What are the prerequisites for ServiceNow?

Process automation, IT service management, IT operation management, and IT business management are all done with the help of ServiceNow, a provider of cloud-based solutions. You ought to have a solid understanding of ServiceNow administration and development by the end of this lesson.

Prerequisites

This is a basic course that will assist you in learning the fundamentals of ServiceNow. Although prior knowledge is not necessary to learn ServiceNow administration, prior knowledge of Javascript is essential to learn ServiceNow development. It will be advantageous but not necessary to have a fundamental understanding of ITSM.

According to the ITIL principles, the cloud-based platform ServiceNow was primarily created for workflow and process automation. However, it may be used for various things and is very customizable. Fred Luddy established the American startup ServiceNow in 2004. It names its variants in a distinctive manner. The versions are given names based on the world's main cities. Orlando is the most recent version of ServiceNow.

ServiceNow provides a variety of products, workflows, and solutions that are ready for use by an organisation. Using ServiceNow scripting and currently available technologies, the organisation can create tailored apps and modules in accordance with business requirements.

Let's advance and master some ServiceNow fundamentals. We will discuss users/groups/roles, lists, forms, applications, modules, and a few more ideas in this chapter.

We can refer to the ServiceNow developer instance's abundance of dummy data, such as users, incidents, groups, etc., to have a solid knowledge of the concept. The subsequent chapters will use BookWorm Ltd. as an old example to help us better grasp how ServiceNow integrates into an organization's internal operations.

Programmes and Modules

Applications are, according to ServiceNow, a group of documents and data that manage corporate operations and provide services. Modules are the offspring of an application that link to other platform data or sites.

For instance, the "Incident" application in BookWorm Ltd. offers a module called "Create new" that allows you to start a new incident for any department. All of BookWorm Ltd's open incidents are included in the "Open" category. The only people who may see this module are system administrators.

Similar to this, there are additional significant apps like Problem, Change, Workflows, etc. and their corresponding modules like "Create New", "Open", "WorkFlow editor", etc.

Forms and Lists

You will learn about lists and forms in ServiceNow here.

Lists

The data table's set of records that meet specified criteria are displayed. It could be a list of problems from the problem database that aren't assigned to any group or a list of incidents from the incident table that are assigned to a certain group.

The incident list in the example below contains incidents that have been resolved as a result of the incident table.

The "Resolved" module of the "Incident" programme generates this List. With ServiceNow, this module is included by default. Search "Incident" in the application navigator to access this module and browse this list, and then look for the "Resolved" module inside the Incident application.

Forms

It can be used to input or update a record in a data table or it can display one record from the data table. An incident form, for instance, might be used to enter information about a new occurrence into an incident table or to display details relating to a single selected incident.

The forms for entering new incident record details and forms with existing incident record details are provided below, respectively.

Go to the "Resolved" module within the Incident application to get the first form from the aforementioned example. Finished incidents will be listed. Any incident number can be clicked to display the form. The "Create New" module of the Incident application can be used to access the second screen in the preceding example, which contains a form for entering new incident details.

Roles, Groups, and Users

Below is a detailed explanation of ServiceNow's users, roles, and groups.

Users are the people who utilize ServiceNow within a company. The system administrator has the power to impersonate users, add new users, explore the list of current users, and delete users.

Go to the "Users" module in the user administration application to view the list of current users.

Roles are connected to the work that users do within of an organisation. According to the work profile, the role is assigned. There could be a role for an issue manager, an application developer, an incident analyst, etc.

The features and capabilities of applications and modules are controlled by the roles. As a result, an incident management position may not have access to some programmes that a system administrator role might. The System security application's Users and Groups section contains a list of all the roles as well as a form for adding new roles.

Groups

Users who work together on a common project establish groups. A group of change managers, for instance, might be in charge of approving production modifications. Another group would be in charge of procurement and have the authority to issue purchase orders. Through System security Users and groups Groups, you can access the group.

Assigning users to groups or groups to users, and then assigning responsibilities to groups, is always recommended procedure. Directly assigning users to roles is typically not advised. The following example illustrates the reason.

Consider that there are numerous groups in BookWorm Ltd. (in ServiceNow), one group for the IT team, and a child group for

Hackers with full stacks. 'Backend IT services' and 'Frontend IT services' are two more positions. In order for the full stack engineers to have access to and license privileges for both the frontend and backend IT services, they must be given both jobs.

A full stack developer with expertise in both frontend and backend technologies has joined BookWorm Ltd. Therefore, it would be wise to construct a group of full stack engineers and assign this group to two roles, namely Backend IT services and Frontend IT services, rather than allocating this person to Backend IT services and Frontend IT services separately.

Now, the administrator just needs to add the full stack engineer user to the full stack engineer group, which is a subgroup of the IT team, for each full stack engineer joining BookWorm Ltd.

We recently created "Frontend IT services" in the collection box; search the role to find it. To include a role in this group, select it, then click the arrow button. Click the Save button to finish. You'll be returned to the Group module's home screen. Use the update button in the top right corner to update the record. Repeat the procedure similarly for the backend IT team's services.

Let's continue by adding a few users to ServiceNow. Click the New button after navigating to the "user administration" application's "users" module.