Get To Know The Main ServiceNow Building Blocks

0:00Hi, Sean here and welcome to this skill where we're going to be taking a look

0:04at the basic

0:05building blocks of ServiceNow and how to use them.

0:10So first of all, let's talk about what I mean by building blocks.

0:14When you're looking at the ServiceNow interface as an admin versus as a user,

0:20things look

0:21a bit different, right?

0:24Kind of the cool thing about ServiceNow is that all of the just basic users in

0:28your

0:28organization are going to be navigating through this thing and getting work

0:32done, right?

0:32They're going to be maybe reporting incidents and handling incidents, things

0:37like that.

0:38And you know, they're not really going to be worrying too much about how all

0:42this stuff

0:43is set up behind the scenes.

0:44All they really care about is that it works, right?

0:46If they want to create a new incident, they can just create a new incident and

0:50submit it

0:50and they know that, you know, the IT help desk or whoever's job it is to handle

0:56incidents

0:57is going to be able to take care of it and get notified about it in the first

1:02place,

1:02right?

1:03But as an admin, right, your job is going to be to configure all of these

1:09things behind

1:11the scenes and, you know, you're not going to need to configure things like

1:15incident reporting

1:16from scratch, but a big part of your job is going to be to make modifications

1:21to different

1:21workflows like this.

1:23And yes, in some cases, you are going to need to create things from scratch.

1:27So you know, as an admin, right, when you're doing things, when you're enabling

1:33everyone

1:34else at your organization to get work done in an organized manner using service

1:39now,

1:39there are what I refer to as building blocks that you're going to need to learn

1:43how to

1:43use and learn how they're connected to one another.

1:46Okay.

1:47So that's what I'm going to do in this first video is just introduce you to

1:51these different

1:53building blocks, show you the basics of how they fit together.

1:56And throughout the rest of this skill, we'll be going into a little bit more

1:59detail on

2:00each of the building blocks and, well, at least some of the most important ones

2:05and

2:05seeing how they work and just some some initial details about them again, we're

2:10going to be

2:10going into much more detail on pretty much all of these later on in the course.

2:16But for now, just to get you just to give you an orientation, that's what I

2:19want to

2:20do.

2:21So this is a final side note.

2:22The reason that I'm doing things this way, right, most, most courses out there

2:26on service

2:26now will do things in, they'll kind of do it, they'll kind of do things depth

2:31first,

2:32where, you know, maybe they'll start off by looking at lists and then they'll

2:35go miles

2:35deep with lists and they'll, you know, maybe go through, you know, the anatomy

2:42of lists,

2:43how to use them, how to, wow, that's a really messy way to write anatomy.

2:47Let me try that again.

2:48So go through like the anatomy of lists, they'll talk about how lists relate to

2:52tables, they'll

2:53talk about how to configure lists and the whole time, they'll fail to mention

2:59how lists

3:00are connected to other pieces of service now, right, other, other building

3:04blocks as

3:04I'm going to call them of service now.

3:07So that's why I'm kind of doing this more breadth first here is because this

3:11was something

3:12that was very, very frustrating for me when I was first learning service now is

3:17I learned

3:17all about lists, I learned all about tables, I learned all about users, I

3:21learned all about,

3:22you know, applications and modules in the interface and whatnot.

3:26But I didn't really learn about, you know, how do these things all fit together

3:30?

3:30So I'm starting off there because that's kind of how I wish things had gone for

3:35me when

3:35I was first learning service now.

3:37So anyway, let's get started here with, you know, by meeting these building

3:43blocks, the

3:44first building block and I'll show you the basic interface and how to access

3:48these things

3:48in service now along with each of these two.

3:50It's not just going to be whiteboarding.

3:53The first building block is kind of like a kind of a trifecta of building

3:57blocks.

3:58Don't worry about it.

3:59We're just going to treat it as one building block right now.

4:01And this is users, groups and roles.

4:08Now basically, this building block here represents who's using service now in

4:14your organization

4:16and what they are or what they do in the organization, right?

4:21So let's say that a new employee joins your organization.

4:26Well, as an admin, you're going to want to create a new user and also make sure

4:30that

4:31that user is assigned to the group that they belong to.

4:34So if they were hired for your IT help desk team, you're going to want to make

4:38sure that

4:38they're added to that group in service now.

4:43And furthermore, this idea of roles, that's something that we'll talk about in

4:47more detail

4:47later on in the course.

4:48But this basically defines what different users and different groups are able

4:55to do, right?

4:56Or what their responsibilities are, I guess you could say, in service now.

5:01So it's a big, this roles thing here is a big mechanism by which we control who

5:07's allowed

5:08to do what in service now.

5:11All right.

5:12So as far as these, as far as where to find users, groups and roles in service

5:17now, if

5:17we go back to the service now interface, we can just open up this all menu here

5:22.

5:22We're going to go to users and underneath organization, there's actually a lot

5:26of different ways

5:27to get to users here, but we'll just go into organization.

5:30If you click on users, this is going to bring up a list of all of the users in

5:35your organization.

5:36And as you can see, there's a number of different pieces of information we have

5:42on each user,

5:43such as their user ID, their name, their email, whether they're active or not,

5:48when the user

5:49data was created, when the user data was last updated.

5:53And if you click on one of these, that's going to take you to a form that

5:59allows you to edit

6:01the user.

6:02And by the way, lists and forms are two building blocks of service now, kind of

6:07the cool thing.

6:08One of the cool things I'll say about being a service now admin is that you

6:11actually get

6:12to edit the forms and the lists that the rest of the users in the organization

6:20work with

6:20on a regular basis.

6:21All right, so I'm going to actually add that to the list here, right?

6:24We have users groups and roles, but we also have lists and forms, okay?

6:30And we'll take a good long look at how to work with both of those as an admin

6:35as well.

6:35Cool.

6:36Now, as far as groups and roles, there are sections in service now for those as

6:42well.

6:42So if we go back and take a look at those, we saw how to get to users.

6:47If you search for groups, it's going to be a little bit tricky to find those.

6:51If you search for users and groups, that might be a little bit easier.

6:55And then it's just groups underneath that.

6:57This is where you can create new groups.

6:59So if your corporation decides to add a new team, this does go beyond just

7:05actual, you

7:07know, differentiated teams in an organization, right?

7:10As you can see, some of these define sort of like a group that has a specific

7:15permission

7:16to do something like approve requests, things like that, approve time off

7:21requests, approve,

7:24you know, if an employee wants to order some expensive equipment and have that

7:27expense,

7:28right?

7:29Things like that.

7:30All right.

7:31And as far as roles go, those are going to be under users and groups as well,

7:36okay?

7:36And again, we'll go into much more detail on how these fit together.

7:39But anyway, let's go back to our list.

7:44And the next thing that we're going to talk about here, we've seen users groups

7:47roles,

7:47lists and forms.

7:48The next thing here is applications and modules.

7:53All right.

7:54So applications and modules, the way that I'm going to describe them here isn't

7:58100%

7:58correct, but it's going to be useful for now at least to describe them this way

8:03.

8:03They're basically the way that different interfaces are grouped and organized

8:10in service now.

8:11So if you go back and take a look at that list that we've been using to get

8:14around,

8:15right, for example, we search for users and groups.

8:18In this case, we saw that this brought up this users and groups, group, so to

8:23speak,

8:24right?

8:25And this menu and inside this, we have users, groups, roles, and each one of

8:28these clicking

8:29on one of these will actually take us to a different part of the platform.

8:33All right.

8:34So there are names for these things.

8:35And here, let's actually search for something else like incident, if you search

8:39for incident,

8:41notice that the same thing applies here, right?

8:43We have these individual things that will take you to different interfaces in

8:48the platform,

8:50but they're grouped together with sort of these drop down menus.

8:54Now these drop down menus, they're much more than just menus as you'll see a

8:57little bit

8:58later, but these are called applications and everything inside them that

9:04provides a specific

9:05interface when you click on it is referred to as a module, right?

9:10So hear me say things like click on the incidents module under the service desk

9:16application.

9:17And that's kind of the basic terminology there that you'll hear me use.

9:22All right.

9:23So, you know, the interesting thing about applications and modules and how they

9:26're related to

9:28basically everything else in service now is these are how we provide users with

9:34the ability

9:35to do things in the service now platform, right?

9:39So as we just saw, there's a specific module for editing users and adding users

9:45, right?

9:46There's a specific module for editing and adding groups.

9:49There's a specific model for editing and adding roles.

9:51The way that it's tied into lists and forms is that modules, you know, the

9:57interface that

9:58comes up when we select a specific module in service now tends to be either a

10:03list or

10:04a form.

10:05As you'll see, there's there are many other interfaces that you might encounter

10:08, but lists

10:08and forms are by far the most common interfaces that you'll see when opening up

10:14a module.

10:15All right.

10:16Cool.

10:17So anyway, those are the first three building blocks in service now.

10:21In the next video, we're going to continue on and take a look at some other

10:24somewhat more

10:25advanced building blocks and how they relate to these ones that we've talked

10:29about so far.

10:30[BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00Alright, so now that we've taken a look at the first three building blocks, we

0:03're going to move on to a few other ones.

0:06And the next one that we're going to talk about is tables and records.

0:11Now, I think this really brings things together for a lot of people, you know,

0:17who are hoping to become a ServiceNow admins,

0:20because ultimately a lot of the power of the ServiceNow platform is based on

0:24this idea of tables and records.

0:27So, what are tables and records? Well, a table in ServiceNow is a place for us

0:33to store a specific type of data.

0:37So, for example, there's a user's table, and there's also an incidence table,

0:42and there's also a changes table.

0:45And there's also, we'll take a look at this one a little bit later, an ACL

0:50table, which keeps track of, you know, permissions in the ServiceNow platform,

0:55who's able to do what, things like that. So, basically, a table is quite simply

1:02that, right?

1:03Picture an Excel spreadsheet, where each column in the spreadsheet contains a

1:08very specific type of data.

1:11So, for a user, this might be like the user's name, we might have the user's

1:15email address, maybe we have the user's age,

1:18maybe we have, you know, other properties besides that, and the records in a

1:25table are simply the individual users that are stored there, right?

1:28So, if we have user one in here, user two in there, user three in there, and

1:32their corresponding name, email, age, and so on,

1:35filled in in each of these columns there, those are records in the user's table

1:41. That's how we say this.

1:42All right, now, the interesting thing about tables in ServiceNow, one of

1:46several interesting things that I'm going to discuss here, is that once we've

1:50created and configured a table in ServiceNow,

1:54our users will very rarely, if ever, interact with the table directly, right?

2:01Instead, what users will typically do is they'll interact with your table

2:06through lists and forms.

2:08So, let me give you an example of this. I'm going to just go back over to the

2:12ServiceNow interface.

2:14Let's say, and I'm going to use users as an example here again, so let's search

2:19for users and under organization, we're going to go to the user's module.

2:24All right, so we'll select that. And once again, this brings up a list showing

2:29some of the users that are in the user's table.

2:33Now, we'll talk about this in much more detail a little bit later in the course

2:37, but the first thing to know is that the data that you see here is not the

2:45table, right?

2:46You may have heard the saying, "The map is not the territory," right? And it's

2:51the same kind of thing in ServiceNow, right?

2:53So even though we see this data here about some users in our ServiceNow

2:58instance, there's actually a lot more data that's hiding behind the scenes that

3:03we can see just by adjusting the settings for this list.

3:07Now, again, we're going to talk about this in much more detail a little bit

3:10later in the course, but just to give you a little sneak peek, let's say that

3:16we wanted to see more columns, right?

3:18There's actually a lot more columns here that are available for our users

3:21besides the ones that are shown here. These are just the defaults.

3:25So if you click on this little gear icon up in the top right-hand corner, right

3:30, what you can see is that, um, let's go down and search for "department."

3:35If we click on "department" and click this little right-hand arrow and say, "

3:39Okay," then now what we'll see after it updates is that this shows what

3:45department each user is in.

3:48Right? So we can see that AbleTutor, for example, is in product management. We

3:52can see that, um, let's see here.

3:54We can see that Alfonso Griglin is in the IT department and so on and so forth,

4:00right?

4:01Now, that data, again, wasn't available to us or it wasn't visible to us before

4:07we made that change.

4:08And that's what I mean when I say that users usually don't interact with a

4:13table directly in ServiceNow.

4:16They're always going to be looking at it through some sort of lens like a list.

4:20Now, the other way that they're going to interact with a table, again, in a

4:24somewhat indirect fashion, is through forms.

4:27So let's open up AbleTutor's form by clicking on the user ID here, right?

4:32That will open up AbleTutor's information in this form. And again, this does

4:36not necessarily show all of the data that's available to us about this

4:40individual user, right?

4:42This is only the data that we, in particular, right, we're currently logged in

4:48as the system administrator.

4:50This is only the data that we have permission to see.

4:54Now, you could probably imagine that it's going to be fairly complete since we

4:57're the system admin, but there might be things even here that we're not able to

5:02see.

5:03So, you know, the interesting thing about a form is that this is how we can

5:08edit a user's information.

5:10All right, so if we make a change here, right, if we add another L to AbleTutor

5:14's name and then click update, what that's doing is that is updating AbleTutor's

5:21name field in the user's table, right?

5:24And you can also make changes directly to fields here by just double clicking.

5:28And so if we wanted to add another L there and we click this little, you know,

5:32save button, we'll see that that will automatically update to now again.

5:36This is making changes to the data that's in a table, but we're not actually

5:41looking at the table itself.

5:43I think I've probably hammered that point home enough by now.

5:47But anyway, another interesting thing about tables, if we go back to here, is

5:54that there are tables for pretty much everything in service now.

5:58And when I say pretty much everything, I mean, everything, right?

6:02So, for example, we already saw that there's a table that stores our users.

6:06There's a table that stores our groups. There's a table that stores our roles.

6:10And there's even a table that stores the different forms that we see in our

6:16application and what fields are available, what users are able to see those

6:21different fields.

6:22There's also a table for specifying what applications are available in our

6:27service now instance, as well as what modules are available and what they show.

6:32When a user opens them up and just to demonstrate that one for you, let me open

6:37this up again.

6:38And I'm going to search for forms module, all right, and that's going to be

6:44under the system UI applications.

6:46So let's open that one up. And what you see here, we're going to go into this

6:50in much more detail.

6:51So this might not look like anything to you right now, but this is a list that

6:56's allowing us to view the data, right?

6:59The records that are in the forms table in our instance.

7:04So in other words, every form that we're looking at, right?

7:07So if we open up the, you know, incident and then we go to service desk

7:11incidents here and let's say that we click on one of these incidents here.

7:16There is a specific record in a forms table somewhere that contains information

7:23for everything that we're seeing here, right?

7:25What fields there are, what those fields are called, what type of data those

7:30fields contain and so on, right?

7:32Which is pretty amazing, right? Because this means that as an admin, we can

7:36really change anything we want in service now just by making the right change

7:42to the right table, right?

7:44That's usually the answer to most questions that service now admins have, like,

7:49how can I change this?

7:50How can I change that? How can I set up this thing?

7:52How can I, you know, set up email notifications for when there's a new user

7:57created that go to these specific people, right?

8:00Just as a, just as a more specific example.

8:02Well, the answer to that, as I said, is by creating the right record in the

8:07right table, all right?

8:08So that's a very important concept to kind of get used to in service now is

8:14that this is how most things are configured.

8:16Now there's even to get even more meta on you here.

8:20There's even a table, if you search for tables in here and go to, where is it

8:24here?

8:25System definition tables.

8:26There's even a table that contains the configuration for all of the tables in

8:32our service now instance.

8:34So if you search for incidents here, or just incident singular rather, that

8:39brings up the incident table.

8:41And if you take a look at that, what you'll see, it may not look like much to

8:46you yet, but you'll learn to read these things pretty quickly.

8:49This contains all of the configurations for the table that stores data about

8:54all of the incidents in our service now.

8:58Instinct.

8:58Right.

8:58So anyway, bringing this back to the other, the other topics that we have

9:04discussed so far, tables and records are the way that pretty much everything in

9:10service now is stored from regular data like incidents or changes or orders,

9:17things like that.

9:18To actual things that affect the functionality of the service now instance

9:24itself.

9:25So again, this is a really important concept and that's why I wanted to mention

9:29these things upfront is because this is how as an admin, you're going to be

9:35making most changes to most things in the service now instances through some

9:41sort of table somewhere.

0:00All right, so moving on to the next building blocks in service.

0:04Now, what we're going to talk about next are filters and breadcrumbs, which are

0:10sort of

0:11like the, they're just a handy little UI feature that allows you to navigate

0:16filters a little

0:17bit easier as you'll see.

0:18So filters and breadcrumbs are the next building block we're going to take a

0:22look at here.

0:24And first of all, let's just talk about the basic purpose of filters.

0:28The fact is that in service now, right, in your service now instance, if you're

0:33working

0:33in a medium to large size organization, there's going to be way more data than

0:38any individual

0:39person needs in that instance, right?

0:43So let's say, for example, let's just go back to the, maybe the users, right?

0:49So as you can see, there are 640 users in here.

0:52And in most cases, we're not going to care about all of those users.

0:57In fact, we might want to, you know, only view the users that are in a specific

1:02department,

1:02let's say, or users that were added after a specific date or before a specific

1:07date or

1:08on a specific date.

1:09And the same thing is even more true or even more evident.

1:13If you just search for ACL under the system security application, right, we're

1:18going to

1:18click on the access control ACL module under that application.

1:24Look how many records are showing up from that table, 22,780.

1:30And there's probably even larger tables that I could have shown you here.

1:33But the point being that when you want to do pretty much anything in service

1:37now, one

1:38of the biggest problems you're going to face as an admin or just as a regular

1:42user even

1:43is going to be finding the data that you actually need to work with, right?

1:48And that is the job of filters.

1:51So let's go back to users, right?

1:52I'm going to search for users because that one's a little bit more intuitive

1:55when we're

1:56just getting started.

1:57So let's go to organization users.

1:59And up here in the top left hand corner of any list, right, this applies for

2:04any list

2:05that you're looking at in service now, unless the filter feature has been

2:09explicitly turned

2:10off.

2:11And we'll actually take a look at how to do that in a later skill because that

2:13's something

2:14that admins are able to do.

2:16If you click on this little filter icon, what that's going to do is that's

2:19going to

2:19allow you to add a number of filters that will help to reduce the amount of

2:26data that

2:27you're seeing in the list so that you're only looking at what you're interested

2:31in.

2:31So let's just, let's go back to the situation where we want to see only users

2:36from a specific

2:37department.

2:38Well, in that case, all we would have to do, there are many different ways you

2:42can add

2:42filters and we're going to take a much deeper look at this a little bit later.

2:46But what you would do is you could say department, right, notice that this here

2:50is a list of

2:51all of the available fields in the table, right, which is much more than what

2:55we see

2:56here as I showed you in a previous video.

2:59If we search for department, there we go.

3:02We're going to say is, and then we'll search for a specific department.

3:06We'll just say, let's search for IT, okay, and it allows us to select that

3:11because this

3:12is actually a field that only has specific values that you can select from,

3:16right, because

3:17there's only a limited range of departments there.

3:20Anyway, we'll talk about that later.

3:22But if we click run now after adding this filter, what that's going to do is

3:27again,

3:27that's going to significantly reduce the amount of data that we're looking at.

3:33And notice that we now only have 122 records in, you know, in this filtered

3:39list versus

3:40I believe it was 640 before, right, that might not seem like that much of a

3:44reduction.

3:45But let's say that we want to search for all of the users in the IT department

3:50who were

3:51added before maybe 2020, okay.

3:55Well in that case, all you'd have to do is add another filter here.

3:59And you would do that by clicking this and button.

4:01All right, and we're going to say created.

4:04Okay.

4:05That's just the, that's a field storing what date the user was created on,

4:11right?

4:12Well, not the user, the, the user record anyway was created on.

4:18So we're going to say created and we'll say before.

4:23And then we're going to say, I mean, you can, you can select a specific date or

4:27you

4:28can select, you know, relative dates like this year, last year, last two years,

4:34whatever.

4:35All right.

4:36So I'm going to click this little calendar thing and oh man, I really don't

4:38feel like

4:38going all the way back to 2020.

4:41Let's maybe go back to, we'll do January 2023.

4:45And in fact, we'll do January 1st.

4:47So this is going to be all users who, whose record was created before January 1

4:52st, 2023.

4:54All right, we're going to select that.

4:56And then if we click run, what we'll see is that's going to narrow down the

5:00results

5:00even more.

5:01So apparently, you know, people tend to stay at this company a long time

5:05because that only

5:06retoosed it by three.

5:08Let's maybe, let's maybe modify that and notice this is actually brings up a

5:12good point.

5:14Notice that as we add filters, this little thing here changes, right?

5:18So we have all, then we have this little arrow department equals it, then we

5:22have this little

5:23arrow says created before 2020, 30101.

5:28And this is what's referred to as breadcrumbs in the service now interface.

5:33So again, these are, it might seem like kind of a strange thing to list these

5:37as one of

5:38the core building blocks of service now.

5:40But you know, the importance of these things really is difficult to overstate

5:46because first

5:47of all, it allows you to know what data you're looking at.

5:50Imagine if someone just sent you a link to service now as people will often do,

5:54you know,

5:54in your organization and you were just looking at this, you'd be like, okay,

5:58what am I going

5:58to be looking at?

5:59Are these all the users that are organization or these?

6:02What am I looking at?

6:04All right.

6:06And the way that you tell that is by looking up here.

6:08All right.

6:09So you can almost think of these breadcrumbs as kind of like a technical title

6:13for the

6:13exact list that you're looking at right now.

6:16So this is, you know, the department, all of the users who are in the IT

6:20department who

6:21were created before 2023.

6:23All right.

6:24And by the way, you can get rid of these things if you click on any one of

6:28these, or if you

6:29click on any one of the arrows next to it, you can change what filters are

6:33actually getting

6:34applied.

6:35So notice that we just removed that created before filter.

6:39And let's, let's maybe go through another, let's, let's maybe add another

6:43filter.

6:44So what we'll do here, we have department is IT.

6:47Let's add another one by clicking and, and what we'll do is we'll say created

6:52and maybe

6:53we'll, maybe we'll get all of the users who were created, maybe in the last two

6:59years,

7:00right?

7:01So users who joined our company that is in the last two years, we can say last

7:04two years,

7:05we'll click on that.

7:06And if we click run now, what we'll see is this really does winnow down the,

7:11the data

7:12that we're looking at because we only have four users now that are in the IT

7:16department

7:17and that were added in the last two years.

7:20Okay.

7:21So hopefully this, we'll go through filters and a lot more detail a little bit

7:26later,

7:26but hopefully this at least shows you how these things are very useful for any

7:31user,

7:32but also service now admins because of how they allow us to really zoom in on

7:37the exact

7:38data that we want in any of these situations.

7:41All right.

7:42And to give you maybe a more admin related task that you might use filters for,

7:47let's

7:48say that instead of working with something more intuitive like users, let's say

7:51that

7:51we're working with things like modules, right?

7:55There's a table for modules.

7:56And if you go under system definition modules and select that module, yes,

8:01there is a modules

8:03module in the same way that there's a tables table.

8:07Notice that you can see under here all of the modules that are, uh, rephrase,

8:14notice

8:14that among other things in this list, you can see what application menu a

8:20module belongs

8:21to now ignore these empty ones.

8:23Uh, we'll talk about those in more detail a little bit later, but you know, if

8:27we had

8:27a filter to this, right, let's say, uh, application menu, we're going to select

8:32that.

8:33And we'll say is, and let's say that we want to see all of the things that are

8:37in the self

8:39service application.

8:40All right.

8:41We're going to select self service and click run.

8:44Well, here we go.

8:45We now have a list of the 34 different modules that are in the self service

8:51application.

8:52So if you just search for self service, right?

8:55Here we go.

8:56Sure enough, we see all of these modules here and there may not be exactly 34.

9:00Some of these may be, uh, inactive.

9:03Some of them may be hidden from specific users or only available to specific

9:08users.

9:09But anyway, that is, um, you know, all of the modules that are there and if we

9:13wanted

9:14to work on these, right, if we wanted to maybe, uh, make a change to some of

9:17these modules,

9:19this is how we would do that.

9:21Right.

9:22As from this filtered list.

9:23All right.

9:24And something that we'll take a look at a little bit later, right, to sort of

9:27tie filters

9:28in with things like modules in a different way that is, uh, here, let me just

9:32come back

9:33here.

9:34This is possible to create a new module that shows a list that have specific

9:40filters already

9:41applied to them.

9:42And in fact, I didn't record all of the videos in this, uh, in this course in

9:46order.

9:47We're actually going to do that in a later skill.

9:51You may have noticed that if I search for incident here under service desks, I

9:55have

9:55this high priority incidents module.

9:59This is a module that we're going to create in a later skill that shows the

10:02regular incidents

10:03list, but with this high priority filter automatically applied to it.

10:09Right.

10:10So, um, that's just one more thing that you can do with filters is you can

10:13associate them

10:15with a specific module so that when you go to that module, you're viewing a

10:19list with

10:20some filter already applied to it.

10:22it.

0:00All right, so at this point, we've talked about a number of different key

0:04building blocks in ServiceNow.

0:06And the last one that we're going to talk about here, I think, is one of the

0:10more, um,

0:11maybe exciting, or at least visually interesting ones, uh, in the ServiceNow

0:17universe.

0:18And that is something called Workflows.

0:21So, you know, one thing that you may have sort of picked up on

0:26about the data in ServiceNow, at least so far, is that it's all largely static.

0:34So what I mean by that is, you know, think about users.

0:37If we hire a new employee and want them to be able to use ServiceNow,

0:41what we as an admin would have to do is we would have to go in, create a new

0:46user.

0:46And then if we want them to have certain permissions or be part of a certain

0:49group,

0:50we would have to manually add them to that group.

0:52If after we've created that new user, we want to create some sort of like tasks

0:58in some other table for making sure the user gets onboarded appropriately,

1:04then we have to go in and add that manually.

1:07And the, um, you know, the key thing, one of the key concepts about ServiceNow,

1:12that ServiceNow aims to, uh, kind of fix in modern organizations is simple

1:19tasks like that.

1:20We should not have to do manually, right?

1:24There is no reason for us to have to do all of that manually by pointing and

1:28clicking.

1:29That's just a waste of our time, right?

1:31So that's where this idea of workflows comes in in ServiceNow.

1:36And to show you what this looks like, let's go back to ServiceNow.

1:39And we're going to search for something called the flow designer.

1:44All right.

1:45Now what this is going to do is this is actually going to open up a new tab in

1:49your browser.

1:50And, you know, this is something that you'll see from time to time in Service

1:54Now.

1:54Certain things have a much more sophisticated interface for allowing you to

1:59create them.

2:00And sometimes they do take a little while to load as you saw with that one.

2:04So in this case, the flow designer is a visual tool.

2:08As you'll see, it's a drag and drop tool really for automating things in the

2:13ServiceNow platform.

2:15So if you ever find yourself saying like, hey, it would be great if when I did

2:20this thing,

2:21this other thing automatically happened, or when another user did this thing,

2:24this other thing automatically happened.

2:26If you're ever using the word automatically with regards to something happening

2:31in ServiceNow,

2:32chances are the solution is to come in here and create a new workflow.

2:37All right.

2:37So if we pick one of these workflows, just pick any of these, all right?

2:40We'll just do a change emergency implement.

2:43I have no idea what this workflow is.

2:45But if you take a look at this, I just wanted to show you the interface.

2:49You can see that this defines a series of steps that will happen.

2:53Whenever something called a trigger happens, right?

2:57A trigger is basically just any event in ServiceNow.

3:00It could be creating a new user.

3:01It could be modifying a specific field on a specific type of table, right?

3:07There's really a lot of configuration you can do here.

3:10And when that thing happens, you get to define a series of actions that occur

3:16in response to that.

3:18So you can do things like send out emails in response to something happening.

3:23So if you wanted to automatically send out an email when a critical incident is

3:27created,

3:28you could do that.

3:29You can also, in this actions section, have things like creating a new record

3:35in another table.

3:36So if you wanted to automatically create an onboarding task for a user after

3:41creating their new user record,

3:43then that would be something you'd use the Flow Designer to do.

3:47So again, we're going to talk about the Flow Designer in much more detail a

3:51little bit later in the course.

3:53But I just wanted to show you this interface because this tends to be one of

3:57the more exciting features for people who are learning about ServiceNow.

4:01And one of the more important things that you can do as a ServiceNow admin,

4:04right?

4:05The fact is that when you automate even the simplest tasks in ServiceNow,

4:11like automatically sending an email or automatically creating a new task when a

4:15user gets created, things like that,

4:18that the cumulative time that that saves people at your organization can add up

4:23to be a pretty impressive amount.

4:26So anyway, again, we'll take a look at that in much more detail a little bit

4:28later,

4:29but that's the final building block that I wanted to show you here.

4:33These are obviously not the only building blocks in ServiceNow.

4:37There are plenty of other things I could have talked about here,

4:39but really in my experience, these are the six most important things that

4:45anyone working with ServiceNow needs to understand,

4:48but especially ServiceNow admins.

4:51So anyway, hopefully this helps you to understand everything that we learn

4:55about ServiceNow going forward.

4:57And the next thing that we're going to do in this skill is we're going to wrap

5:00the skill up by doing a challenge.

0:00All right, well now that we've learned about the main building blocks of

0:03service now

0:04It's time for you to do a challenge and in this challenge

0:07You're just going to be going through these questions that I've created for you

0:12And you'll also see the video that I'm recording right now show up here

0:15I couldn't put it there because well I haven't recorded it yet

0:18And so as you can see we have to fill in the blank questions. We have

0:29And as you can see we have two fill-in-the-blank questions we have one

0:32Multi-select question. I think that's what they're called and we have one

0:37matchup question for you to match the building blocks with their

0:41descriptions, so feel free to give these a try and

0:44Once you've walked through these and given your answers

0:47Feel free to go on to the next video where I'll walk you through the answers

0:52myself and offer a little bit more of an

0:54explanation to these to make sure that we're clear and really the ultimate goal

0:58of this challenge is to

0:59To take what we've learned about service now through these main building blocks

1:04and try and synthesize it into

1:06Some you know some key principles that we can keep in mind when going through a

1:11lot of the details that we'll be covering

1:13About service now itself right so as you can see I've named this section

1:17creating some mental models

1:19And the idea here is that many people find service now to be a pretty

1:24Shall we say inscrutable platform when they start working with it?

1:28especially if they take kind of the piecemeal approach and just learn about

1:32lists than just about forms then just about you know

1:35Whatever other concepts they're trying to learn about in service now without

1:39covering the basic

1:40Concepts and applying those right so with what we've learned in this skill the

1:45idea is that you'll have some

1:47Mental models as I said that you can take through the rest of the course with

1:52you and apply to everything

1:54we cover there. So best of luck with these questions, I'll see you in the

1:57solution video.

0:00All right, well, hopefully you gave this challenge a try and answered these

0:03questions

0:04as best you could.

0:06So let's take a look at the solutions and also talk about a few final remarks I

0:11wanted

0:11to make just with, you know, kind of how to think about these different

0:15concepts in service

0:16now as we go through the rest of the course.

0:19So the first thing, in fact, I think I said this thing exactly, you know, word

0:24for word

0:24in one of the videos, pretty much everything in service now is a record in a.

0:30And if you were listening, you should have put table.

0:33And in fact, my browser obnoxiously lists the previous things that I've typed

0:38here underneath

0:39the, you know, underneath the cursor.

0:42But anyway, if we click submit, sure enough, we see that that is correct.

0:46All right.

0:47So again, we talked earlier about the fact that basically everything from, you

0:52know,

0:53just raw data like incidents or changes or users to actual configurations such

1:01as the

1:01tables in our application is defined in a table.

1:05Right.

1:06So tables are absolutely fundamental as a concept in service now.

1:11And as I said earlier, pretty much anything you want to do in service now you

1:15can do by

1:16adding the right records to the right tables, the specifics and what we're

1:19going to spend

1:20pretty much the rest of the course learning is what the right records look like

1:24and what

1:25the right tables are for a wide variety of tasks.

1:28All right.

1:29So the next question here says blanks show data for many records and blanks

1:35show data

1:35for only one record and also allow us to edit that record.

1:39So this one is you can tell from my very helpful little drop down from my

1:43browser.

1:44This first one is lists.

1:47And the second one, which we're going to separate with a comma here is forms.

1:51Right.

1:52So lists show data from many records and forms show data from only one record

1:55and also allow

1:56us to edit that record.

1:57All right.

1:58And if we click submit, sure enough, we see that that is correct.

2:01All right.

2:02So the third question here in this challenge was which of the following are

2:06correct statements

2:07given what we've learned in this skill select three.

2:11So it's sort of like three truths and one lie here.

2:13All right.

2:14So this happens, at least in my case here, the lie has been put up at the very

2:20top.

2:20And that is automation is not something that service now allows us to do.

2:24If you watched the previous video before the challenge, you would have saw that

2:29service

2:29now offers us the ability to create workflows through the flow designer.

2:34And those allow us to do an incredibly wide variety of automations in service

2:39now.

2:40So, um, we know that since it says select three, we don't even really need to

2:44read through

2:44the rest of them, but I'll go through each of them and, uh, you know, and kind

2:48of explain

2:49why they're true.

2:50So this second one says users navigate service now by selecting specific

2:54modules, which are

2:55organized into applications, right?

2:57We saw that, um, you know, you had sort of like these top level groups, which

3:01were applications

3:02and then modules were the individual things you could click and it took you to

3:06a specific

3:07interface, whether that was a list or a form or some other interface.

3:12All right.

3:14The third one says filters are a critical tool in service now because they

3:17allow us to find

3:18the data we're looking for in a specific table or list.

3:21This one was true because as we talked about earlier, uh, most tables that you

3:25're working

3:26with are going to have hundreds, if not thousands of records in them.

3:31And you're usually going to be looking for maybe like a handful of records out

3:37of that

3:37number.

3:38So that's what filters, uh, you know, give us the opportunity to do.

3:43And finally the fourth one says lists and forms are just views into underlying

3:46tables.

3:47The tables themselves usually contain more data than what we see in a list or

3:51form.

3:51I demonstrated this for you, I believe in the first video where I showed you

3:56that we could

3:57hide and show individual columns in a list.

4:01Therefore, you know, kind of demonstrating that lists are just views and don't

4:05represent

4:06the entirety.

4:07Um, you know, the, the wholeness, if you will, of the data that the tables are

4:12storing.

4:12So let's click submit.

4:14And sure enough, we see that that's correct.

4:17And finally the fourth and possibly the hardest question here is match up the

4:21following building

4:22blocks to their descriptions.

4:24This should be fun.

4:25So we're going to start off with lists and forms for this one.

4:29This is convenient interfaces for viewing the data in our service.

4:34Now, instance, again, these are just interfaces.

4:37They're not, you're not viewing the data directly like you would, like you

4:40would be doing if

4:41you were working with maybe an SQL database, right?

4:44You're, it's just a nice convenient way for users, both technical and non-

4:50technical to

4:51see the data that is relevant to them.

4:54Okay.

4:55So that's the, you know, the basic description for lists and forms for tables.

5:01Let's see which one matches up here.

5:02This one is the database of our service now instance.

5:07And I described it this way because the tables are really the main location of

5:11all of the

5:12data and configurations of our service now instance.

5:16So you know, you really can think of the tables in our instance as being the

5:20database of it.

5:22All right.

5:23I'm going to skip users because there's something additional that I want to

5:25talk about here.

5:26Let's go to the flow designer and oops, you may have noticed that the order of

5:29these things

5:30just changed.

5:31That is because I had a typo in one and I just had to go back and edit it.

5:34So you won't even notice that when you go through and answer these yourself.

5:39But let's go back to the flow designer.

5:41This one was a drag and drop interface for automating things in service now.

5:47And finally, that brings us to users.

5:50And this description might have confused you or hopefully intrigued you a

5:54little bit.

5:55This says a representation of the people who will be using our service now

5:59instance.

6:00And here's the interesting part as well as the lens through which people will

6:05interact

6:05with service now.

6:06And it's really the second part there that I think is going to be very

6:10interesting for

6:11you is so far whenever I've demonstrated something in service now and here, let

6:17's just click

6:17submit and sure enough we see it says correct.

6:19So congratulations.

6:20But anyway, going back to the user thing so far whenever I've demonstrated

6:24something in

6:24service now, I've been doing it as this system administrator user that service

6:31now provides

6:32us with in the test instance that we're working with here.

6:37However, it's a really important thing to keep in mind as a service now admin

6:42that most

6:43of your users are not going to be system administrators.

6:46And in fact, they're going to have a variety of different roles and

6:50responsibilities, things

6:51like that, that are going to control in a very real way what they see and don't

6:57see in the

6:58service now interface.

6:59So let me just demonstrate this with a very simple demonstration.

7:03If we go to this all menu and here, let's actually look for flow designer,

7:08right?

7:09As a system administrator, we're able to see flow designer when we search for

7:13it.

7:13However, if we log in as a different user and you can actually do this as a

7:17system administrator

7:19to by doing this impersonate user thing, if we impersonate able tutor who does

7:25not have

7:26the permissions to design workflows, all right, so we're going to say imperson

7:29ate user there,

7:31then what's going to happen is once we've switched over to this user, there we

7:36go, if

7:37we open up this all menu and search for flow, notice that nothing comes up

7:41there, right?

7:42And there's a lot of other things that don't come up either.

7:45For example, if we search for incident, notice that there's no incidents create

7:50new or high

7:50priority incidents or anything like that, because this user doesn't have the

7:55appropriate

7:56permissions to access those.

7:59Okay, so that's what I mean going back to where we were here.

8:04That's what I mean by the lens through which people will interact with service

8:08now because

8:09again, the settings that we have and the permissions that we have associated

8:14with a given user

8:15in that user's table, those are going to control in a very real way what the

8:20user sees and

8:21what they're able to do in service now.

8:24So anyway, that's something that we'll learn a lot more about as we go through

8:29this course,

8:30but that's just sort of again, a mental model that I wanted to give you here is

8:33that users,

8:34right, those users that we create in that user's table are the lenses through

8:38which the real

8:39people are going to interact with service now when they log in as that user.

8:45So anyway, hopefully that makes sense and congratulations on figuring out this

8:49challenge.

8:50And I hope you enjoyed learning about the main building blocks in service now.