hey everybody welcome to another episode of glidechat my name is michael lombardo ceo of glidefast today i'm with brent newellen avp of professional services at glidefast brent how are you doing good how are you oh not too bad so brent first tell us tell the audience how long have you been in the service now space yeah i actually got my start i was on an enterprise monitoring team and my start of service now was integrating with the platform so that's when i first started working with it um we spun up a kind of a pseudo event management before event management yeah and i really fell in love with the way the platform set up yeah i've heard so many little stories like yeah we did it we implemented hr before it existed you know event had that that must have been a pretty cool what uh release was that did you get started oh man uh would have been 2015 the first time that we built it i think dublin uh eureka probably eureka eureka yep i go by releases right then years later like i started and we had just uh upgraded to aspen and then when when berlin came out it was like just a huge change it just felt so much more modern but i i just i remember every release is it's kind of cool yeah so uh you and i were talking a little bit about i think you called it the power of the things you don't know yeah in service now so tell us a little bit about that yeah it's really and what i knew when i first started what you knew when you first started yeah a lot has changed since then new new features new functionality and a lot of things that we used to have to build custom you don't have to anymore yeah um and just staying on top of that yeah and like the other thing i was thinking when we were talking earlier there's so many different ways to achieve every single problem right that comes your way like every requirement a customer has immediately they don't know but our brain starts moving it's like all right do i use a business rule for this or is it should we work float am i going to build a custom table you know like our brain just starts solutioning and then it's like i love when like the the the light bulb goes off here's the best way i always look at it as like it's a gift and a curse of servicenow that it's so powerful and there's there's so many different ways to to to solve your problem and it creates it requires creativity and expertise and knowledge what are some of the ways people get to that point so i had a few years back i was asked to build this functionality for a customer they want to be able to email into the platform and have a service catalog get triggered off of that yeah the first thing i did was say why are you emailing the platform when you have a third portal yeah yeah yeah after that conversation uh you know we talked about you know what what was the value that you were looking to achieve who was the the players that were involved what are they trying to solve for and i had done something similar before so i kind of had this canned solution that i already knew how to build you know i go to my my my whiteboard and i draw out the process you know then start plugging into the platform how i'm going to solve for it and you know it's something that i'd already done i already had this knowledge with how to solve for this yep and you know the last thing i did before i was like okay let's put some hands to keyboard and start building this out i go back and look at release notes and like oh wait now there's a canned solution to to submit catalog items via script you know i don't have to write this custom script to do it anymore but you see it often where you know just like you said you know when you've done this for so long you solve for a lot of problems yes you have a lot of knowledge a lot of um what was the best solution at the time and it's so easy to just say i know how to solve for that yeah from there and do it yeah yeah but if you don't have that that critical thinking of you know what i know how to solve i know a way to solve it it's a way exactly way it might not be the best way anymore yeah you know it's funny like i remember when get reference with a callback are you familiar with that like that was that was that was considered best practice like right get reference with a callback was was good enough hey don't use a guy wreck a query in a client script but you can use a get reference or a callback and i knew glad ajax obviously existed in it but you know two scripts you know versus one line of code you know i was doing the get reference with a callback all day and then all of a sudden it became no no no that's a that's like a red flag stay away from that and like i was like whoa just you know hang on one year ago that was okay so don't don't don't read the flag awful thing you know but yeah best practices change solutions in the platform change and then the other thing i was thinking about when you're talking about that when you were talking about the problem right i was thinking okay inbound email action and what i had found out just like you was like oh i can parse out an email that if i have these fields so you're saying there's a better way than an inbound action with like the email parsing and grabbing the fields the inbound action is actually still the way that i would go about it yeah the card api you know that didn't exist when i had first done this tell me about that because i don't even know what that is put me um the spot here i'm putting on this mod but like i didn't even know i didn't even know what that was i would think a manual script which i for me i'd probably go in the community try to find like an existing one and then just modify that to work the way i want but so there's actually an api that'll basically like give you the fields and and just give you like kind of the tools to do it uh more streamlined exactly you you pass it an object and it parses the object into the account you tell which catalog item you're trying to submit yeah passes the object to populate the variables and then api to actually submit it servicenow will keep you humble man i mean like the second you think you know something or you tell a customer like oh that can't be done or that's we shouldn't do that or this that you know every almost every single time that i've said that i've i've really had to correct myself after finding out you said something earlier that was yeah i mean you hit it on the head yeah you know there's so many ways to solve for things in servicenow yeah um and i wouldn't even go as far as to say they're all bad but they might not be best and that's what yeah the point in this topic is is while you what you're doing may solve for the problem the solution that i was going to provide to them would absolutely solve them solve their problem it would give them the functionality that they needed it would provide the value that they're looking for but because it's not the newest functionality that the servicenow provided functionality if i was to move forward with that i would be immediately introducing technical debt into that customer's instance it's not the best solution exactly the way that i really like to talk through it is we try to follow a best solution model exactly right because everyone's you know some of the terminology is like use it out of the box or you know don't customize yeah and configure and those are all wishy-washy terms yeah no because we're not using out of the box we're doing development development has to be done things have to get built you can't just buy it and use it and customization you know you ask five different people you get five different answers yep um and so like you said there's a best solution that follows best practices that avoids bad practices that's leveraging the best features of the platform that's that's scalable that won't affect upgrades so it that is a is also a phenomenal process the best process for the customer as well because if there's 25 approvals on a workflow that's not a good no matter how we architect it it's not going to be well right so and and part of that is the the customer side of it you know you you have the the best solution that you're looking for right and that best solution might not be exactly what the customer is used to in their legacy platform exactly right but in order for them to go some value the value they don't even know they can get yet yes you have to coach them through that it's an art form it's an art form and how you deliver that message it's an art form and how you coach the customer say listen here's the outcome you're looking for allow me to solution it i know you think you understand the best way to do this like and and and that's the other thing about servicenow developers servicenow developers we can't just be developers right we have to be hybrid process experts or process evangelists and we have to be technical solution experts because we have to understand both sides and then we have to be really great at communicating to communicate to the customer to say hey here's the best way so you know you're not going to have upgrade issues you're not going to have challenges in the future you're leveraging the best feature of the platform and you know all that right and part of that is understanding where they're sitting you know i started out on the help desk so i was the consumer of these yeah yeah and having that background makes it kind of makes me able to relate to them it's about when they say hey that's too many clicks i know exactly what they're saying it's too late exactly because our job was to save clicks right exactly like i had notepad i had you know before i had service now we i had like you know every possible incident or the most common incident templates in you know outside of the the i don't know call it a platform the system we were using to log incidents right i i had all my tools you know ready to go because i wanted to solve that call as quickly as possible or get it escalated if i needed to and then get to the next one so that and that's it's funny you talk about the helpdesk background that's what's i think allowed me to be a better when i was a servicenow developer because you know i did help desk for five years and it was rapid solutioning so whether i had to go to google or our knowledge base or you know how do i solve this person's problem as quickly as possible especially being in the healthcare world where these are doctors nurses that have to get back to their patients right so it was it was get them off the phone as quickly as possible get their problems solved or escalated immediately you know absolutely yeah i mean i was on the help desk you know the one thing that i hated was those repetitive tasks so i was at a financial processing company yeah and you'd be you'd have certain tasks where it was you know um perform maintenance on atm yep and it would be you know punching the keys punching keys punching keys but it was the same keys i punched them every time exactly so i ended up scripting a lot of it because you know there's no reason to have that that's just wasted time yeah and if you have service now to your point it's like that that made me realize the the value in automation it made me realize the value in saving time the the the impact that those clicks have on getting your your task done the whole business right yeah and um a lot of times just moving customers all the time just moving customers to servicenow and getting access to the base functionality before we do any of those parsing emails thing and any of the advanced stuff just getting them the ability to have that type of head knowledge search and templates and things to just save one two three clicks that adds up and all of a sudden you're adding in 10 20 30 phone calls per analyst per day right and that's saving a ton of money and helping and helping these organizations and then forget about virtual agent and service portal like we you know the place where i was that we implemented service now as a customer we even get that far while i was there virtual agent didn't exist yet and we didn't even get to really a service portal but the amount of time we saved was unbelievable just just by repetitive clicks and and you know obviously those those people that like to retype every incident over and over i just copy paste possible you know yeah and that goes back to again the the value of what you don't know you know even outside of the technical aspects of the platform the process i came from a financial processing company and i knew their processes yeah and if i take that as my gospel then that process isn't going to solve for somebody else's you know the automation that i needed isn't with the automation that somebody else needs exactly it's a great starting point it's a great way to empathize with what the with what they're experiencing then i can use that as a springboard and say okay i understand you know the the value that you're looking to achieve i understand some of the nuances that you're experiencing tell me a little bit more about that so that i can really target your solution to provide you the most value that's a great point and let me ask you a question so how does your brain work where you're about to solution something or build something for a customer do you go check the wiki first i like that you use the word wiki is that not though is it not a thing anymore i wish it was still the wiki what is it community the community what is it now the docs the docs everyone's gonna everyone's gonna roast me out there all right do you go to the docks it's the wiki all right well it's the wiki it's the wiki it's the wiki it's that's an og term i guess but yeah the wiki was was great so what's how does your brain like what's the workflow in your brain of like okay if it's below this level i already know what the best solution is there's like there's no way they're going to replace glad ajax right i know this is a glide ajax this requires glide ajax right how does your brain work to say i better go check the docks for this or i better get a second opinion or i better you know i better watch out for the things i don't know in this situation i i always start with the process um and even when i was teaching other developers how to you know you got a complex process you're trying to solve for how do you go through that i go to a whiteboard yeah i love whiteboard and in just in plain english i kind of draw out their process yeah and then once i have that drawn out then i start plugging in you know how am i going to solve for this in modular ways and once i get to the point where i understand like how i'm going to solve for it then like you said i haven't used triple knowledge you know because i understand a lot of javascript understand a lot of the functionality that servicenow offers yeah but then i'm i'm using my resources so i'm going to the community like you said i hate the community a lot always look at the dates yeah dates are important and shout out dev help like live fast absolutely so i'll start there and i'll get what i think is a good starting point a good framework put together and once i have that framework then i'm going to my peers and and i'm looking at you know hey i use top a lot you know tops house tops really know csm so i'll go to him and i was like hey this is what i'm looking at this is the problem we're solving for you know this is what this is my proposed solution i don't want to go with him with hey how do i solve for this double check double check them yeah and we'll talk about it it'll give me some some pointers and we'll move on from there collaboration is key nobody can be an expert you know and um i will run up on time here brent all right i wanna let's leave our audience for one thing what do you love about being at glidefast so much what you know what keeps you here every day what what what keeps you excited and motivated and the the thing that really sets glad fast apart for me like the the peers the peer support like i've been in companies where it's it's it's siloed or it's competitive you know glidecast i was talking about top earlier top's an outstanding developer yeah an architect but he's not trying to like prove himself oh do you i yeah the whole organization is like that we have that dev help channel that you mentioned and you put a post in there and you'll get 30 different responses in a matter of minutes it's like together you know exactly it's one like we're one team and that's great and then just the leadership i do everybody cares about the individualized people you know as a manager that's the first thing i tell my team when i introduce myself is as a manager i care about you as a person first and foremost you know if you're not happy let's figure out what it is because the last thing that i want to have happen is you know you'd be unhappy because of something that was in my control yeah exactly and the whole organization feels that same way and i just think that's awesome yeah and like that's such the the message listen nobody's better than anybody here we're all on the same team we're all working for the same mission you know we all want to be the best servicenow partner out there we want to provide the best for our customers and that's the goal yeah absolutely all right thanks everybody for joining make sure you like and subscribe and uh check us out on youtube spotify thanks guys thanks brent [Music] you