hello and welcome to the service Ducks podcast I hum co-host James downs and I'm Rush here and we're here to chat about all things servicenow everyday life as a servicenow consultant new features implementation successes and perhaps more entertaining when it doesn't go quite so well hello welcome back to another episode if you haven't caught the first episode you can find that on Apple podcast or Spotify so welcome back James what have you been up to what have you been doing well unfortunately the last few weeks I've actually been off with um the old Big C uh covid for anyone else not listening it's been um particularly uh hard and to be honest with you um still at the moment although I've tested negative last week still feeling a few of the effects so it's going to take a little while to fully get over um kovid but we're getting there it's out and done by Christmas is that your first time first one yeah I was a covered virgin um I've never edit that properly don't worry but amongst that this week I've been doing some new bits and pieces to help towards myself certification which was to start sharing some knowledge and getting involved with um the uh Community Forum in that I've created a new post on one of the forums Pages the rise up connect um where did you find inspiration for that for us I don't I do know what you've still got more views than me there's a bit of an in-joke there I did a post um going back a few weeks ago now I did a YouTube video on it you can go and check that out I'll drop something in the description but anyway sorry yes um so as we were talking last time around about our Journeys and things like that the whole rise up campaign I'm sure we'll talk about that a lot more um as well but um I wanted to share my story again with the with the community and to give a little bit advice similar advice what we've given on the last podcast um to those who are new to servicenow and starting their Journeys um so yeah absolutely getting involved sharing the love sharing the love what have you learned um I just want to point out actually before I continue I am going to drink tea while we do this by the way um so if you keep in the slurps yeah I'm I'm a slurper so this podcast is taking a turn oh it's still service now related yeah um or is it um no I'm a slurper so if it gets too noisy um just just let me know stop drinking it what have I been up to what was I doing last time I was scootering last time I've not done any more scootering around scootering is that a word I've not done any more scooting there in um London um annoyingly um tell you what I have done um I don't know when this episode's going out but we've just not long had Black Friday and I bought I'm a big um of a big Runner I'm not a big guy that runs I'm just a big fan of running and his hobby got into in lockdown like most people but anyway um I bought the daddy of all running shoes um we don't I can't remember I told you this but yeah I bought some um Nike Vapor Flies if you don't know what they are check them out um I might we might do a YouTube channel based on those who knows um but I bought those on Black Friday I took them out for a test run um and they're absolutely awesome they're absolutely awesome I went out for a training run on Friday um stick with us listeners by the way we will get to service now in a minute I went out for a training one on Friday and it was a training run I thought oh well let's just see what I've got I did a 5k PB by about 20 seconds without trying trying to slow down unbelievable having the right equipment that's what it's all about all the gear and no idea but yes anyway that's what I've been up to that is almost quite sad that that's the highlight of my week but it is don't care and then I'll and then I'll I'll tell you about my son's Nativity later on but anyway shall we move on to something that yes yes yes listeners are here for so topical what are we talking about today what's what's the deal well something very topical especially um in the organ organization I work for at the moment is um the debate around hyper Automation and no code low code um are you for or against um what does it actually mean what the hell is hyper automation haven't we been doing that for years you love that term I know it and I purposely brought this yeah it's um it's an interesting one so you I tell you what you bought the topic up yes you take us through what do you perceive as I'm sorry my series just going off what do you perceive seat but for automation because it is something we've talked about for a few years I've noticed it um uh absolute the world Forum I went to not long ago in London in November they were talking about hyper automation there you see it on LinkedIn there's a few webinars around hyper automation um a lot of people you know listening may be thinking well okay what's this isn't it just automation with the word hyper at the front of it yeah have we been doing it all along anyway we're just rebranding it marketing terms to make it sound a bit more sassy for new customers exactly it's very salesy isn't it yeah um I don't want to say that my take on hyper Automation and actually it depends where you go to to get the right definition for it because you know you look at Gartner and they'll Define it as like a a business driven disciplined approach to rapidly automate processes um yeah you look at servicenow and the way that they are defining it and they Define it as a tool to allow you to build business application extend apps and turn which I like turn anyone into a developer so let me ask some questions so hyper automation is it a feature of servicenow is it at all is it a physical thing that you touch inside servicenow no it's an approach it's a collection of features it's a it's a a way forward a way to automate and streamline processes which was what we've been doing for the last 20 years right so I think I think that's key right so if anyone if you're a technical person of anyone in the business or anyone comes to you and says right I want you to configure hyper automation tell you what tell you what to look out for actually if you've got recruitment agents coming to you saying I want someone that's got 10 years experience configuring hyper automation um run the opposite direction yeah because it is not at all it's not a feature than at all right it's not a feature but there are features which are going to help towards it things like muddy the water oh yeah but there's going to be more and more low code no code features and Ai and obviously intelligence and things like RPA which are so underused at the moment but I'm sure it's going to be used a lot more going forward things that uh may be perceived as maybe a bit gimmicky at the moment dare I say um but clearly you know it's unlike you know the likes of what's happening to meta at the moment this could be something that is the future yeah um okay and I still say could because I'm still not sold on um low code no code yeah so so the way the way I see it um and again I've not got the master architect qualification so I am butter butter porn in the service now um but you've got hyper automation we've established it's not at all it's not a thing that you go and configure right but it's it's an approach towards yeah um automation within your business so if you've got a business and you've got um a function Finance for example and the finance function understand the finance function understand their element of the business more than anyone else so typically what you'd have in the in the olden days in the days of your is developers would go in or Consultants such as myself would go in we'd talk to the finance team and we'd help them all to make processes and remove spreadsheets right yeah but what we're saying here a hybrid automation is we're allowing the business or that function to do that for themselves right is that is that what we're getting at is we're saying yeah you understand your processes more than anyone else Let's help you and enable you for you to automate them yourself absolutely doing that by giving you things like flow designer what's your Monument RPA documents UI Builder catalog Builders all these kind of like front-end UI experiences that you can literally turn anybody into a a developer but I'm actually going to put that to the test at some point and get my other half on a PDI and you know Show app engine Studio to her and say Hey you build something for your business out of this go don't look at docs don't look at videos well that's that's actually a really good oh that's a great kind of podcast slash YouTube vid there because I reckon my daughter my daughter's 10. I think you should do it now well she came in the ones when I was messing around on Flow designer and there's an app that they use at school I can't remember what it is um it's it's one with a cat in it um it's an application that they use um it's free and it's got a cat in it if anyone knows what it is dropped you know drop us a line or something because I forgot but my daughter walked in she said why are you using this insert app name there so she recognized the the flow designer kind of format from what you've been doing at school so I reckon if I gave my daughter a task to do she'd probably moan about it for two hours and then she might actually finish off yes yeah so that's a good one so with so we've kind of established what we think hyper automation is now yeah and I tend to agree is something that we have been doing for a long time many many years um I I I think the only element I would say I would challenge back and say oh have we been doing that is allowing people within the functions as in upskilling someone in a finance role to build yes I think that's what's different it's definitely more business driven and not necessarily driven by I.T and pro code development okay so if we take that then yeah if you take that concept I'm sorry I'm clearing my throat there I'll edit that bit um what are the challenges with doing that because basically what you're saying right is if you own the product servicenow or you're an administrator you are giving the keys are you giving the keys is that good analogy let's go with it you're getting my keys to some people that you need to have a element of confidence they know what they're doing you're giving them the keys to your platform right so how what are the challenges with that how do you manage that does it scare you does it bother you would you do it this will scares me and I think the biggest part of hydro Automation in this kind of low low code no code um or citizen development is governance and I think that's my number one concern for this is that there isn't many governance models out there to handle that you know how do they move things between instances what kind of training do these people need um what sort of standards are they going to gonna you know keep up um and making things consistent in the way they're developing their their apps um they are at some point gonna get stuck who are they going to escalate to if you don't have Pro code developers um so interestingly we actually run a really interesting test so we created a challenge for people with different roles within our organization there was a team of grads there was a technical consultant and there was an STC slash architect and we gave them a challenge to create a timesheet app in app engine Studio and that included you know creating tables importing data so these are people that know what they're doing no well the grads are people who have only just started out with servicenow less than one year experience um you know they're really there to Shadow and just understand what you're doing and the detective Consultants you can think of people who have been on the platform for about one to two years they can do the basic sort of configuration around servicenow an FTC an architect you're looking at five years plus really a pro coder um so the challenge was there yeah did you just say Pro Crowder be Crow I might have done okay um blame that on the covered plus Red Bull I just had fair enough um it's a good mix um so yeah so the challenge was there to get as far as you can basically in a time-boxed kind of manner I think it was two days they were given to you know create a table import data um have a catalog portal flow logic you know all of that yeah and basically what the output of that was the grads managed to get as far as creating the table and importing the data within that time frame um the technical consultant managed to get as far as doing that plus doing a portal and the STC or architect got as far as as far as doing the flow logic so in the same sort of time frame you know people had the built up experience of service now clearly was able to achieve a lot more in the same time frame as a low coder or someone with less experience of service now I mean that may sound really obvious but if service now is really going down this route of Citizen development then people you know organizations really have to think about that because they're all talking about rapid you know um development yeah so so just on that so hang on so I you've got three different groups of people that you kind of just said go and do this right and they all did they all take the same approach or did this so so for example I I would I'm not going to put myself up there but I would say Pro coder yeah did you did you kind of tie me handcuffs and say I must use template Builder and app engine studio and all that or yeah did you say I can do whatever I like no if it was purely using um app engine studio and you know no code low code features uh okay so yeah purely in there and building in the table Builder and um importing things that I've seen on the servicenote channel um you like don't you a team would be really interesting though mate is is if yeah you kind of did the same test but said to the tech consultants and I'm going slightly off topic um but said you can do it whichever way you like that yes yeah yeah yeah um I think what what it kind of showed though is that you know it's good in theory but I think as things stand at the moment um I think citizen developers would struggle and they would need that escalation point of a pro coder to be there um you know if you Chuck someone new like your daughter uh um a flow designer or even UI Builder which is just a laugh on its own um they're just struggle clearly they would need I need someone I need to play with UI Builder more to be honest with you I know I need to do that but I set myself a goal UI Builder I um I started a brand new portal from scratch so not from a template or anything else and I just wanted to create a home page uh I think within two hours I created three components one of them was connected to data and it looked awful whereas I think in the standard you know service portals and building up portals that way I think I would have created at least three pages but then it's isn't it an element of and I I was gonna say I hate this this terminology but I actually quite like it um isn't it an element of short-term paying for long-term gain so you're going to have that that kind of um curve aren't you where you've got that learning curve and then you're going to start accelerating and that for me is going to be the same as do we call them citizen developers or um let's just call them people in the business that we're going to train on servicenow to do some stuff that's a happy title but yeah yeah but once they are trained Yep they're going to understand the processes inside their functions a lot better than the technical consultant they they are and they're gonna they're gonna be able to recognize the educated spot opportunities for automation so you might have you might have them them develop an application let's say it takes twice or three times as long as it yeah I see what you do right yep but once it's there they're gonna be able to spot opportunities and any future enhancements that's coming they're going to be doing that themselves they're going to be going on that learning curve yeah it's on their time frame um so you're saying that that outweighs the value of um I guess I'm just considering it because that would be arguably if you think you're from a budget point of view that would be on the function budget rather than coming back to it there'll be an element of hand holding I get that cuddling and I think as a technical um as technical people or ecosystem service now need we we need to think about that in terms of how do we gear ourselves up to do that if you if you've inside a company itself maybe you think of a charging model of you know one of your services that you're offering the business is hand-holding with citizen Developers yeah um and and is there a better way of doing that is there a is there a is it really you know is a is there a better way of holding people's hands rather than just having to sit them and show them all the time because that's the skill set in itself isn't it you need to be right an individual to help someone out yeah and it's a completely different mindset it's a different approach it's um yeah I think I think whether we like it or not it's probably the future of service now um but yeah I think I can tell you one thing I don't get on board with because I I sit on the fence so I think it's a good idea yeah for um to move businesses forward I think you know I think automation's here to stay it's only going to get more prevalent in the in the the industry um as a whole but the one thing it's it's all very well helping people enabling people training people setting up that kind of physical governance structure to make sure no one's doing anything untoward on the platform or the there's use cases where you know duplication of apps won't happen um you can put that kind of technical governance in place right I get that but how if you're going to say here you go for finance function because that's our example if you say here go Finance function um go and create your apps and automate whatever you like don't bother us or do bother us but we'll just help you out whenever we need to how do you keep control of things like licenses so things like licenses are based on applications and tables and possibly even to the extent of fields on tables how do you keep that under control yeah and this is this is the mess isn't it yeah and I want to caveat that actually if anyone's listening to that and I'm mentioning licensing thing the caveat is if you want any help with licensing please speak to your um service account Master 101 answer isn't it don't don't we're not responsible for anything we say anything we say we just just word of course for free shut up shut up but the you get the point right how are you gonna keep that under control and that's why my number one concern as I said at the start was governance and I think servicenow's got a way to go to making that abundantly clear so hang on you you said that at the start so we could have just saved all this waffle and just we could have saved this is 15 minutes and just ended it there sorry mate come on yeah no it's all good but you know this is all something that we all have to think about now I think it's such a um such a trend at the moment and it's worth the investigation so I guess my I guess my call to action for those out here listening to this is one to give it a go so if you're not played with you know the app engine studio and try to import data um and you know building up experiences definitely just give it a go and get your own opinion of it and get your daughter on it get your um but yeah give it a go watch the service Nerd YouTube channel to have a look at the low code um video so some really good stuff on there about how to do it as well um but yeah form your own opinion form your own governance models it's going to improve as as the releases come to make it a lot easier for this stuff but yeah I think there's a lot a lot to be done in the whole governance side of things yeah absolutely I agree it sounds like um that's that's a natural place to wrap it up I know we haven't necessarily come to an absolute finite conclusion in terms of do this and everything will be okay but I think that the point so watch this space yeah watch this space um we'll absolutely certainly um talk about this again maybe we should get some people on to talk about this as well um really really nice if there's anyone that is um that person inside a business function so not necessarily I.T doesn't really know much about servicenow or just starting their Journey on servicenow and part of a business function and would like to drop us the line or perhaps come on and chat about it and share their experiences and what they know and and feedback that would be really good and perhaps we can get someone like that on um if you know anyone yeah drop us an email so I think um who I concludes us for today yeah I think so I think until next time I've been Russ Army James and this is service dogs that's all for today's podcast thank you for listening and if you want to get your question answered by the service Ducks get in touch through talk to the doc at service hyphandux.com or just use one of the links below [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right