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ServiceNow

This document outlines the best practices for using ServiceNow with CRUK projects.

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The following content is recommended.

Description​

ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that provides IT service management and automates common business processes. At CRUK, it is used for the following business processes:

  • Incident Management: Creating and updating incident tickets.
  • Change Management: Integrating change requests to streamline the change management process.
  • Service Requests: Creating and tracking service requests.

Rationale​

ServiceNow is used across the organization, and it is highly likely that your team will need to support incident resolution and include change management in the release process. This guide ensures teams have the knowledge on how handle ServiceNow tickets effectively and aims to help minimize the impact of business processes the software lifecycle.

Incident Management​

Information Needed​

Each product may require different information for effective ServiceNow tickets. Ensure that the ServiceNow tickets capture all necessary details specific to each product. This may include:

  • Product-specific fields and data
  • Custom workflows and processes
  • Unique incident and request types

Ticket Triage​

Effective ticket triage is crucial for managing incidents and requests efficiently. Follow these guidelines for triaging tickets:

Priority and Severity​

Tickets should be triaged based on a combination of priority and severity:

  • Priority: Indicates the importance and urgency of the ticket.
  • Severity: Indicates the impact and extent of the issue.

Use the following approach to triage tickets:

  1. High Priority and High Severity: Address these tickets immediately as they have the most significant impact.
  2. High Priority and Low Severity: Address these tickets promptly, but they may not require immediate action.
  3. Low Priority and High Severity: Address these tickets based on their impact, but they may not be as urgent.
  4. Low Priority and Low Severity: Address these tickets as time permits.

For more detail please refer to the CRUK Service Management Incident Matrix

Guide for Supporter Services​

You may wish to create a guide to guide supporter services in handling tickets for your team. This could include:

  • Steps for triaging tickets
  • Guidelines for resolving common issues

Work with your product manager to identify the right information to include and let your Service Manager know so that this information can be passed on to supporter services.

Change Management​

Product managers are responsible for raising a change management request in ServiceNow for each software release on your applications. The change management request usually includes information on the features released, any downtime, start time, and end time for the release, etc.

ServiceNow API Integration​

warning

The integration with the ServiceNow API has been paused due to cost issues. Please contact your service manager before attempting to automate this process.

The ServiceNow API Documentation provides guidance on integrating with the ServiceNow API.

Service Requests​

ServiceNow is also used for requesting work from other teams within the organization, such as requests to other product teams, the platform engineering team, etc.

References​