ServiceNow Cookbook

Table of Contents

ServiceNow Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Why subscribe?

Customer Feedback

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Service-Now

Introduction

Service-Now prerequisites

Service-Now and the ITIL framework

How it works...

See also

Understanding Service-Now procurement

Understanding Service-Now roles and licensing

There's more…

Understanding the Service-Now setup

Accessing the Service-Now application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

See also

Microsoft Active Directory authentication

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Logging in to the Service-Now application portal or end user view

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Creating service requests from the Service-Now portal

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

Understanding the Service-Now IT view

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

See also

Understanding Service-Now's self-service application

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Understanding Service-Now's service desk application

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understand unique record identifier

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Using the incident management application

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Using the related lists of applications

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Using the problem management application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

Using the change management application

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Creating the change/problem task from the incident task

Getting ready

How to do it...

2. Performing Core Configuration and Management Tasks

Introduction

Setting up basic configuration

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding LDAP servers

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding user administration

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding group administration

Getting ready

How to do it...

Using service-now plugins

Getting ready

How to do it...

Configuring the Service-Now form

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Configuring UI policies on Service-Now forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

Configuring UI actions on forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding deployments or update sets

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Getting into CMDB

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Setting up an SLA/OLA/underpinning contract

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Setting up system rules

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

Understanding the system dictionary

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding the Service-Now tables schema

Getting ready

How to do it...

Getting into system security

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

3. Building Data-Driven Application

Introduction

Starting a new application

Getting ready

How to do it…

Getting into new modules

Getting ready

How to do it…

Getting into the client script

Getting ready

How to do it…

Getting into the server-side script

Getting ready

How to do it…

Understanding the team development plugin

Getting ready

How to do it…

Understand web services

Getting ready 

How to do it... 

See also

Understanding development best practice

Getting ready

How to do it...

4. Configuring Alerts and Notifications

Introduction

Understanding the Service-Now system mailbox

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating a new e-mail notification

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating an e-mail template

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating an e-mail notification script

Getting ready

How to do it…

Setting up an inbound e-mail action

Getting ready

How to do it…

Inbound e-mail action - new

Getting ready

How to do it…

Inbound e-mail action - forward

Getting ready

How to do it…

Inbound e-mail action - reply

Getting ready

How to do it…

There's more...

E-mail Notification by event registry

Getting ready

How to do it…

E-mail notification troubleshooting

Getting ready

How to do it…

5. Building and Configuring Reports

Introduction

Viewing and running reports

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating new reports

Getting ready

How to do it...

Scheduling reports

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

Sending multiple reports in one e-mail

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating a table-specific report module

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating a dashboard

Getting ready

How to do it...

Including the date in a report's e-mail notification

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with the report's header and footer template

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with the report sources

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with the report range

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating a database view

Getting ready

How to do it...

6. Creating and Configuring Workflow Activities

Introduction

Understanding the Service-Now workflow

Getting ready

How to do it...

Attaching a workflow with the service catalog

Getting ready

How to do it...

Attaching workflows with current/new modules

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

Workflow troubleshooting

Getting ready

How to do it...

Setting up an approval activity

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with condition activities

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with task activities

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with workflow utilities

Getting ready

How to do it...

Setting up e-mail notifications from workflows

Getting ready

How to do it...

How to configure a timer in workflows

Getting ready

How to do it...

Understanding the approval engine

Getting ready

How to do it...

7. Auditing and Diagnosing Service-Now

Understanding auditing in Service-Now

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with auditing tables

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

Understanding Service-Now upgrades

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with system logs

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more…

See also

System diagnostics

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with background scripts

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with Field Watcher

Getting ready

How to do it...

Working with JavaScript logs

Getting ready

How to do it...

ServiceNow Cookbook

ServiceNow Cookbook

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: February 2017

Production reference: 1240217

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham 

B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-052-0

www.packtpub.com

Credits

About the Author

Ashish Rudra Srivastava is an ITIL and Service-Now Certified Professional who has assisted multiple global organizations in ITSM, CRM, BPM and Infrastructure Management implementations and solutions delivery. He holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science & Engineering and a dabbler at Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud & mobile application development, Enterprise architecture frameworks and ITSM applications. He works as a Service-Now consultant, developer and trainer and has trained numerous industry professionals in ITSM tools like Service Now, BMC Remedy and JIRA in administration, development and implementation areas. He is a strategic partner to clients in Insurance, Banking and Manufacturing domains.

His research interest lies in Artificial Intelligence based network security systems. He has propounded an innovative concept of PMA-Hardware utilising an indigenous framework called NFCL model. His research paper on this titled Hardware Based Total Secured Networks was published in IJFCC journal in 2012. http://www.ijfcc.org/papers/93-F0040.pdf.

You can find him on LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishsrivastava03

I would like to express my gratitude to Lord Ganesha for giving me strength, my Father Rudra Pratap Srivastava and my mother Reeta Srivastava who have nurtured me into the person who I am today. My special thanks to Mehvash Fatima for editing and composing the book. Last but not least, my thanks to all those people I have been associated with whose names don’t find mention here but have contributed in shaping this.

About the Reviewer

Sukhwinder Wadhwa is currently working as a Senior Consultant - ServiceNow at Infosys Ltd. He has 8.5+ years of experience in IT Service Management Consulting, ITSM Tools Functional Consulting and Pre-sales. He has rich experience in Business Analysis, Solution Design, IT Service Delivery and Operations.

For his qualification, Sukhwinder has done B.Tech (IT) and MBA(IT) and is a ServiceNow Certified Administrator and ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist. In addition, he has certifications in, ITIL v3 foundation, CoBIT 4.1 and IBM Certified Solution Advisor - Cloud Computing Architecture V2.

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Preface

The genesis of this book owes to the fact that several students who attended my training programs in the last few years have been struggling with ITSM implementations or application support upon their initial assignments. They keep on texting and calling me to seek guidance and often solutions to roadblock which though unforeseen yet are very natural to any project. This paved way for the thinking that a concise yet comprehensive literature dealing with the practical and real life problems during implantation is needed. This book is my humble attempt to the goal. It provides step by step approach to ITSM implementation or resolving development or support using Service-Now, common pitfalls, impediments and errors and their possible solutions. Apart from the general framework for a Service-Now implementation to facilitate a robust design, it also provides general guidelines for planning implementation in such a way as to avoid most of the situations which may result in a not-so-clean design later on.

This book provides insights into the various stages from planning through implementation and maintenance with specific focus on what to expect at individual stages and how to be prepared or counter the common as well as rarely occurring pitfalls that arise from time to time by following best practices recommended by Service-Now.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Service-Now, covers Service-Now basic modules and is focused on individuals who have never been associated with any ITSM applications and want to shift their career path in ITSM/Service-Now application.

Chapter 2, Performing Core Configuration and Management Tasks, deals with common issues, administration, database, contract configuration and other topics useful for deployments. It is focused on professionals who are working on ITSM applications or Service-Now already and want to enhance knowledge of Service-Now platform administration.

Chapter 3, Building Data-Driven Application, deals with development, enhancement and maintenance of  new and existing custom applications. This includes server side, client side and web service side scripting with specific focus on best practices. On many occasions professionals struggle deciding the structure of the application. This chapter provides a general guideline for that.

Chapter 4, Configuring Alerts and Notification, deals with development and configuration of inbound and outbound alerts and notifications, dynamic and static content and watermarking.

Chapter 5, Building and Configuring Reports, explains how to develop and deploy reports for specific support group or team and developing relevant dashboards.

Chapter 6, Creating and Configuring Workflow Activities, this chapter covers development and configuration of application workflow activities, triggers, approval groups and usage of components like timer, switch and so on. This chapter is important for the entire audience of this book as this part is the heart and soul of Service-Now.

Chapter 7, Auditing and Diagnosing Service-Now, focus of this chapter hovers upon the troubleshooting capability in Service-Now. It deals with auditing, debugging and version control.

What you need for this book

Service-Now is cloud hosted enterprise level application so you require standard browser (Internet Explorer/Firefox/Safari/Google Chrome) only to access it. Apart of your organization Service-Now instance, you can claim your personal Service-Now instance by registering on at this link https://developer.servicenow.com.

Who this book is for

This book targets IT professionals and administrators who have some experience of working with ITSM or Service-Now already and are looking to solve regular or unique problems that surface when using Service-Now. It’s advisable to have a basic level of administration experience with Service-Now. Familiarity with JavaScript is assumed.

Sections

In this book, you