ServiceNow Administration Basics

0:00Hi, Sean here and welcome to this course where we're going to be covering a

0:03wide variety

0:04of different topics that will get you well on your way to becoming an effective

0:09ServiceNow

0:09admin.

0:10Now, before we jump in here and start learning all these topics, the first

0:13thing that I'd

0:14like to do is give you a better idea of what exactly it means to be a Service

0:19Now admin,

0:20right?

0:21On the surface, I mean, obviously it sounds like it's important because it's an

0:25admin,

0:26right?

0:27What exactly are you doing in your organization as a ServiceNow admin?

0:32Well, a metaphor that I like to use to explain this is picture for a moment

0:36that you're a

0:37building manager of a big old skyscraper.

0:41And let's say that there's a company that's working inside there, maybe several

0:44companies

0:45even.

0:46Well, in that building, there's going to be an awful lot of people going back

0:49and forth.

0:49And the fact is that you're not really going to know or care very much about

0:55the specifics

0:56of what those people are doing, right?

0:58So there might be a lot of people having a meeting in a room.

1:02And it's important that the room has the lights on.

1:05It's important that the air conditioning is working in the room.

1:08But it's not really your responsibility to know or care what's being discussed

1:12in that

1:12room.

1:13And the same thing is true throughout the whole building, right?

1:16You really, your job as the building manager in that case would be to keep all

1:21the systems

1:21of the building running and in many cases, doing things like updating the

1:26systems, modifying,

1:28you know, certain layouts in the building, things like that, so that everyone

1:31in that

1:31building can do what they need to do in order to, you know, move that

1:36organization forward.

1:38And that's very similar, right?

1:40If you can follow my metaphor here to what you're going to be doing as a

1:44service now

1:44admin, right?

1:45In other words, everyone at the organization that you're at is going to be

1:49using service

1:50now for specific tasks.

1:52And it's not always going to be a responsibility to care what those tasks are,

1:57but you're going

1:58to need to make sure that service now allows them to do those tasks as

2:03efficiently as possible.

2:04All right.

2:05So anyway, hopefully that metaphor helps you to understand a little bit more

2:08just how

2:09important your job is, but also how it's, it's kind of decoupled in a way from

2:16what

2:16everyone else in the organization is going to be doing.

2:19So with that said, the next thing that I want to talk about is what is service

2:24now exactly?

2:25Well, if you want to learn the basics of service now, I'm actually going to be

2:29assuming throughout

2:30this whole course that you've already done so.

2:33So I'd highly recommend that you take a look at my other course that covers the

2:36basics of

2:36service now, right?

2:37It'll cover the basic interfaces that you're likely to see just different

2:42terminology about

2:43service now.

2:44But really the flows that different things go through, right, information goes

2:49through

2:49when it's traveling between people on the service now platform.

2:53So I'd highly recommend that you take a look at that course first before

2:56jumping in here.

2:58But just to give you kind of a, you know, a 10 to 15 second explanation of what

3:02service

3:03now is, service now is a collection of very powerful tools that help

3:08organizations centralize

3:10and streamline everything that they do, right?

3:15So all of the information that's flowing through that organization, all of the

3:18tasks

3:19that are getting worked on at that organization, service now helps you keep

3:22track of all of

3:23those things.

3:24And also in many cases automate them.

3:27So that's ultimately what service now is going to help you do, right?

3:30Instead of having to keep track of all of these email threads and text messages

3:35and

3:35phone calls and things like that going through your organization, it gives you

3:39a single central

3:40centralized place to keep track of all of those things.

3:44And then it gives you tools to control how all of those things move through

3:47your organization.

3:49Again, we're going to be seeing these things in a lot more detail, at least

3:52from the admin

3:53perspective throughout the rest of this course.

3:55But again, if you want to see the basics, please feel free to go back and take

3:58a look

3:59at the basics of service now course.

0:00All right, so now that we have a basic idea of what it means to be a ServiceNow

0:03admin,

0:04the next thing we're going to do is go a little bit deeper and take a look at

0:08the basic responsibilities

0:11that most ServiceNow admins will have.

0:14So the first thing here, and I'm going to show you also, I have all of these

0:19tabs open

0:20in my browser here that will actually show you the parts of ServiceNow that

0:24will be

0:25required in order to perform these responsibilities, but I'll just write them

0:31down here also for

0:33you know, just so that you have a list, right, that you can look at.

0:36So the first thing here that you're going to be responsible for as a ServiceNow

0:40admin,

0:41this is by far one of the most common responsibilities is user and role

0:46management.

0:47Right, so the basic idea here is you're going to be managing what people have

0:52accounts in

0:53your organization and ServiceNow in the first place, right, not everybody will

0:57necessarily

0:57need access to ServiceNow, although in many cases, everybody in the

1:01organization will,

1:03even if it's just to do things like report hours, but you're going to be the

1:06one that

1:07will usually set that up.

1:09And also, and this is in many cases even more important, it's going to be your

1:13job to control,

1:15right, through means that I'll show you a little bit later in the course, who

1:20can access

1:20what and who can do what in the platform.

1:25So for example, you're not going to want the intern that you hired a week ago,

1:28no offense

1:29interns, to have access to everyone's salary information in ServiceNow, right,

1:34that's just

1:35a bad idea and ServiceNow gives you as an admin the means to control things

1:40like that.

1:41All right, so some of the tools that you're going to be working with in order

1:45to do this

1:46kind of user and role management, let me just open up that browser over here.

1:51There we go.

1:52This here is the ACL, right, the access control page.

1:57I'll discuss that in much more detail a little bit later, but this might not

2:02look like much

2:03as is the case with pretty much every interface or at least a lot of the

2:08important interfaces

2:09in ServiceNow because it's just a list of data.

2:13But the fact is that this is one of the main places where the real power of

2:18ServiceNow

2:19comes from, right?

2:20All of the data that you have in lists that are in specific places like this

2:25ends up kind

2:26of fitting together like a giant puzzle and creating the behavior that

2:31ultimately runs

2:32your organization.

2:33So again, even though it might look a little boring, might just look like a

2:38spreadsheet

2:38that you can't edit, right?

2:40It is actually extremely powerful, the ability to edit the data that's in these

2:45kinds of

2:46tables, all right?

2:47So besides that, you'll also have the ability to do things like edit data

2:52policies.

2:53This goes along with user and role management as well.

2:57Data policies basically just define things like mandatory fields, right?

3:01So if you want to make sure that like an email field is always filled out when

3:05someone

3:06submits a form, you would do that in here.

3:08All right.

3:09So really the first main category of things that you're going to be working

3:12with the second

3:13is you're going to be working with tables quite a bit and you're going to be

3:18doing this

3:19in more of like a meta way than most other employees, right?

3:24So you're not just going to be editing the data that's in tables, but you're

3:28actually

3:28going to have the power to edit tables themselves.

3:32So in other words, you're going to have control over not only the data that

3:37your organization

3:38has, but also what form that data takes, right?

3:43What fields need to be on that data, things like that.

3:46So here's the tools that you're going to be using for that over here.

3:52This is the main tables and columns editor.

3:56As you can see, there's quite a lot going on here.

3:58And again, we'll talk about these interfaces in much more detail later on in

4:01the course.

4:02I just kind of wanted to give you a little taste here of what's to come.

4:06All right.

4:07The third thing here is you're going to be responsible in many cases for what's

4:13known

4:13as form and field management.

4:17So again, this is where you're actually going to be in charge of editing the

4:22forms that

4:23people in the organization will be using in order to enter data for different

4:26things.

4:27So, you know, let's imagine the incident reporting workflow, right?

4:32When something goes wrong and someone reports an incident in service now, if

4:36you want to

4:36have some sort of special field or, you know, multiple fields or if you want to

4:41delete certain

4:42fields, you're going to have the power to do that as an admin, just as a simple

4:45example.

4:46All right.

4:47Now, just to give you an idea of what this might look like, let's head over to

4:50our browser

4:50again.

4:52And, you know, what you see here is just a simple incident form.

4:55Well, and we'll talk about this in much more detail a little bit later, you can

4:59actually

4:59edit this by going to configure and clicking on form design.

5:02And that'll bring you here where you have almost total control over this form,

5:09right?

5:10So you can add new fields, you can remove fields, you can move them around,

5:13things like

5:13that as well as many other things, of course.

5:16All right.

5:17So beyond this, you're going to be responsible for managing business rules.

5:24Now business rules are essentially logic that can be applied automatically to

5:29certain situations

5:30in order to streamline different processes, right?

5:34So as an example, let's say that you want to automatically assign incidents

5:39that have

5:40the word printer in the title to maybe the IT support team, right?

5:45That would be an example of a very simple, but also very useful business rule.

5:51Okay.

5:52So the way that things like business rules are managed, the interface where

5:55these are

5:56is over here.

5:57And again, this is just a list and so it might seem deceptively simple, but

6:02there's actually

6:03a lot of power behind this thing, as I said before, right?

6:06Same thing as what we saw with the access controls over here.

6:10All right.

6:11So again, as we'll see later on in the course, by editing these business rules,

6:15by creating

6:16them, deleting them, modifying them, you can really change the behavior, right?

6:21The automatic logic that supplied across the ServiceNow platform for your

6:26organization.

6:27All right.

6:28And this also includes things like client scripts, right?

6:32These are actually scripts that are run on the client side, right?

6:37Basically in the user's browser of whoever is using ServiceNow.

6:42That's something that we'll go into in much more detail.

6:44So don't get confused.

6:45Just know that working with these things looks an awful lot like a lot of the

6:48other things

6:49where you're going to just be working with list items and forms.

6:52All right.

6:53So we're on number four here, number five, right?

6:58Really the fifth main responsibility that you're going to have as a ServiceNow

7:03admin

7:03and what we're going to cover in this course is workflow management and

7:07workflow automation.

7:08All right.

7:09So I'm just going to write workflow, we'll say management and automation.

7:16All right.

7:21So just to show you where in ServiceNow we're going to be doing that, that's

7:23going to be

7:23in this workflow studio, right?

7:25It's actually a separate application outside of ServiceNow.

7:30And as you can see, it looks kind of similar in the fact that you're just going

7:33to be editing

7:33lists a lot of the time.

7:35But what we'll see when we talk about this in more detail is that it contains a

7:39lot of

7:39extra tools that are going to make this process a lot easier for you.

7:43Now workflow management and workflow automation also includes managing things

7:48like who needs

7:49approval from who and for what, right?

7:52So as an example here, right, if someone submits a vacation request, right,

7:57request to take

7:58vacation time, who is it that needs to approve that, right?

8:02A lot of that stuff can be automated.

8:04And as an admin, you're going to be in control of making sure that those work

8:07flows are set

8:08up correctly.

8:09So that whenever employee A submits a vacation request, employee B, which is,

8:15let's say,

8:16employee A's boss, gets that request and can approve it in ServiceNow.

8:21All right.

8:22And this also includes things like configuring notifications, right?

8:25So you can control as an admin who gets notifications when specific things

8:31happen.

8:32So again, let's say, you know, when someone submits a reset password email, who

8:38gets a

8:39notification about that?

8:40You have control over that and you can specify those things in a way that I'll

8:45show you a

8:45little bit later by basically working with the data that's in this part of the

8:50app.

8:51All right.

8:52So that's number five.

8:53And that was, let me just go back here.

8:55That was workflow management and automation.

8:58Number six here, and I'm running out of room.

9:00I might need to start over if there's many more.

9:03Number six is managing the service catalog.

9:07So as you may recall from the previous course, or, you know, if you're just

9:12already familiar

9:13somewhat with ServiceNow, the service catalog is basically just a centralized

9:20repository,

9:21centralized collection of all of these services that your organization provides

9:26both externally

9:27and internally.

9:28So if someone wants to, you know, get a new laptop for a new employee, let's

9:33say, the

9:34service catalog would be where they submit that just again as a simple example.

9:38So that's going to be service catalog management and obviously the specific

9:44services that an

9:45organization provides, that's going to be a fairly fluid thing, right?

9:51And you're going to be in charge of that, right?

9:53Or you're going to at least have the ability to modify that as a ServiceNow

9:58admin.

9:59So just to show you what that might look like, let's go back over to our

10:02browser and open

10:03up the catalog builder.

10:06That's what the tool is called.

10:07That's used to edit the service catalog.

10:10As you can see, this is just a nice fairly user friendly interface.

10:15In some places it looks very similar to just regular ServiceNow where it's got

10:18the lists

10:18and everything.

10:20But this interface makes it very easy for you to do things like, as you can see

10:24right

10:24here, create a new catalog item, create a new template for, you know, different

10:28requests,

10:29things like that.

10:30All right.

10:31So that is number six and I'm going to end it there.

10:33There are obviously many more responsibilities that ServiceNow admins are going

10:38to have.

10:38But these I think really form the core of those responsibilities.

10:43We may cover some other ones that are not necessarily related to these in later

10:49skills,

10:50but I'll discuss that in more detail when we get there.

10:52So anyway, hopefully this video has given you a more specific idea of what to

10:58expect

10:58as a ServiceNow admin and some of the interfaces that you'll be working with on

11:03a regular basis.

0:00All right, so now that you're a little bit more familiar with those tools or at

0:05least have a better idea of what to expect

0:07With the tools going forward as a service now admin

0:11It's time for you to get a developer instance set up in service now

0:16Right, this is what you're gonna need in order to follow along with the rest of

0:20the videos in the course

0:22so

0:24what you see here, this is actually a

0:27Development platform right or a development instance of the service now

0:31platform

0:32Meaning that we can make whatever changes we want really without having you

0:37know without there being a danger of us

0:38Messing something up. I would highly recommend that you play around with a

0:42developer instance in service now quite a lot

0:45Before actually making any permanent changes

0:48You know to your your organization's instance. So anyway

0:53Let's take a look now at how we can get this set up right the first option for

0:59you is to go to the

1:00developer page of service now right you can get there by going to developer dot

1:06service now calm

1:07And that should take you to a page that looks like this

1:10They'll probably have changed the branding a little bit or whatnot

1:12but anyway, you're gonna need to log into that and

1:16Once you've done so you should see some button up at the top here or some other

1:21option elsewhere

1:23Right, that's where it was for me again things might change

1:25That says request instance and I've already done that

1:31So you'll see this little green thing with the instance underneath it right

1:34that that's basically

1:36Indicating that I've already created developer instance if I click on this now

1:41what you'll see is

1:42That sure enough we see instant status online and you can open that up by

1:47clicking start building and that'll open up something that looks like this

1:51Now you'll notice that this is a little bit different from the one that I just

1:54showed you

1:55The fact is that when you use a developer instance in service now

2:00some of the developer instances that you'll work with are

2:03Pre-configured for something specific. So for example the one that I'm gonna be

2:07using here is

2:08Pre-configured for the service now

2:11administration fundamentals on demand course right basically service now just

2:15has this training course and

2:18Along with it. They have this very helpful, you know create instance open my

2:23instance thing where it's all pre-configured for everything

2:25You'll need for that course

2:27And since the needs of that course and this one aligned to a large degree

2:32That's another way that you can do it right but most of the things that you'll

2:36see

2:36You can get just on the regular service now instance like the way we just did

2:43it. Okay

2:43so anyway, that is the basics of getting a service now developer instance up

2:49and running and

2:50You should see just a few other things to notice up in the right hand corner

2:55here

2:55You should see someone that looks pretty much like this unless they've changed

2:59the you know default photo for this

3:02System administrator since I recorded this course

3:06This is because you're logged in as a system administrator, but not actually

3:11yourself

3:12right this is just kind of like a fictional scenario if you will and

3:16Because you're logged in as the system administrator on this developer instance

3:24You're gonna be able to do a lot of things that you may not necessarily be able

3:29to do or may not necessarily have the permissions to do

3:32At your organization, right? So, you know, you're probably you know if you're

3:38watching a service now

3:39Administration basics course you're probably not already a service now admin at

3:44a company

3:45And so if you try and do a lot of these things that I'm gonna show you in this

3:48course

3:48You know just logged into your regular service now account you won't be able to

3:54do them

3:54So that's just a caveat there that I wanted to get out of the way as well

3:59All right, so anyway once you've got that set up you should be prepared for the

4:04rest of the course

4:05We're not gonna be using this I think until the next skill at least not in a

4:08whole lot of depth

4:09But it's good to have this set up one last thing too that I personally find a

4:14little bit annoying for

4:16You know when I'm in a in a hurry and ready to record for the day things like

4:20that is

4:21Opening up a developer instance, especially when you're doing it for the

4:26learning courses here

4:27It does take about you know 15 to 20 minutes to

4:33To wake the instance up, right? That's just how they how they manage having a

4:37lot of free instances running

4:39At the same time is they'll actually put them to sleep after after a period of

4:44time

4:44so

4:46What I usually like to do is when I start for the day I come here

4:49I click it it'll say like wake my instance or something like that and I like to

4:53click that and then I go make my coffee and come back

4:56And it's it's already you know, it's already to go

4:59So just a caveat that I wanted to share with you there so that you don't waste,

5:02you know 15 20 minutes tomorrow morning

5:05So anyway, that is the basics of setting up a service now developer instance

5:10for the course

5:11♪ ♪

0:00All right, so at this point, hopefully you have a developer instance set up.

0:04So before we get into, you know, performing all of the different tasks that

0:10ServiceNow admins are typically responsible for, I want to discuss some basic

0:14terminology that you're going to need to know as a ServiceNow admin,

0:18in case you're not already familiar with it, right? That's one of the big steps

0:22in becoming a ServiceNow admin is actually using these terms correctly.

0:25So the first term that you've already heard me say a handful of times in this

0:29skill already is instance, right?

0:33I've mentioned, yeah, I've talked about developer instance and creating one,

0:38and an instance is basically like a specific environment of ServiceNow.

0:44So this gets really important when you start doing actual ServiceNow

0:50administration because when you make a change in ServiceNow, usually you're not

0:57going to want to just make that change, boom, immediately, and have that take

1:00effect across your organization.

1:03That's usually a bad idea for reasons that we'll discuss sometime later.

1:07But more often than not, what you're going to want to do is have multiple

1:12instances of ServiceNow, one of which you can kind of experiment around with,

1:17the other one that you can, you know, test on to make sure that everything's

1:20looking good.

1:21And finally, an instance that everyone in your organization is actually going

1:24to be using, right?

1:26Normally, these are referred to as the dev instance, right?

1:30This is kind of where you're allowed to experiment around, make changes, things

1:34like that. It's kind of like a sandbox.

1:37The QA instance, right? This is where some changes that you've made that you

1:43want to, you know, take effect across your organization are going to be tested

1:48more often than not.

1:50And finally, you'll usually have the production or prod environment, which,

1:55again, is, it's the environment that everyone's going to be using.

1:58So these are each going to be different instances in ServiceNow, which, again,

2:02is why that term is so important, right?

2:05So anyway, that's the basic idea of an instance in ServiceNow and that term,

2:11why that term is so important to use correctly.

2:14The next one that I want to talk about, or next two that I want to talk about,

2:18actually, are application and module.

2:21The interesting thing about, especially the term application in the context of

2:26ServiceNow, is that it means something very specific that I think is different

2:31than what a lot of people typically think of as an application, right?

2:35Most people think of an application as like a smartphone app, and they also

2:40tend to think of, like, ServiceNow itself as an application,

2:46but ServiceNow is actually much bigger than that, which is kind of the

2:49interesting thing, right?

2:51So if you open up this all menu up at the top, we talk about this extensively

2:57in the previous course where we go through the basics of ServiceNow,

3:01what you see here on the very top level, all of these are actually applications

3:06, right?

3:07So essentially, an application in ServiceNow is just sort of like a logical

3:11grouping of functionality, right?

3:15Like if you search for incident, right?

3:18Let's just search for that there up in the top search bar there.

3:21Sure enough, what you'll see is that there's this application called Incident,

3:25and it's got a lot of individual actions or pages that you can go to.

3:31These are actually referred to as modules, right?

3:34And all of those are related to incidents, right?

3:37So if you want to create a new incident, you click on the Create New Module

3:41inside the Incident application.

3:44That's how those words work in ServiceNow.

3:48All right, now the next term that we're going to talk about here is Table, and

3:52I already mentioned this one in a previous video when we were talking about

3:57some of the key responsibilities of a ServiceNow admin, right?

4:01One of those was going to be managing tables, as you'll see, and tables are

4:05important in ServiceNow because everything in ServiceNow is stored as a table,

4:11right?

4:12So you can think of a table as just kind of like a collection of related data

4:16items.

4:17So, you know, let's just find a table in here.

4:20In fact, we can do that just by going to Incident and going to the Incident's

4:25module under ServiceDesk.

4:28All right, so most of the data that you see here is coming from a specific

4:32table, right, an Incident's table.

4:35But there are other parts of this data that you see that are coming from other

4:40tables as well, right?

4:42So this Collar column here, this is actually a link from the Incident's table

4:47in ServiceNow to another table.

4:50And this is one thing that you're going to be responsible for managing as a

4:54ServiceNow admin is the relationships between tables as well as the tables

4:59themselves.

5:00All right, and if you've ever worked with like SQL before or really any kind of

5:05relational database,

5:07you're probably going to be very comfortable with the idea of tables in Service

5:10Now because the concepts are very similar.

5:14Now, as I showed you in a previous video here, if you search for tables and

5:17then go to System Definition and Tables there, right,

5:21the Tables module in the System Definition app, right, what you'll see is that

5:28this will actually contain a complete list of all of the tables that ServiceNow

5:32contains, right,

5:34or that your instance of ServiceNow contains.

5:36And you can see down here that there are quite a few tables in ServiceNow that

5:41you can potentially work with.

5:44There's five in mind anyway. There's 5,594 different tables.

5:50Now, a lot of those tables are not really ones that you're going to touch,

5:53right?

5:54You're not going to have to work with all of these on a regular basis.

5:57But just to show you how complex these tables are behind the scenes and, you

6:03know, the exciting part about this is that this is where

6:05the ServiceNow platform gets a lot of its power from, is combining all these

6:09tables in different ways.

6:11So if you go to the module underneath that, right, if you go to Tables and

6:17Columns in System Definition,

6:20this is the one that we saw in a previous video where you can actually look for

6:23different tables, right?

6:25You're seeing all of the 5500 or so tables in here.

6:29So let's maybe scroll down and see if we can find that Incidents table.

6:34All right, there we go.

6:36And if you click on Incident here, you can actually see that this brings up

6:40this column names thing next to it.

6:43And this is basically all of the possible pieces of data, all of the possible

6:48data points that each incident can have, right?

6:52So activity do, actual end, actual start.

6:55You can read through the whole list if you want. And the exciting part about

6:58this is that it's actually editable, right?

7:01You can change what columns are in the incident table.

7:06You can link the incident table to other tables, things like that.

7:09We'll take a look at all this a little bit later. So don't worry about it right

7:11now.

7:12I'm just kind of showing you in more depth what you might be working with and

7:17using that to kind of explain the important terminology here.

7:20So anyway, that's the idea of a table in service now.

7:24Inside a table, you're going to be dealing with records, which are individual

7:30instances.

7:32I don't want to use that word, but we'll say it differently.

7:35Individual rows in a table, right? So if we go back to our incidents, let's

7:40just search for that again.

7:42Incidents will just go to self service incidents.

7:45In this table, we have two records, right? Each one of these things is a record

7:52and admins work with these things constantly, right?

7:56As an admin, you're constantly going to be creating, updating and deleting

8:00these records.

8:01Now, the individual pieces of data on a record, these are referred to as fields

8:06, right?

8:07So you can say this is an opened field of this record. And if we go back to

8:13where we were before, okay, under the column names, right?

8:16These basically represent the different fields that each row in a table can

8:22have.

8:23Okay, so hopefully it's all coming together there.

8:26You know, just some other pieces of the interface that you might have forgotten

8:31the exact terms for.

8:33I think they're maybe kind of obvious, but I'll just go through them anyway.

8:37Let's go back to incidents here. All right, if we go back to self service

8:41incidents, right?

8:43This here is known as a list, right? So a list is a very important part of the

8:48service now interface.

8:49It's basically how most of the data in service now is displayed.

8:53And it also gives you the option, of course, to edit the data if you're allowed

8:56to do that.

8:57Just by clicking on an individual row in that list.

9:01And that actually takes you to a form, right? So really lists and forms are by

9:05far the most common interfaces that you'll see in service now.

9:09Again, we talk about this in a lot of detail in the service now basics course.

9:14So I highly recommend that you go back and take a look at that.

9:16If you're not familiar with these interfaces and everything they're capable of,

9:19right?

9:20So like if you wanted to here, we'll just find something a little bit more

9:23interesting here under service desk incidents.

9:26Right, if you wanted to do a bar chart of all these, right?

9:30It's important that you know how to do things like that as well.

9:33And that's also one of the very powerful aspects of lists in service now is

9:40that, you know, while it might look a little bit boring on the surface,

9:44there's a lot that you can do from this interface.

9:47So anyway, those are just some of the basic terms that you're going to need to

9:51be familiar with in order to understand all of the concepts that we're going to

9:55go through.

9:55So hopefully those all made sense and with that we can move on.

10:00move on.

0:00All right, so the last thing that I want to do in this skill here is walk you

0:06through

0:06a few of the most common tasks that admins are going to have to do, no matter

0:11how much

0:12you know or how deeply you understand the surface now platform, right?

0:17There's just a few simple, fairly surface level tasks that you're just going to

0:21need

0:22to do fairly frequently.

0:23So I'm going to walk you through those, again, just to give you kind of just

0:27kind of round

0:28out this skill here with some very practical hands on demonstrations.

0:34So the first thing here is resetting a user's password.

0:38This is something that you're going to get requests for on a fairly regular

0:41basis, perhaps.

0:43And the way you do it here is by going into all, right, this is as we saw in

0:49the previous

0:50course, right, the basics course, where you can search for pretty much any

0:53application

0:54or module in your service now instance.

0:57And we're going to search for user administration.

1:00And we're going to go to users.

1:02Okay.

1:03Now we will be coming back to obviously this, this whole user administration

1:09app in much

1:09more detail in later skills, but you know, again, this is just to demonstrate

1:14resetting

1:14a user's password.

1:16So the next thing here is you're going to want to find the user.

1:19So let's say that Abraham Lincoln here has forgotten his password.

1:22We're going to just click on Abraham Lincoln there.

1:26This will open the user record as a form.

1:29All right.

1:30And you'll see the password field here, which is currently blank.

1:34So you can either type in the password there or you can click set password.

1:39And that will allow you to generate.

1:42It's got this nice little tool that just generates a new password for you.

1:45And you can see that it's a pretty complex, you know, just kind of a bunch of

1:48random characters

1:50there.

1:51And you could maybe send that to them as a temporary password if you wanted to.

1:55So I'm just going to click save password now.

1:59And that is how you reset passwords.

2:01It's pretty straightforward there.

2:02And then we can just click close and that will have that user's password

2:07updated.

2:07Now notice that this password field is blank because it's not a good idea to

2:13store passwords

2:14like that in plain text.

2:17And you know, service now follows that.

2:19So it's not going to actually display the user's password to you ever, no

2:22matter, no

2:22matter what you do.

2:24All right.

2:24So that's the first thing is resetting a user's password.

2:27The next thing is creating a new user for this.

2:31We're going to go to user administration again and users.

2:35And by the way, you might do this when a new person joins the company and you

2:38want to create

2:39a new user account for them.

2:42And we're going to go up into the top right hand corner and click new.

2:46That will open up this form for creating a new user.

2:50And really, you just have to fill everything in here and click submit.

2:54I'm not going to fill all of that out here myself, but you can feel free to do

2:59so.

3:00And once you've done that and clicked submit, what you should see is that that

3:03new user

3:04should be in this list.

3:05If you don't see them directly here, they might be at the end of the list or

3:08somewhere

3:09else in the list.

3:10So you can just search for them by name.

3:12So if you did, you know, George Washington, for example, you could search for

3:16George Washington

3:17and that would bring up.

3:19Oh, look, there is already a George Washington.

3:21Apparently someone beat me to it.

3:22So anyway, you know, if you did someone else that didn't, whose name wasn't

3:27already in

3:27there, you would see that show up just by doing that search.

3:31All right.

3:32So that's the second thing is creating a new user.

3:35Another thing here is creating or updating a catalog item.

3:40Right.

3:41So in the basics course, we saw that the service catalog, which I'm going to

3:47just search for

3:48here, right?

3:49Just go to self service service catalog.

3:53The service catalog is basically just a collection of all of the services that

3:57our organization

3:58offers, both internally and externally.

4:01So, you know, employees can get things like, you know, if they need a new

4:05charger for their

4:05laptop or something, they can do that through here.

4:08But also customers can, you know, make orders through the service catalog.

4:14So very powerful, obviously very important part of service now.

4:19And let's say that you need to create a new catalog item.

4:23Right.

4:24Let's say that, you know, your organization wants to start offering a new

4:27service and

4:28wants you to add that.

4:29Well, the way that you do that is you're going to go to service catalog.

4:33Right.

4:34And actually you're going to go to the service catalog application.

4:37I just had that opened up for demonstration there.

4:40And you're going to go down to catalog definitions.

4:43In fact, it might be easier just for you to just search catalog definitions.

4:49All right.

4:50And inside here, you're going to click on maintain items.

4:53Okay.

4:54So this is going to bring up an entire, you know, a list of all of the items

4:59that are

5:00in your catalog.

5:01You can see we currently have 226 of them.

5:04So if you want to create a new one, it's really the same as creating a new user

5:07, right?

5:08Again, that's really the power of these very simple, deceptively simple that is

5:13.

5:13His interfaces is there's really just a lot you can do with them.

5:18And it's pretty consistent whether you're creating a new user or whether you're

5:21creating

5:22a new catalog item or whether you're creating a new item in some other table,

5:27right?

5:27So you know, if you wanted to create a new catalog item, you could do that in

5:30here.

5:31You just enter the name.

5:32You'd enter the, you'd show the catalogs that it should appear on.

5:36The categories it should be part of all of those other things.

5:40All right, as well as the description, short description, things like that.

5:44I'll leave that up to you to play around with yourself.

5:47You can obviously modify these as well.

5:49So if you click on one of these, you can modify it just like we were able to

5:52modify the user's

5:54password.

5:55But you can just come in here, make any changes you want and click update.

5:59So that's again, one thing that admins are typically going to have to do quite

6:04frequently.

6:05What else do we have here?

6:07Oh, the last thing I wanted to demonstrate here for you is how you can imperson

6:12ate other

6:13users.

6:14We did talk about this briefly in the service now, basics course, but I'll show

6:18you again

6:19just because we're going to be doing this quite a lot, right?

6:21It's very important, especially when you're setting up different things like

6:25permissions,

6:26all right, access control, things like that, to actually test things out from

6:30the point

6:31of view of another user, because they're going to be seeing a completely

6:36different interface

6:38than you.

6:39And it's important that you make sure that that's what you expect.

6:42So the way that you impersonate a user is by clicking up here on the little,

6:46you know,

6:47profile picture icon in the top right hand corner, you're going to go down to

6:51impersonate

6:52user with a little eyeball next to it.

6:55And then you can basically search for any user in here.

6:58So let's search for Abraham Lincoln.

7:01All right, already there.

7:02And we're going to impersonate Abraham Lincoln by clicking this impersonate

7:07user button.

7:08Okay.

7:09So what this is going to do, I'm just going to click leave there.

7:11This is actually going to reload our application as that user.

7:16So if you were actually Abraham Lincoln, well, first of all, you probably

7:20wouldn't be using

7:21service now.

7:22It doesn't quite line up, you know, timeline wise, but let's just pretend if

7:26you were

7:26Abraham Lincoln and you were to log into service now at your organization, this

7:30is exactly

7:31what you would see, right?

7:32And that's a pretty powerful feature, right?

7:35Because if we wanted to, let's say, give Abraham Lincoln access to some other

7:38feature

7:39of the service now platform, we could actually just, you know, instead of

7:42having Abraham

7:43Lincoln log in, you know, sending Abraham Lincoln a slack message, let's say

7:48asking,

7:49Hey, can you see this thing now?

7:51Abraham Lincoln says, No, I can't see it.

7:53And you know, you just have to go back and forth like that.

7:56Kind of doing things like that, you can literally just log in as Abraham

7:59Lincoln and check,

8:01right?

8:02So you can see, you know, if you wanted to check if Abraham Lincoln had access

8:06to submitting

8:06incidents, let's say you could just search for incidents and you could see that

8:10sure

8:10enough, Abraham Lincoln is able to do so by clicking new, you get the idea.

8:15So that is how you impersonate users.

8:18And when you're done, you can just come back here and you can do end imperson

8:22ation, right?

8:24So do log out that'll actually log you, you know, the admin out.

8:28You just do end impersonation and that will bring you back to yourself, right?

8:32You're no longer Abraham Lincoln.

8:34So again, those are just a few important tasks that admins are going to have to

8:38do on a pretty

8:39regular basis.

8:40So I just wanted to show you those right off the bat so that you know at least

8:44how to do

8:44those few things before we go into much more depth on the individual

8:48responsibilities that

8:49we talked about earlier in this skill throughout the rest of the course.

0:00All right, so now that we've seen how to perform those very common tasks and we

0:04've also discussed

0:05quite a few other things about being a ServiceNow admin, it's time for you to

0:10do just a kind

0:11of a fun little challenge that will tie everything back in and also make it

0:16much easier to find

0:17those common tasks that we performed in the previous video.

0:23Your challenge here is going to be for each of the things that we talked about

0:27previously

0:28to create a favorite for that.

0:32Basically set it as a favorite for yourself under this favorites tab.

0:37I'll get you started here by showing you how to do this for the first one and

0:41then your

0:41task will be to do that for the other tasks.

0:45I'm going to go into all here and basically all you need to do in order to add

0:49a favorite.

0:50This is something that we discussed in the ServiceNow basics course but I'll

0:55just show

0:55you again.

0:56It's pretty straightforward.

0:58In order to do this, all you need to do is search for the thing you want.

1:03So in that case we're going to want to search for users and go to, where is it

1:07here, under

1:08user administration and for the password reset, you're just going to go to this

1:14and find the

1:15corresponding user.

1:16We're just going to want to set this module here as our favorite.

1:22All you need to do for that is go to the module again and click that little

1:26star next to it

1:27and then you can see that that comes up with a name.

1:31You can always just say something like reset users password if you want to give

1:36a little

1:37more context around it and then if you click done what you'll see is over here

1:41in favorites.

1:42Sure enough you have reset users password and no matter where you are, if you

1:46go to your

1:46favorites and click that, sure enough that'll take you right there.

1:50So again, that is your challenge here is to do that for the other tasks that we

1:54talked

1:55about previously.

1:56And once you've given that a try, you can move on to the next video where I'll

2:00just briefly

2:00walk you through that.

2:02[BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00All right, well hopefully you gave that challenge a try,

0:03so let's walk through the solution.

0:05Now, this one was kind of like a two-for-one deal

0:08that we just had because the, you know,

0:12creating a new user was this one here,

0:14but you could have also, right?

0:17You could have actually clicked new,

0:20and that takes you to this page,

0:23and you know, there's not really a star anywhere in site

0:26that we can click on in order to set this as a favorite,

0:29but you could have gone into here, right?

0:31This little menu up in the top left-hand corner

0:34and actually done create favorite,

0:36and that would give you create new user as a favorite.

0:40So that one might have been a little bit tricky.

0:42Hopefully you were able to find that.

0:44And sure enough, up in favorites now,

0:45we see that create new user takes us right here

0:47so that we don't need to search for it anymore, right?

0:49It saves us a clicker too, which is very valuable

0:52when, you know, you're swamped with different tasks

0:55as a service now admin.

0:56And the last thing here is creating or updating a catalog item.

1:01Well, actually the last thing is impersonating a user,

1:04but that's already up here,

1:06so it's, you don't really need to set that as a favorite.

1:08So the catalog, right, what we're gonna do is

1:12we're just gonna search for catalog,

1:14and down here under catalog definitions,

1:16we're gonna do maintain items,

1:19and that's going to be where we want that.

1:22So if you wanted to set a favorite

1:23for creating a new catalog item, you could do that here,

1:26in exactly the same way, right?

1:28Again, that's a nice thing.

1:28You know where everything's gonna be

1:30because it's the same basic interfaces that are used.

1:33So we'll just click done for create new catalog item,

1:36and you could also just set this one as a favorite

1:38for catalog items, right?

1:41So that you could edit one if you wanted to.

1:43So we'll just do that under here, right?

1:45We'll search for maintain catalogs.

1:47We'll do something like catalog items list

1:52or something like that.

1:53And then we can click done.

1:55And that's pretty much it.

1:57Again, the other one, which is just impersonating a user,

2:00that's right up here.

2:01And that's really a sort of a different type of thing

2:03you're doing 'cause you're not really interacting

2:06with the data that's in here.

2:07You're actually just viewing the application

2:10or viewing a certain feature as another user.

2:14So you wouldn't wanna set that as a favorite anyway.

2:17But anyway, we now have our favorites.

2:19We now have four new favorites here for different things,

2:22for resetting users password.

2:24That takes us right here for creating a new user.

2:26That takes us right to that form,

2:28for creating a new catalog item.

2:30That takes us right to that form

2:31and for seeing a list of all the catalog items.

2:35We can just click on that and that takes us right here.

2:37So anyway, that is the solution to the challenge.

2:41Hopefully you were able to figure that one out

2:43and hopefully these new favorites help you in the future.

2:46[BLANK_AUDIO]