without further Ado let's jump into it the first segment here is the servicenow landscape or what I like to call the servicenow landscape and Akash I'll start with you uh you know when customers get the product they do have a lot of questions and and I like to uh point to different areas in service now to get that information so could you kind of walk us through how a customer might navigate that landscape where to get certain uh specific pieces of information how to kind of help themselves be more self-sufficient in some areas sure uh thanks Victor thanks for having me on uh and thank you everybody for attending so um so really we're dividing this into into three different uh categories the the now learning uh product information then I the community itself the item Community within the uh servicenow uh Community uh now learning you know it's a lot of different um uh uh training uh sessions on demand or uh live uh live training sessions with with a uh instructor-led uh type of training sessions they're some of them are free some of them are are for for uh or buy training credits or or paid for uh training um but it's going to help you not just they're not just certification trainings there's going to be uh trainings uh that might have uh smaller topics um that you can focus on uh you know let's say software normalization or something like that within the training session itself so um it's going to give you an opportunity to kind of learn the product and not just software asset management but the now platform as a whole there's a lot of different uh offerings out there and then with the product information so here we're talking about the uh the doc site so um uh within there you're gonna you know we've got um information about basically the capabilities the features how they're set up a little bit of the step by step of uh how to navigate to it what's included within that feature uh you know what kind of details can you get out of it you know uh like we'll see when I do the demo you know uh we'll see things like you know the plugins that are involved or you know with the software normalization what um what tables and fields are are involved in there so you can get a little more detailed technical information around that um the product itself uh and then the itam community so this is your way of engaging uh engaging other customers engaging um other uh you know Consultants servicenow uh folks as well you know the product teams in there a lot but it's a place to be able to ask your questions uh search other questions that have been asked before see what those responses were also we've got blogs out there we've got video was out there and then link to um you know KB articles and and so on so forth so I can I can kind of go through each one of those and and show those uh from a screen perspective yeah yeah that'd be great so if I were to summarize it just from what I heard the now learning is your educational platform the product information is your technical kind of product information and how that how-to manuals in some cases or definitions and things of that sort and the communities where you engage so you have three different areas where you can get not only get information but but also learn learn from the products so that'd be great to go through those let's do that yeah so I'm gonna grab this so uh this is the you know I'm logged in as myself so this is the the initial now learning uh uh website um you'll see you know as you scroll through as you take classes um it'll have you go through like a quick you know what are you interested in type of uh selection process and then based off of those interests it'll start uh showing you uh different items that you can take different uh classes you can take um and some of them like I said some of them are are on demand some restricted LED uh uh paid uh versus free and so on and so forth um and then you can also search for uh certain classes or or uh topics so let's just go and search for software Asset Management and then within software Asset Management what are you know what kind of classes are available um not just the you know certification classes but we do have a fundamentals course out here uh which we'll see here in just a second yeah that fundamentals course is the one that we we always recommend our customers to do out of the gate right you buy the product yeah yep absolutely you're absolutely right and so we do have you know an instructor-led one you know for those that uh like to have a little more of that uh one-on-one time um and then it you know the on-demand course for those that you know need a little bit of that flexibility um we have that as well but then you know like we'll go through here there are some courses that are you know uh geared towards smaller um uh quicker uh courses that are more focused so this integration with SCCM for Reclamation and distribution we've got one in here for software normalization something that we'll be touching on uh today as well so you know it's not just uh larger courses it's you know even more focused ones uh as well yeah that's great so the fundamentals course is going to give you an overview of everything that is Sam and then these other courses that you just highlighted these are kind of the supplemental courses that go into a deeper depth into uh those those topics awesome yeah and as you can see as we have newer releases and newer features uh a lot of those courses then will get added uh over time as well so like we have the workspace one out here to kind of give you that overview perfect yeah so the next part of that landscape is the the product documentation and as I said this is going to be a little more uh detailed information so uh and more technical in nature uh but let's say we go looking uh uh uh product uh software normalization I could spell and think and talk at the same time um so you know if we drill down into one of these uh and we're going to be able to kind of see like with this one's uh tied in with uh Discovery uh as well as the normalization uh process and so it just goes through and just kind of explains a little bit of that detail we're talking a little more uh as far as um if we wanted to get a little more uh technical in nature uh I think they've got uh some different rules and you know what are the the normalization suggestion forms What fields are on there and so on and so forth so it'll give you a little more detail about the overall uh concept around you know in this case software Asset Management uh and then some more details around you know what that functionality is uh and what's behind a little bit of the what's behind the scenes of that functionality awesome um and then finally on the community site so this is when we're talking about engagement right this is where you can go and you can engage other customers you can um you know uh put questions out there uh for uh and see what other customers have done uh you know and and you know that are similar to to your implementation or what you're trying to implement and maybe we want to go look at uh at those kind of things if you're a developer you know our developer site is also uh very important where you can come out and there's a lot more technical uh discussions out there a lot more technical references out there as well um so here let's just again uh we're talking about normalization so let's just uh stick with that and then see what comes up so we should be getting some some questions that have been asked and answered through this this process here and you can see the the green check boxes those are you know correct answers or or accepted answers um as well as you know some you know in this case like our internal I.T operations management team had put out a series around software normalization and the reconciliation process uh if we go to this knowledge and documentation one of the things that it will pull up um and while this is going it's actually uh going to be this particular documentation document that it pulls up but it's a KB article um that in this case does a deep dive into that software normalization and talks through the entire process and so on and so forth so again just different places to try and find some of that some of that information um around uh around the topic that you're you're looking for that's great I mean I think the fact that there's blogs out there and there's questions I mean oftentimes when I go through that I see the same question over and over again it's nice to see that there's a central location to find answers to those questions and then the added effect is there's a knowledge and documentation portal right next to that accessible so you can actually get some more information Deep dive into that yep absolutely absolutely well awesome all right so those were the three the three areas in our servicenow landscape where folks can get information I think now is a good time to jump into our next segment where we're now looking at plugins and the store app so you've got the product you've purchased it you've you're starting to educate yourself and find more information on what is what now how do you actually activate um Sam right so what is the difference between plugins and store-ups and we hear that kind of interchangeably but there might be a you know clarification that's needed there yeah so uh plugins are you know that was the original way of uh enabling uh features and functionality uh within your instance um a lot of times these were just uh Native within instance and you and your admins could go into the the plug-in uh table and enable those those plugins uh in the demo instance they may have also loaded some demo data to kind of get you started and get you an idea of what that uh the overall functionality looks like um so that that's the plug-in side now um for certain plugins you do have to create high tickets um so like for the first one we're looking at that the master plug-in for software Asset Management you do have to create a high ticket to have that enabled so once you know um everything is is done on the on the licensing side and and on the um you know the instance you've got you've gotten the instance and so on and so forth then you'll go want to go ahead and create a high ticket to get that the master plugin enabled so there are some plugins that do require a high ticket on the store app side so this is a kind of a newer way that we're releasing functionality releasing capabilities and features is through the store app the servicenow store um uh website so uh with that it allows us to roll out features and updates um two particular uh capabilities that may uh that maybe it will we'd be able to do that on a more frequent basis right so uh family releases are twice a year our store apps we have uh we have a quarterly release so it allows us to get some things out there that may not necessarily be family release based um it could be you know it could cover multiple releases but at the same time it gives us the ability to develop and get something out to the to our customers a little quicker so um so that's kind of the difference between the two uh as far as sequencing of these you know we kind of have these sequence uh right here you know and it kind of makes sense overall you want that Master plug-in um to to be enabled first for the full software Asset Management uh capability and then along with that uh get the the workspace our new workspace um uh plug-in enabled uh and then we've got one down here for procurement so um just to for clarification you know the this procurement plugin is um our base itsm procurement plugin and that includes things like the purchase order table purchase order line stable uh receiving capabilities sourcing capabilities through uh from a request so it's got a lot of the Autobox functionality that we use in you know base itsm asset uh software asset management and the hardware Asset Management uh uh modules there is a new uh procurement Service uh what it's procurement service management or procurement management uh module out there and this is I just wanted to clarify this is not that particular plugin that is that is a different uh functionality okay and I noticed I noticed Akash that you have core on one side and Advance can you kind of tell us a little bit about that why are these grouped in that in that way yeah so uh with the with the core plugins and core store apps um you're really looking at you're getting majority of your your your base software Asset Management capabilities through these core plugins and you're really able to get um you know uh get started on your overall implementation uh with the with those core plugins and then this uh the core store apps right so like within the store app we're looking at uh the SAS license management integration so that's going to be all of our out-of-box uh license connections or uh SAS connections that we have um those would be a part of that as well as the metric for um the SAS uh um the user subscription uh subscription license metrics um service graph is in here um where for that uh we're looking at like SCCM or jam and again that's going to be you know bringing in software installation data uh some of your cmdb data uh in regards to you know end user compute and things like that so again it's it's some of that core functionality core capabilities that we need to get started with software Asset Management on the advanced side you'll see here like software spend detection uh license change projections so and and then when you're looking at the store apps like the sap ABAC program the glass um the Oracle glass um uh program uh which requires Discovery those are definitely you know more advanced capabilities Advanced features not to say you couldn't have that you know when you're starting out but typically for most of our customers these are things that they're going to start tackling once they get a good understanding and good foundation uh within their Sam program uh utilizing software Asset Management uh profession or Enterprise depending on what you bought yeah yeah great I mean we talk about we we talk a lot about crawl walk and run that's something some of the terms that we we have with customers I can really see the core plugins and the store apps really helping customers with the crawl and walk phase if you will the the very heart of Sam things that are around compliance things that are around optimization I mean you could easily accomplish a lot of that with the core plugins and as you mature in your journey getting to Advanced plugins getting plug-ins that can um cross-pollinate with different applications uh you know things like vulnerability response if you will there's plugins between Sam and vulnerability response so those things can be addressed as you mature in your in your journey let's go to the next one which is the software normalization and content service we talk a lot about that a lot of customers here hear about that so let's let's jump into that and I think the first question I'll ask here Akash is why is software normalization so important um especially in Sam yeah so I mean if you if you think about you know the the different data uh um repositories you know uh Discovery sources that we get information from that's being brought into the cmdb um you know the way that we identify Publishers or the way that we identify a particular title the versioning um you know all of that information if we had to go and try and sift through the number of ways that you know um you know a company like Microsoft is is listed Within These different uh um repositories it would it would be very difficult for us to be able to do good reporting and then you know eventually reconciliation against that data and so the the normalization process gives us the opportunity to take that data and then through our normalization rules normalize it to uh Publishers titles the versions that can then be reported on easily uh and then also be um reconciled uh against your your software models and your software entitlements uh when it gets to the the reconciliation side so um really it's to it's to clean that data uh so you can so it can be more usable uh from a uh more reporting side we do keep all of the raw data so we don't update you know the original data that that comes in so we still have access to that for other applications within the uh within the platform other reporting needs that you may have outside of software asset management but we do for the the on the software side do normalize that so we can digest it and report on it easily nice now this slide here is an interesting one right so this one what we're talking to here is the feedback loop between you know the customer and our content service and how all of this is actually constantly working and it's live so can you highlight that a little bit and tell us more yeah so um so normalization the normalization engine is the process of cleaning that data but that normalization engine uses our content data so the the data that is put together by our research teams uh that content data is is what it it basically is uh checking against to help with that normalization process so the content information is downloaded to your to your servicenow instance we do update that through a scheduled job on a weekly basis um and then as part of if you've opted into our content service so even if you don't opt into the con you'll still get the content data but if you opt into the content service we're able to then take some of that data that you have manually normalized or that didn't get normalized at all or you created custom part numbers or custom you know products we're able to take that information back into servicenow feed that into the our research team and they're able to take that data and start you know researching and cleaning it up and and getting it normalized and get it into our content now the data that comes back obviously that is all um Anonymous data we don't take any information from the instance itself of where we got it we don't store any of that stuff but uh it does help us um get that data cleaned up and then eventually into the Content Library for us to feed back to our uh to you as a customer and then to our other customers as well um if you do have with uh Enterprise uh Sam Enterprise um if you do have machine learning normalization some of that uh feedback loop that it it takes some of that is reduced because of the machine machine learning normalization process that will take some of that uh unrecognized data and feed it through our uh machine learning capabilities and servicenow and then uh bring that and normalize that within your instance itself nice yeah and I guess the other thing I'd call out is on on average this is not always but on average kind of out of the box um you should expect to see some around 85 percent normalization that may vary depending on the type of content you're looking at normalizing I mean you may be in a specific industry where it's a very Niche type of software or a niche type of content that's required it may not be in the content service um but that's not to say that it won't be in the near future and for the majority of folks that are using the microsofts the oracles the ibms the vmware's of the world a lot of that is already in the content so that's where you're going to hit those 85 percent normalization rates out of the box and if you opt in to the servicenow uh content service that that just that just increases right I mean that just allows you to bring in more data get that further normalized so that your your specific instance can kind of reach that 95 98 normally rate absolutely and we do have we do have features in so like let's say you create a custom part number but you don't want that you know overall you want to be opted in but you don't want to feed that particular part number back or feed that particular product back because it's it's a homegrown software we do have the ability individually to opt out and not feed it back to us specific specific um specific products okay while still benefiting from giving and receiving everything else in between exactly right exactly awesome let's jump back to the normalization process and maybe you can walk us through an example or just explain how how is data coming in being normalized yeah so uh and this is specific to to software installations but you know as we get that from you know the multiple possibly multiple data sources you know if you've got Discovery if you've got um uh SCCM jamf possibly uh the agent client collector with uh with Discovery you know those software uh installation records They they're getting created constantly right and so uh from there we'll take that Discovery uh or that uh discovered software installation record and the system will either create a a new discovery model or it'll link to an existing Discovery Model right so we'll we'll either associate or go ahead and create one that is what that Discovery Model is actually what's getting normalized so uh when we're talking about the normalization engine it's going against the data that's associated to the Discovery Model so then at that point we're going to go ahead and normalize um the publisher the product version uh if we have Edition we'll go ahead and get the addition in there uh and then uh any you know language information that we could find any um uh whether it's a Windows device or or whatever like we'll try and apply that as well uh during that normalization process and all of that is part of uh kind of gets tied into our Discovery map as well so uh the information that's on the Discovery map that's on your software model helps identify and and query uh the discovery models table when it's ready when you're ready to reconcile or you want to see what Discovery models would match up against that software model oh that's great so that the discovery Maps then which brings in all that information or gets normalized to those Maps is what links is the linkage to the software model that contains all the the product details and attributes and I believe if I'm not mistaken the software model also has associated with it the entitlement so that's that's what's what's pulling together the um the linkage between your reconciliation right from entitlements to your to your discovery that's right uh so you know when you're looking at a software model uh you know there's a a link down there that says you know uh show Discovery models that's what it's it's tying back to and then that's what the query uh in reconciliation is utilizing to try and find the appropriate installations to you know sometimes um I've worked with customers awesome they're gonna have that 85 to 90 normalization rate and sometimes they can't find data sometimes they can't find content or something's not getting fully normalized are what are the ways in which customers can kind of ensure that that it's true hey I'm not finding I'm not finding this data and then I guess the second question to that is what do they do if they can't find content yep that's a that's a good question and actually um we came out and I believe it was San Diego that we came out with the uh content portal lookup um so this is a store app that you can uh go out and have down and download within your instance it works on the workspace it is a workspace specific uh Store app so um you'll notice here on the uh left side uh basically you've got these different icons in here you know we've got the home we've got the license I think this is operations or usage and then license operations and so on and so forth the bottom one will then be once you've loaded that app will be the content lookup so if we take a look at the content look look up uh if you have Hardware Asset Management which I do in this particular instance you will also see the hardware um items over here as well otherwise if you just have software Asset Management you will see the software Asset Management uh products and publisher part numbers and and those kind of things if we want to do just a simple search you could search for let's say SQL Server and what that's going to do is going to take a look at our overall and just bring back results from our our Content Library from our the um uh the products uh table uh and then if I drill down into one of these and we can do some additional filters you know like let's say I just want to see licensable um uh products so we could drill down into this specific uh SQL Server right here and then this will actually give you more detailed information the publisher and so on and so forth but then it'll also show you the related data you know so these are different versions The d-maps that we have within the uh product for this are within the platform uh in our content for this particular product these are different life cycles that have been generated um you know based off of that information as well so you know uh end of extended support and the support uh General availability dates things like that and then finally all of the different publisher part numbers that tie to this specific product are also displayed here so again it's just being able to get down into the uh the details of the overall content the reason we did that was it was so much it was not a it was not easily available um your admins could create uh favorites or they could create a way to get to that data because you know um you know the tables are in the platform this just gives our users the ability to look this information up very easily and and so on and so forth if let's say we um we want to go back and we want to just do a we wanted to take a look at the products uh or take a look at certain publisher part numbers we can deep dive directly into there as well and then once you're in here you're actually just using you know regular um filter capabilities that we have today within the the platform so um you could do a contains filter or is filter and look for specific part numbers uh and filter out uh and filter uh based off of that you can filter based off of publisher or product or anything like that so you know this is just your normal list views that you're able to do your filtering on but it gives you basically access to be able to take a look at that data and try and help find that information um before uh you you know create a high ticket or you know something like that create a a case with uh with servicenow you can take a look at that here so the to answer your second question what if I'm not able to find anything right like I'm not able to find that specific part number or I did find that part number but it's not matching up to what we have uh we have a contract for right that that content is not correct so you could in that case create a high ticket create a case uh with now support so you would just click on create a case so I'll get an announce support uh something is broken so what I like doing is you know in the subject here just say you know new content uh uh creation something like that right and then just give it a quick you know uh publisher uh you know X and product why you know something you know give it some some information on what we're looking for if you have multiple things uh where you're gonna attach a document then just say hey you know these are products for these Publishers you know or something like that uh and just give it something uh so it's easily uh understandable when someone takes a look at it uh what instances are impacted so I'm gonna just say it's my uh my instance here I believe I have a uh we'll use this one for now um and then you know the criticality obviously everybody knows that everything is is business critical uh and so on and so forth but um you know typically uh these content ones while they're very important they're not critical for you to they're not a you know a priority one type of thing you know um if you've got these content tickets you know definitely it's something to to keep an eye on but make sure you you take that time you know go work on something else you know go work on other Publishers go work on other part numbers things like that uh while you're waiting for some of that content to get created uh and uh loaded back into the system you know it doesn't stop you from being able to do uh more of a different uh areas of Sam so the uh once we click next It'll ask you some uh it gives you some recommendations but it'll ask you for some additional information so you know identify what you're trying to get you know just like any other case um really no steps to reproducing this situation but the biggest thing is if you do have uh an attachment if you have a lot of content that you want created just add it into an Excel spreadsheet and then attach that to uh to this case and that'll help kind of get a lot you don't have to create uh for each publisher part number or each product you don't have to create a single um uh ticket uh you could create a larger ticket with multiple uh content requests all in one and then have that submitted as well so you're just kind of following that single uh that single ticket overall make sense makes sense to me a gosh that's a really good walkthrough both for the content portal lookup and the creation of the case you know for the case I think like you said it is important to you know submit it and if there's other things that are of higher priority they need to work on let that work in the background um a lot of times customers will try to focus 100 all their efforts in just getting content I think that's okay to start but once you get to that hey I have 50 to 60 70 of content in the system you don't really need to struggle on the 30 and make that the number one priority I would recommend start making value out of the 50 to 60 of content and then leave that second portion working in the background so that once you build out and get that content then you can continue your efforts in those regards for sure for sure and and it kind of goes back to you know Perfection is the enemy of progress right like uh so you know definitely it is something that that needs to get worked on you know we're not minimizing the need to um within your organization to have that content created but there's probably other things that that could get done while you're waiting for that content to get created you know it shouldn't stop you from being able to move forward uh in other areas all right so what we're seeing here is uh just a slide of what we looked at in the demo uh we're going to throw in those KB articles in the chat but I think we'll open it up for questions I think it's a good time to move into the question format and we'll start looking at and reading out the questions we got in the submission form