on Twitter. You can also search Twitter using #SNtechbytes for previous podcasts, video clips and pictures.