all right thank you everyone for joining good morning uh good evening my name is padmaja and i welcome you to the uh this webinar where we'll be covering anonymous reporting in employee relations um and i would a couple of disclaimers before we start off um you know a safe harbor for whatever is coming up uh for discussion now um it's it's it's in the product uh in although this is a release feature we just like to uh give this heads up before we start off any demo so uh just putting it there uh for everybody to see um yeah um so we will have everybody on mute when they join in uh there will be a q a at the end of the session um and uh i encourage uh any questions uh that you may have and you know uh please feel free to sort of come off near to introduce yourself or put in uh the questions on on the on the chat or or the q a um and um we'll also have a quick poll uh for you uh in between the presentation and i really look forward to to knowing uh more uh from your side uh on on the uh anonymous reporting piece in employee relations a quick introduction again thank you uh everyone for joining um my name is padmaja and i am a principal product manager in in servicenow i manage the employee relations product and today i'll be taking you through the anonymous report center that we are introducing in our san diego release uh we have a quick poll uh for you as as we start off uh since this is a feature that's coming up in san diego we would just like to understand if you have the er plug-in if you do not have it and plan to use it uh or you have already activated you are already aware of what the anonymous center anonymous report center is all right uh i'm gonna let it stay for five more seconds so i see about 16 of the participants uh saying they are considering using anonymous report center uh one of um one of you all saying that you have activated the plugin so i really look forward to uh you know walking you through this feature and really hoping that you all see value in it um and also you know i'm super keen to hear from you all as well uh as to what you you think you know we got right in the future and you know some hopefully some improvements as well for for us to take back all right um so primarily the idea behind introducing anonymous report center was uh two key challenges that our customers were facing uh we already had a misconduct service under the employee relations uh coe and one of the prime things when it comes to just uh you know reporting uh misconduct type of issues or generally in employee relations issues uh the number one challenge is that unless there is confidentiality insured uh employees are not so forthcoming when it comes to reporting issues and this sort of impacts the organization where they're unable to maintain that complete uh you know um security for the employee to come for you know uh come forth and talk about any issues they might be facing um and the second key aspect is just enabling access to external users not just internal employees how can we have a a system an interface where external users who may have uh encountered some issues while dealing with the company or they may have witnessed some uh some problematic behavior um you know how would they be able to sort of report this so uh to address these two challenges uh you know is why we introduced the anonymous report center and and the whole um the process or the ideology behind it is what you see on the screen um we have a public uh facing portal which which any user whether it's an internal user of uh of our customer or an external user who does not have access to the servicenow system wants to log in create uh you know a complaint raise an issue um can do so by accessing this portal they will be submitting this case uh anonymously they will be given a report key and and password which they can sort of um keep it handy and you know enter later on to keep a track of the case leave any additional comments on the case and just be able to track with track the case with the agent um and the agent can sort of communicate with the user who still remains anonymous throughout uh so the level of confidentiality here is so that even the servicenow admins will not know who really submitted the case so it's a completely secure sort of way uh to ensure your employees as well as external users uh can report uh issues it's it's it's uh one of the channels that you can use and implement to sort of uh support the whistleblower uh you know whistleblower issue reporting uh some quick things about uh erc employee uh uh anonymous report center in employee relations is uh this is a new plugin in itself um that can be that is that can be used by other processes for example you might in your company have uh you know ethics uh compliance and employee relations um all may be handled by one practice and you want this portal to be leveraged by other practices within your company you can do so with this uh this particular feature uh we have given a few you know few uh things out of box one of them being the anonymous report misconduct service there is already a report misconduct service which was rolled out in our first release of employee relations back in paris early 2020 we have introduced the anonymous report misconduct which essentially is the entire end-to-end anonymous uh handling of a case of a misconduct case um this is like i mentioned before a public portal that also supports non-employees uh who can you know go ahead and create a case and this plug-in employee relations itself uh is available in hrsd professional and above uh with that said i will take you through some screenshots of how the feature looks after which i'll be going into the demo um in our portal we again give this uh service out of box so you'll be able to see one catalog item which is a visit anonymous report center this is a public portal and as soon as a user whether it's an employee or non-employee who tries to access this they are immediately logged out and then they're they're able to sort of submit the case as a guest user um they are shown this particular form where they fill in what was the incident they noticed who were the people that were involved when the incident took place and where the incident took place they're also asked how they would like to be you know communicated with uh obviously in this in this format it's completely anonymous so the only way you can communicate is uh through the comments on the case and there is uh basically this process to be able to submit a case and once the case is submitted the the the submitter here the requester here is given a report key and a report number which are essential for them to be able to track this case later on and to be able to even access this case leave some comments they can also download a pdf copy of this report for future reference and once they want to be able to you know again track the case like i said they need they would need the report number and the report key to be able to do that the agent can ask for updates and and the end user can continue to give those updates anonymously and continue to sort of track how the case is going so now i will go into the demo so the for the purpose of today's webinar i have this instance where i'm going to log in as able so i'm quickly going to go to the invoice center so for the purpose of this demo we have it configured under the hr section under employee conduct but ideally depending on how you are you see it fit basically you know if it falls into your legal or your compliance team or generally under hr then you know you can accordingly arrange it uh we have it under employee conduct and we have the visit anonymous report center we also have a knowledge article that we we give out of box which is uh you know just some basic end user documentation on how you know how employees can go about filing um you know and following up on anonymous anonymous complaints so like you see i've been signed out as able and i would go ahead to continue again we have on this page either the option to submit an anonymous report or to be able to follow up uh so right now i'll be going into the submit report and we have some you know uh q a um faq section as well where we sort of try to guide the user on uh to the employer or you know external user on how they can go about making an anonymous complaint and also some added information on is the report confidential or not um like i mentioned previously now since the user is locked out uh really you know it's a it's sort of logged in as a guest user now uh when you're you're creating this complaint and uh even even our even the servicenow admins will not have sort of you know uh an idea of who actually created uh this this uh case so um there are some sections we've given where you know this can come in handy when uh user first time goes through this this particular uh page and uh once i go into actually filing a complaint so we have given report misconduct as a service over here ideally obviously the customers can go ahead and create more services more catalog items under the anonymous report center section um we have heard previously that customers may want to sort of make it available in general not just for misconduct maybe maybe general you know employee relations issues as such uh you're also free to do that we have given report misconduct as an out-of-box service so i would say i witnessed [Music] this premises um you can say this um i don't know and some other person and someone inside section you're going to see and use um [Music] one wedge just and i need to enter this to ensure that it's the person entering this complaint and now i'll be going and submitting this case i'd be given a report number and a report key all right so what i'll do is quickly download the report itself and i will keep these details handy so i can immediately on this page i can sort of say that you know some additional details um just for the purpose of the demo i just i'll just keep it simple uh but the essence is that you can leave comments here as as an anonymous user and now that you see it's not yet assigned but uh now if i go in again to anonymous report center i can sort of follow up uh this is where i would need the key and the report number so let me type that in okay so uh here is where i'll continue to sort of you know i can continue to track the case and leave additional information as in when i see flip as as the as the complainant uh i'll quickly go into the agent side of it the agent for the agent it's pretty much the same experience where they they continue to see it as a as an employee relations case uh here though you can uh you would basically treat it as a normal case and the complaint in here would be i'll go into it the complainant which is usually defaulted to the person who created the case in this case would be hidden because the user is anonymous all right let me login as an agent who has access so now i'm logged in as isabel who's an agent in the employee relations assignment group so by default i would be having access to any new case that has come in since this anonymous report misconduct is a service under the ercoe uh we any agent who's part of the employee relations assignment group will also be able to see cases under uh this the anonymous service as well [Music] so here is the one that's come in which is uh what we just created i just created as able i'm just going to open this it's not uh it's assigned to me which is isabel and this is the information that was given by abel uh given by the anonymous user while submitting this case and uh as you see uh for those who who have some awareness of the employee relations functionality itself you see that it is a usual employee relations case assigned to the employee relations skill group assignment group um and then opened by anonymous reporting user is this is why we have added you know uh this particular naming uh open bias the anonymous user and now when i go here you see that there is no complainant because the user is anonymous which usually in the usual report misconduct service the complainant is defaulted to the person who would have created the case so uh now here is where i can go ahead and uh leave more comments asking for the you know for more for uh for more information as you see there is uh the comment that i had added as the user as the creator of this this anonymous complaint i can go ahead as the agent on this and i can ask for more work notes uh more information so [Music] and i can ask questions when i'm open to this oops and now um let me start work on this some of the functionality you see here already exists which is a restrict case which essentially means that i can further restrict an anonymous case uh to the group that has access to such restricted cases so once i click on restrict case what would essentially happen is uh as per the configuration that we allow at the coe level for er only a limited number of people which who have been included in that restrict case group will be able to uh you know view access this case so i'll uh that's the the that's that's you can that's how you can add an added layer of you know security on top of anonymous cases if you uh you know see the need for it now that i've added some notes for for the guest for the person who has created this case i can log back in as abel who was the user who created this let me select an image yep so i see that isabelle is the agent working on this case and you know she's asked me a bunch of questions i can go ahead and you know keep that communication open with the agent working on this case so essentially uh this the the gist of this is that you can continue the communication in an anonymous form uh on the case with the agent and keep track on it uh keep track of the case as long as you have the report key and report number uh with you um and the agent basically you know will continue to have the same uh you know view of the case as as they were having previously we also have some reporting we give generally for er cases uh it will it can include the anonymous reports uh anonymous reports as well if you would wish so but uh basically this is the end to end of how an employee would go ahead create an anonymous complaint and how the agent would uh you know access that same case and uh be able to work on it conduct interviews with the people identified ask for more information from the anonymous complainant and simply you know continue to work on the case and give updates to the uh to the completement as well i see a question in the q a which is if i'm an employee will i find the case under my request uh the answer is no um we are basically logging this as a guest user from uh you know case so you will need the you know the the report number and the report key uh you can only go in and follow up through the anonymous report center page um and also you'll have the links to it in the in the knowledge article that we're shipping out of box as well any other questions for me uh the restrict the restrict case functionality is available from uh chrome release so uh it's already going to be there on your instance if you're on rome or above um essentially it will be activated for any agent who has the restrict case user so basically let me go into that real quick and i can show you what i'm talking about so restrict case is a functionality we give it's basically a configuration we give at uh the coe level and you will essentially have to be uh you know an admin to configure it er admin to configure it um i have that configuration enabled on this instance so i'm just going to go ahead and show which is essentially case restriction under employee relations admin administration section when you go in here you have i'll just go into one configuration that's already there so you have a configuration where you can enable a group which is er confidential in this case to either restrict cases or view restricted cases or do both so essentially isabel is a part of a group that can restrict cases that is why she sees the restrict ui action on the case form if she were from the group who were able to only view the restricted cases she won't see the action to restrict it instead once the case is restricted it will show up in uh you know her queue if she's the only one available so essentially you can have groups to either be able to restrict cases using the ui action or view the restricted pieces i hope that answers the question okay i'm assuming the anonymous reporter would not get any notifications that's right we don't give any notifications to the anonymous reporter to confirm is this functionality only available with the newer er table and not supported with the legacy er table yes that's right uh jacqueline so this is part of the er plugin it is the the newer set of tables that we have shipped for er uh it's it's a new scope plugin which was available has been available since paris is restrict case available in the original case management or only in er it's only available in er and it's available only for the report misconduct and other services which are created under the erco thank you for the question aaron john hi is this restricted cases functionality limited to here this is yes this is limited to your cases all right um you can feel free to uh you know type in your questions uh meanwhile i'll go back to some resources that can be accessed uh by you when you know you would like to understand this a bit more we have a community blog posted which details out this feature and you know essentially calling out the admin side of it the employee experience and even the agent experience of how the the arc or the employee anonymous reporting center will be handled and implemented and of course we have the documentation which goes into the aspects of which plugin which tables what roles etc uh yeah so hey jacqueline does the employee have to log back out again in order to follow up on their submitted case uh they will be locked out that is right uh so whenever you go into the um essentially whenever you go into anonymous report center section which we are shipping the whole uh you know the topic itself the catalog item as well as knowledge articles whenever you're going into the section of either wanting to create a request or being able to follow up on a request you become a guest user and you basically do that whole activity as a guest user that is how you're able to whenever you even open the case uh you are a guest user and that's how you stay anonymous while leaving comments on the keys so you will be locked out when you're trying to uh track a case uh yeah we will have um we'll have the resources shared upon so the community blog in a sense is is i think you know it details out the whole feature and you know uh gives enough guidance on how to go about it as does the product documentation yep all right uh if you do not have any other questions i think you know we are we're good to go and uh thank you so much again for joining everyone and uh we'll have more webinars coming up and you know uh if you want to keep yourself updated with the newer features and what's what what new exciting stuff is coming up be sure to register for uh the events coming up in june