hey everyone my name is mike lombardo the ceo of glidefast consulting and today we are kicking off episode one of glide chat and today we're going to be talking about a new feature in the quebec release called universal request today i have some servicenow experts with me ashley snyder and josh brostoff i'm going to have them introduce themselves and we're going to kick off this glide chat i'm ashley snyder i'm a senior technical consultant with glide fast consulting um been with glide fast for over a year now and really enjoying all the great things i get to do in the platform for our customers awesome thanks ashley thanks mike hey everyone my name is josh brostoff i'm a service delivery director here at gladfest i've been working on the servicenow platform for a little over six years and worked for several servicenow customers before moving over to glidefast a little over three years ago so looking forward to you know talking about some of the new features in quebec today awesome so i guess just to kick us off and really i first heard about universal request actually from ashley's blog ashleysn.com i have to give a little shout out to ashleysn.com it's a lot of great information servicenow information on that blog but uh i really got excited because there's been a couple of features that servicenow had that kind of tried to solve this similar use case so i i think let's start off by maybe ashley if you could give us maybe your definition or explanation of what a universal request this feature that servicenow came out with in the quebec release actually is and then maybe we could talk a little bit about the problem that it's solving and then uh the the features or the the solutions that servicenow had previously uh to to this universal request yeah definitely so you know i came across universal requests um i was just kind of poking around in the release notes and i saw it and it looked pretty interesting so i kind of started going down the wormhole of what it was um and as i looked into it you know what servicenow has tried to do which you know we've implemented different solutions that we'll discuss um you know throughout the years let's give the customer kind of you know one kind of you know number to follow within their notifications mobile or service portal that you know doesn't show them all the background processes and stuff that needs to happen in order to fulfill you know whatever their their request or their record number may be so they just have to know that one record number um and servicenow has implemented universal requests to kind of make that more streamlined to the end user to not show them all that background stuff yeah and i think that's great because i mean i'm sure that's something that all of us have experienced whether you know we've been in a workshop or just working with a customer is i think people just get you know confused right they have a requested item or they have an incident number um they have all these different numbers and all these different types and i think it's just confusing for the end customer to understand look all i want to do is come i want to submit my request and then i want one number to track it but you know if you have all these different things each time they come to this service portal i think it can lead to a lot of confusion from the end users so i think having this one central place for everything that shows them one record type is is really a game changer for the future of customer service i totally agree with you guys right workflows are getting more complex right as as more customers are rolling in more processes into service now they're getting more complex right and and i think you guys both touched upon it customers don't care how we get things done right in it or in hr they just want their their problem solved or their new equipment or their hr issue resolved right they don't care what we call it an incident request you know everything you just said josh so so that being said you know let's talk a little bit about new call in interactions because these are two products uh or or tables on servicenow that you know kind of address this issue a little bit so i don't know ashley if you want to take a stab at maybe interactions uh and then maybe josh you can do a new call and then i'll kind of maybe give my opinion on the two yeah so you know i know interactions were released i believe they were released you know in conjunction with the workspace in london and you know what they're meant for is if a customer you know contacts you somehow or i'll say an end user as well you know via the web the portal a call email they get in contact with you somehow as an agent but you don't really know what the nature of their contact is yet you don't know if it's an incident or request or another record type but you need to start logging their details and their information right away and get that into the system so once you figure out what they need then you can convert an interaction to like a request or an incident but that's really where the interaction stops the customer then gets the you know they get the incident number or the request number that they need to to track and those records may have different records you might need to put in a request for an incident so now they have two different numbers and that interaction number is long gone they don't carry that with them so that's kind of what i'll say about interaction and and what do you think a drawback is of interaction other than i know like you lose a number and there are there could be other records that come you know out of that conversation that that interaction with the customer but just if you were to give maybe one drawback or you know maybe another issue that that needs to be solved with interactions that you know because sometimes solutions cause other issues too right like other problems that that we didn't anticipate you know yeah i mean i would say to me like me because i've been on the service desk and i've been a desktop person it just seems like an extra step honestly it seems like something else i have to do yes yep i agree and i feel the similar about new call uh so josh why don't you maybe explain what the new call table record yeah so new call before interaction new call was kind of servicenow's previous version of being able to take in the inquiry from the customer and it quite literally in in the most classical form was when a customer would call in and uh you know someone at the service desk would pick up the phone they would record on the call you know what happened this custom you know their their computer is broken or whatever it may be and then what the agent would need to do after they've documented that is they would move it into the appropriate record type so they would document it as an incident or a request and it would carry all of that relevant information over from the new call record into the target record right but um you know this was really more so on the you know before london like ashley was saying how servicenow treated that and then they kind of moved into the um into the interaction module which really replaced new call so interactions really had a lot of new features that you know new call did not necessarily have so it was really thought of as the the previous version before that great explanations on both i think and for me i'm a little passionate about you know in my developing days or a little before uh interactions and but i've interacted with the new call table a few times and i had a lot of issues with it because everything you just said ashley it'd be new call is also an extra step in the process to me you know whereas i'd rather just be on the incident form gather all my information and i'd rather almost close that incident and open a request or have them open a request if need be or you know handle it that way rather than you know having this other table because this is a don't forget we have to implement this right this is another application in servicenow we have to we have to configure and build for these these customers to use right these service now organize these organizations to use so you know some people wanted notifications to go out on new call and we're like ah that's not really what it's meant for right or they wanted more automation they wanted more uh okay how can i search for incidents and requests and changes and all this stuff and we're like it's not what it's just meant to be a staging table until so it caused a lot of confusion i think for customers i i think we all understood what the intention was of it it was it was intended to be like a staging table which is why i think especially with you know a major difference that i just heard from both of you is new call numbers don't necessarily get burned right so those records stay there there is a new call number and then interactions after you create that incident that interaction's burned right it ceases to exist cease to exist right yeah oh so now i think that's a good backdrop of to where we were before servicenow came up with this new feature for universal requests and i do love the name i have to i do like the name i'm not gonna say i love the name i like the name and um so i don't know let's talk a little bit about that let you know uh ashley like i said i read your blog i got a little bit to play around with it i don't know if maybe we could pull it up and kind of show what it is and let's see if we can maybe highlight some pros and some con let's highlight the features of it and then let's see if we can um identify some pros and maybe some cons of this as well because this you know this is not an uh i don't think there's a silver bullet that'll solve this problem of making sure we're getting everything in the right table and we're also not confusing the customer but this seems like it may be the closest we've been to solving that problem right and i definitely agree with you mike in in terms of getting closer to it because i think you know with the previous solutions that we've had there's always been this concept of dividing it out into multiple records right but trying to centralize this all in one place i think is really getting us closer towards a more scalable solution and a better customer experience and not only a better customer experience but i think also for the people working on this as well right if you are a fulfiller you know you don't have to go and work you know four different kinds of record types you just i think it's also a better fulfiller experience as well yep yep yeah i agree yeah um so i'll go ahead and pull it up in just a second one thing i did want to bring up to and we can kind of discuss that you know with interactions and even new call they were never really designed for the end user to put in themselves so they always you know in the portal or in csm were like still filtered to choose hey is this an incident is this a request and i'm not i'm talking even pre when brief you have scoped hr before all that stuff came out and even yeah kind of complicated it more so yeah i remember customers trying to say hey can we put training videos to educate our end users what a request is and what an instant i said no please we they we they don't care we don't need them to know we need to know all right fulfillers need to know this not our end users right we want them to go to google and say this is what i need you know not i'm currently filling out an incident i'm calling they don't care you know and we don't want them to care you know so yeah i'm excited to to take a look at this and and i just love the fact that it's it's gonna be one number call it ticket number call whatever we want to call it one number for the end user num you know regardless of what which requests we're talking about so it's uh it's exciting or task type i should say yeah i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen awesome so i'm using the platform view right now but this stuff is also available in the workspace view i just wanted to let everyone know that it is there and you know it's been configured if you are in agent workspace let me go ahead and zoom in a little bit so it's just not so small okay cool so i'm on a universal request record i'm gonna go ahead and start opening this up for someone i'll open it up for aileen and she is calling or she's contacting about she needs a new computer or you know her computer isn't working all right so i'm going to go ahead and submit this i mean the forms pretty pretty standard you know the layout is like most forms in service now um you know one thing i did want to point out is this primary ticket number and i'll get into that in just a second but i'm going to go ahead and create an incident from this um you can see i have create incident and create hr case so i did want to point out with universal requests there is a universal request plugin but in order to create different record types or associate different record types they have their own respective plugins right now all i could find were hr case plugins and incident plugins so i don't know if there's more to come for csm or things like request management but kind of just to make everyone aware those are the ones out there right now as of the quebec release yeah so i'll go ahead and create an instant from this um and you can see it you know on my incident form and it has associated my universal request number here um so i'll just go ahead and save this so ashley when you close this incident is it going to close the universal request and vice versa or is it does it only work one way does somebody have to close the incident to to basically close the universal request so since you can add different different record types onto universal requests when i close the incident it's not going to close that universal request out because i can still create an hr case let's say now i need something else yeah so you know that the incident or the primary ticket associated to the universal request doesn't kind of it doesn't control the state it will send the states back and forth between the two so yeah let's go ahead and so let me make sure that let's stay in progress go ahead and obviously we can configure it to do whatever we want right this is service now that's the beauty that's the beauty the gift and the curse right this is we can make it do whatever we want but i'm curious what servicenow is thinking out of the box yeah and something else that i see that that is kind of nice too from you know someone who's working on this is right at the top you have that info message the primary ticket you know something that i remember you know when you're tying together cases typically you'd have to open up a new section of the form and try and find it but just having it right at the top i think it makes makes it really easily yeah easy to find it and also let's say you have an incident and an hr case as well you know just an easy way to see where this all ties back to and that if there's other relationships between multiple records um so think think you know from that perspective they did a really nice job yeah for sure one thing i did want to point out and let me go ahead and impersonate alien here since it's for her and we're going to get to the service portal real quick okay so underneath requests here guys this is my pdi so things will happen what are you doing the playground i have been playing in it um but you can see you can see that here's my universal request um so you don't really see that incident for her because she doesn't need to know that it was out there so the my request widget in um in the portal automatically configures this this is out of the box that's great really great yeah i read in your post it also suppresses the notifications so so the user is not going to get double emails from the universal request as well as the incident yeah and the other thing too about that that new widget on the portal which is nice is if a customer is using hr and they're using itsm and csm right when you click that my request you're gonna used to get multiple different drop downs to view all the different types but if you just have it all in one now you it's it's just eliminating clicks so i think from that that perspective it's definitely a lot easier to use yeah i agree it's definitely just a lot cleaner to the end user they have their one request number um actually here are the comments that i put in and since i'm you know impersonating system administrator i can see work notes but usually the customer would just see the comments this is actually the comment i put in from the incident so it did load up into this widget um yep yeah and you can put attachments here too so it's just so you know like a one-stop shop to really just follow along with this one number yeah so it looks like it actually got both your your comment from the incident as well as your comment from the universal request so can i be debbie downer sure can i talk a little bit about the cons here so a little bit of the again this is a new process we're introducing right so it's especially existing customers who are already have configurations and customizations and automations an incident that's not going to carry over to universal requests right so if they're used to auto populating i did see the knowledge search which i was happy to see that it's gonna search knowledge articles as you're typing in the short description but if there's any type of you know vip flag automation or state changes we love our customers who love playing with the states you know that's not going to carry over and it is again it's an implementation of another product of servicenow so it's a requirement gathering it's a process right these these service desk analysts are customer service analysts or hr analysts they're gonna have to make sure they have a process for creating these universal requests and then flowing them into these other tables and then also making sure we circle back and not only close the incident but close the universal request right i could see a lot of customers saying hey when we close the incident if there's nothing else we want to automatically close so there's definitely some some process maturity that's going to be needed here for customers i think if you can get that down right a lot of the customers we work with you guys know is are very you know immature on the on the process uh scale right so we're just trying to get them used to okay let's separate out of everything being one ticket you know this is an incident this request just just just you know explaining and having them comprehend that and then developing a new process so i could definitely see some challenges there i don't know what do you guys think about that am i being too negative no so you know when i pulled this up i was like oh neat you can start linking tickets together like how and that's awesome i'm glad they finally put this out but as i dug into it there are so many different modules that have to be configured it's not i know it seems easy when we're showing forms and we're showing the portal but there's so much that has to actually go into configuration for incident in hr that it is a little implementation project in itself and you do have to have your processes set up to get it working correctly it's not as easy as kind of linking some tables together like servicenow it has put in a lot of background scripts for this and you know they're getting more data driven so they expect you to configure it the data in the modules and their background scripts and stuff or their script includes will take care of the rest so there is there is quite a bit of configuration actually to this yeah right i mean i think you know ultimately though it's all about the customer experience right and as we've seen with with other applications in servicenow typically you know when they start going down this road they start incrementally making it better release after release right and i think it's better to kind of get on that now and get the value of it and as they keep adding features be able to adopt those new features right so i definitely think really from a customer perspective ultimately you know that that's what it comes down to and i absolutely think it's worth making the investment in something like this just to give you your customers the best experience possible that's great yeah and and i think this you know this shines another light and yet another reason why you really need experts in your servicenow environment this is not just something you can loosely roll out especially for an existing customer and you know that that's one of the again i i said it i think i said it earlier like a gift and a curse of servicenow where you know the more features we add the more and in servicenow does a great job of thinking about the big picture right it's this is not we're not just because we're talking about uh this one feature this one application service now we have to think about all the other you know processes and applications that surround it in in the different scripts and codes that rely on each other and if you modify this and you're not following best practice here you're gonna break you know 20 20 different things so really i i think just just this is another reason why hey this is a great feature if it's implemented correctly and if the correct process surrounds it right you can take i say it all the time you can take a cadillac a beautiful car and you can slash the tires smash the windows and the perception unfortunately is this platform is not great this is this is has bugs everywhere well mistakes were made during the implementation best practices were not followed things were not thought of in a bigger picture it was siloed right so you know i think it just shows another way of having a great partner having having the right expertise on your side to making sure the bigger picture is thought of and best practices are followed yeah absolutely and especially you know you think about the the process behind this type of stuff and you know you have the new call transitioning into the incident or these other records and like you're saying like i mean there's a ton of process involved behind that people who are working these get very used to this process right and it not only takes kind of re-engineering some of that business process but also to what you're saying ashley is there's a there's a technical component of it as well that's going to require that some of these things be changed and absolutely i think having the right partner is super key and being successful [Music] that's great anything else to add i i think there's a great uh little episode one of glyphosate i'm really excited but i don't know if you guys have any any words to leave us with i'm just really excited about like the cool back release but i know we have so much material to go over in these they've packed a lot of stuff into this release and it's really exciting that's awesome no i definitely agree super excited about the quebec release and i know we have tons more to talk about so hoping to come back to uh come back soon and have another chat and if you are a customer out there and you need some help with your servicenow environment maybe getting a demo of universal requests or some advice you can reach out to us at info gladfast.com go to our website gladfast.com thank you everybody and have a great day thanks everyone thank you [Music] you