hi I'm Alice hi I'm Justin and you're listening to the utterly awesome podcast who knows what we'll talk about oh gangcocks oh no well I married into it so you're embracing it are you standing up I am I've been sitting all morning how's your morning been oh the Tooth Fairy came I saw that on Instagram very exciting oh but our family like growing up like we didn't do the under the pillow thing and like I thought kids were nuts and so Dexter gets to do it the way I did it as a kid which is so when we were growing up like as a kid I didn't think anything of it because I didn't know any different but our parents had us and I think it was actually my mom's family that did this they had you put your tooth in a cup of water by the sink and then the Tooth Fairy I think they told us that the Tooth Fairy would drink your tooth which now I'm telling that was kind of creepy um but the Tooth Fairy would take your tooth and leave money in the cup as a kid I didn't I never knew the whole pillow thing like I thought my kids my friends were nuts and so now as an adult I'm like that's brilliant because I don't have to like go dig under a pillow like trying to find a truth you know and so last night my probably a terrible Mom I'm not keeping his teeth that's creepy um but I got glitter out and had like fairy dust and like dumped the water out and put some glitter in the cup and put it all over the one dollar bill and so he was like oh my God there's Barry was like she left dust in the cup too and I was like what are you gonna get with your dollar he's like there's dust and he doesn't even care like no surprise so that's what our family did and I like kids at school were trying to tell them about the pillow thing he's like we don't do that it looks like it's one of his his front teeth yeah yeah well he's actually too young because he's only four and they don't start losing teeth till they're like five or six but about five or six months ago he decided not to listen to me and Dove head first as I told him to quit jumping and he hit his mouth on my knee and knocked both two front teeth like loose and one has tightened back up but the other one has been just like hanging by a thread for like five or six months and I even asked the dentist I was like is this because I obviously took him in and then at his like six month appointments I'm like should this be out and they're like it'll come out when it's ready and I'm like feeding them apples with all this stuff but yeah oh man you just brought back a memory a little early my brother tried uh tying a string to one of my teeth and shutting the door you know tying it to the door and everything it didn't work but uh yeah that was a wonderful childhood memory I did I did think I'm not a parent but when I saw it I was like he's four years old is he already losing his teeth sorry that was my first stop and I was like what do I know Bliss for a bit longer than normal so I mean he's only I mean he'll be five in November so he would have kind of started it in a couple months anyway but he was so excited he woke me up at Five Points yesterday morning which is what time he told me that he pulled it himself usually get up there I get up at 6 15. but that extra 15 minutes and not being awoken by a child say Mommy I lost my tooth and I'm thinking there's blood everywhere and there wasn't but that's awesome so good times good times memories you'll never hence the reason I'm standing he's the reason you're standing oh cause you're tired okay got it yeah God I got it I'm on my other screen my um my PDI is upgrading I'm in I'm in upgrade mode right now so we're a little bit ahead on our episodes which is we want we want to be ahead and uh yesterday Utah General availability patch one came out so I've got two instances that were upgrading for work that I've got my PDI that's upgrading and it just went red on me so I caught my attention lost connection to this girl or whatever that is yeah yeah and then I've been sending you all my CMA immersion stuff oh this isn't good I'm gonna share a screen um I haven't looked at the stuff you sent me yesterday uh let me search screen real quick screen I wanted to share my entire screen there we go tell me what you think if you saw this have you ever seen that oh that's true just like yeah nothing 40 for it I was in you'll love this story I was in the middle of a customer demo and we are like 30 to 35 minutes into I'm showing project something or itsm and this happens and I was like what the it was like how does this happen in the middle of the demo so I quickly scramble to another demo instance and um I follow up afterwards after it's all over everything was fine the world did not end even though it felt like it was going to I follow up and uh I won't mention any names but our internal support was like oh yeah we gotta notice like a week ago that they were gonna be doing maintenance I'm like did you think to tell anybody while we're doing demos hey that's why I asked yeah yeah and I appreciate that like what happens is like uh I'm just maybe two in the weeds for our podcast is for for solution Consultants which is what I do if it wasn't clear um we do demos and we're kind of counting on two two major things that the out of the box capabilities are all there because that's what we're usually demoing and um that there's nothing serious going on like no scripts or updates or downloads or something like that because you know there's four of us demos made this kind of in time and what we found is if you let the technical teams in like the delivery teams what they'll be like is like they'll have this yeah like Allison Allison hasn't done this for the record somebody has but Allison has the technical teams will be like I need to do this for the customer and they're like where's secops installed and I'll go find where secops it's installed and they'll just install something and you're in the middle of the demo like what's going on I have no idea what's going on so that's why you know it's nice when I was interested in it yeah yeah I mean I've helped others with the demos like setting up portals and building a custom app with the former associate solution consultant which he it was fun to do that Connor because he was like oh I get to kind of see how one's made so like we walked through and built it so you want to hear something funny about that I think when you walked him through it he did it for every demo Connor you're gonna kill me for talking about this but I think every every demo he would go make a portal for the customer and if you know service now they're like that's one of the this I gotta be careful here that's one of the things that they do is they make a custom portal usually for the customer and uh him and I were talking one day and he showed me and I was like honestly I I've never ever ever made a custom portal for a customer like I always show them out of the box and then talk to it yeah um when I would do my workshops I would go brand my entire instance if I had access to theirs I would go ahead and do like The Branding and stuff at least what I thought they would want and every time I would do my workshop like oh that's our instance I'm like well actually it's mine but you know and they it would like help through the workshops because they would already think it was theirs and so not something foreign yeah well speaking of Utah um I've been just sucking it all in or taking it all in um theming is supposed to be a lot easier and what I think is neat and I've seen it yeah it goes to mobile now so you can set your theme in a core instance and whatever you do goes Downstream to mobile now I haven't tested it or I'm not good with colors the themes that's really why I don't mess with it because I just whatever I do it's gonna be ugly the less time I've tested here do this right but I think that's neat for those that are doing that like that you don't have to go configure mobile now separate from yeah what's so funny about the theming so once again in my old days of doing workshops um a lot of the I.T people that we work with are males and this is no offense to any males we work with but I would spend so much time trying to find like the perfect like icons and portal images and my most favorite customer I ever worked with um they were a golf supply company and we were looking at their portal and I was like when we're doing the portal we need to Engage The End users this portal isn't for you it's not for it it's for the people that are going to use it and we went back and forth about it and I was like just trust me and they're like no no let's put it together and then show them so they gave me this photo that Justin I don't I don't do clowns they're not my thing it looked like it was like dark and it looked like there'd be a clown waiting on like hole eight to like murder you like it was just dark and like creepy and I was like he's like how many golf courses have beautiful photos like that are associated with your brand like there's hundreds I'm sure and they were like no we think everyone will love it I was like how about this send me some pictures I will mock up four options and we'll have a voting contest with their interviews ask me how many votes the creepy clown photo got how many votes Allison zero zero none it was like it's just dark and creepy like it needs to be bright and like one that's like on near a beach with palm and and they were just like okay and it was just it was funny because they're like sometimes the it teams get like they don't think about the end user piece of it like we have to use words they use like if I said go order a new exchange mailbox they'd be like what's that right you know and so those workshops were always interesting because you have to help them like get out of their own way almost and be like how do your end users speak that's what the portal needs to be and it's a struggle and it's really interesting because you know they they think they know the best way to do these portals yeah I've I've totally get it I think that's what makes a solution consultant a solution consultant is being able to bridge that Technical and like end user I I have a short story there was a company I used to work for she'll be unnamed new CIO came in they pulled all the IT department into a conference room and he was like from now on every single one of you will be out you know meeting nurses and doctors and end users and talking to them and I'm looking around the room and I'm just reading the room I'm like some of these people should not be out there talking to doctors and end users like you know what I mean like the guy who the sunglasses on over there Coating in a corner is like yeah yeah he shouldn't be out there he's good at what he does but no yeah yeah yeah I think there's a lot of unique skill sets because I think the reason I was a good architect was because one I used to work at a service desk so I could hear people in general and many different many different help desks I work at an airline one which God bless those people and then I worked you know for oil and gas service desk and I don't know I just my personality like I'm actually super introverted but I know how to like read my audience and have conversations and my mom always jokes that part of it was because I was in a sorority so I learned how to you know have conversations but I have to recharge later like after I've been in workshops all day like I have to be compressed yeah on the same way not talk for a little bit I'm exactly the same way despite my online presence I'm an introvert and it worked and so it's draining I know what you mean it's like takes energy but there's other people who doing what we're doing right now gives them energy yeah it's like it's the opposite of us yeah well this actually I don't mind because like we're friends and so it's like we're having a conversation so these don't drain me like you know I do nothing but stress out over this what are you talking about I've got spreadsheets huh but when you're with customers they're more draining not because they're difficult but because you're trying to guide them towards like I know you do it this way today but there's a reason we're going away from that and so you're having to constantly like so essentially and I am not meant to be salesman yeah yeah I can I can sell for so long before I get tired of my own self um like come on but yeah I know what you mean I know what you mean I like my favorite part of what you're talking about is the moment that you do convince them to come over and do it this different way and if you watch them you can usually see the moment where they like they get it and that for me is like the rewarding moment it's like they don't even have to say anything it's just like okay now you got it you got it yeah it's always that light bulb moment and it's always been like after I've like I remember one time they were like there's no way servicenow can do this and I'm like what what do you have to do today they had like 600 or 700 workflows to do one access request and I was like I was like I will bet you lunch tomorrow but I said not really because it's against our foot of Ethics but I will secretly bet you lunch tomorrow that I can go back to my hotel and have one workflow that does it and they were like there's no way done deal we'll take you to they're like we will take you to dinner and I was like okay 30 minutes wait two lookup tables so I just listed all of the different accesses did look ups with the workflow and it had like task descriptions and approver and like everything and I brought it in the next day and they were like rest of the workshops were so easy it was they just needed like that one like proof of Concepts nugget to get them past it because none of the people in the room actually pick servicenow their CIO did so it was even harder yeah that's usually a tough crowd yeah okay I got a question for you since you shared a bunch of shared well I have two questions for you first question is when you said you did a workflow did you do it in the old workflow engine or slow designer all right fair enough fair enough um second question is have because this wasn't out when you did it either have you and this is something I've been messing with I just discovered have you used decision tables yet not yet okay no I'm not in the weeds like I used to be so I'm I mean when I'm in projects now it's there's been an escalation the customer's unhappy you know like the Laugh literally I just did a workshop Monday with a CIO that was struggling with our team and so I went in and you know listened and figured out what she wanted and got it done for the one before that they later the whole project so I had to take over the whole thing and so I was just the workshops and the stories okay you can't stop there it's not all bad right like there's you do have no but it's I mean the advisory workshops I normally do are not they're meant to be like I have a unique skill set of I know the technical but I also know how to have conversations that are surface level where we're not getting deep in the weeds and so most of what I do is Road mapping strategy when I get into the technical workshops it's when there's been an escalation or the customer's not happy and they need someone to come in and like level Set uh out of like two partners ago one of our EMS at the time his name's Colin I doubt he's watching this but he was like one of my favorite people and he was like have you ever seen and I forget I think it was in Pulp Fiction he was like you're like the wolf and I oh that goes in and just Smooths everything over it's like I think that's a compliment but thank you it is a compliment you know it actually ties back to what we were just talking about though because I I want to I want to spin the positive of this is because I don't want people to think that um any part servicenow partner is just having escalations all the time I think what happens if you tell me because you know better than me is that what we were just talking about we have really technical competent people trying to work with end users and there's two things that seem to happen one is they just take orders they say yes sir yes sir yes ma'am and they do it without kind of thinking through the implications and then the second one is there's just a a lack of a human connection to put it simply like when I talk to person X I don't feel like I'm being heard or listened to and that's not what I think you get pulled in to kind of to bridge those things yeah yeah well and if they're younger like I I say that like I'm super old but when I was first starting in my career like any time someone would say something to me I just took it personally and now I'm like all right call me stupid call me an idiot tell me I don't know what I'm talking about like let's move on all right now let's figure out what you want like I just it doesn't faze me anymore I just kind of let it happen let them get it out and then move on and it's usually after they get it all out it's either they're they're learning something new so they're trying to you know they have that fear of am I gonna know how to do my new job all this stuff and so I used to not have I don't do this as much anymore but I finally was like okay I need to take what they're saying figure out how to spin it into good constructive feedback of how I could have done it better that made them call me you know whatever and that's how I got through it back then and now I mean we have a lot of people that do order taking and a lot of the more younger people are like I want to do the best for my customer which is great but they want Consultants they want us to tell them don't do that right you know don't don't build all these custom Fields when you can just change the label don't go and overhaul something just because you can and there's many ways to say don't do that there there's there's multiple ways to deliver that message and uh that's that's an art it's a skill um you sound like you were very self-aware when you were younger um since you didn't use air quotes um a lot of I think like I think a lot of maturity maturation is what I was trying to say is developing that self-awareness of like hey they said this but I'm not going to take it personally like how can I improve I guess yep be better next time yeah and it's like I said it you learn it as you go and I had really really great Architects and seniors on the projects I was on who I could say hey so and so they said this help me understand you know what I should have been doing and like just really great people that were my seniors that I leaned on to help me get through those which was great and a lot of people are scared to do that like I'll look down that's fine I'll ask a question so I think when people don't do that they miss out on a lot yeah you know you just made me think too like a lot of times um you ask when you don't know something and you ask a senior person or someone who knows it and you ask them to tell you or teach you whatever you're both benefiting from that you're benefiting because you don't have the knowledge um or the the experience that they had in troubleshooting or doing something and they're benefiting because not forcing but the exercise of them explaining something to somebody helps them understand it even more so it's really a win-win for both as long as you're not like that annoying person you just doesn't try to figure out anything on their own and just reaches out that's annoying so you guys would reach out I'd like what did you try what have you you know looked up that didn't work and if they said well I haven't I'd like we'll go yeah try you know and then come to me and we'll talk through the options and which ones like I wouldn't just instantly help them but I would also say if you're not sure where to start here's some things to start with here's some things to look at that maybe you didn't think about and most of the time they've like okay and other times they're like oh I just didn't know where to go so it was really interesting but as long as they would talk to me but I also tried to make sure I never made them feel bad about doing it or make them feel like they were a burden for asking because I have had some seniors that are like I don't have time for this and I'd be like oh okay sorry yeah and so I would go find another senior that I knew I had worked with that knew what I was talking about so there's a little bit of you have to make the time as well and some people don't want to I don't know yeah sometimes that just isn't a good fit for a culture you know like if yeah if uh you know working like what we do it's like we have to grow we have to get better and learn um and I think sometimes that means like you know even if you are busy and you know doing something there's always time at some point to help that person but yeah I know I feel like I get guilty sometimes because I do have a lot going on I'll have to be like I can't right now but I can right tomorrow or later if it's urgent like I would go to this person but if you can wait so I try to at least say like I will help you but it may not be immediate if I can I don't just like shut it down but I feel guilty about it I think we talked about this in the last episode or one of the previous ones where I'm starting to get it more and more from external like because of the visibility in it and I've had the same guilty feeling too it's like man I don't want to say no but it's kind of like I got a lot going on and and so I've been trying to do like you say and be like okay well I don't have a lot going on two weeks from now so you know I offer that and be like hey and you'd be surprised how many people don't take you up on it they want something immediately and it's kind of like I have made commitments to people and to to certain projects and stuff so that's a community site I was first starting I didn't know how to write code other than HTML that's good but you know that's all I knew and I would go out on the community and I know some people will respond to people like I'm not just gonna write the code for you and it's like I don't know how like if you could just give me even pseudo code or like insert this here and then not the whole thing but even just a snippet to get me started um like that's where I used to struggle and as people would help me and like give me the Snippets and give me like this is a business rule and I'm like oh okay and then I could go look it out of the box examples and see like oh that's what I need to write like I hate when people are just like go figure it out here's a link and I'm like but that's not why a lot of some people yes they just want you to write it for them that most of the people that I've seen on a community don't like they just want like maybe one little snippet because they they've searched and most of them will be like here's everything right I tried and and at that point I'm like here here's a little piece to help you get started and that normally does it for them the community is great like that's one of the unique things I've never even friends that I have tons of friends in I.T and Novak I work for X company or I help with this one product and I'm like oh what do you do when you struggle they're like I don't know I call the rep right and I'm like it's just crazy to me yeah I I agree with you on the community part uh I've used it many times I actually monitor it for kind of like things that are of interest to me um and I've I think I've responded to a couple of things it's that's that's actually like something that takes a little bit of time so the people that do go out there and respond thank you thank you thank you because um I know that takes time and energy um yeah well thank you to service now for recognizing them because it does kind of sweeten the pot of encouraging people to purchase yeah what are they it's like a I see their little things MVP program yeah yeah yeah MVP program yeah to MVPs thank you for responding to community stuff I real quickly like so I I did work for a company that worked for a bigger company and I remember Microsoft I'll call the name out and it was like uh I can't remember if it was exchange or SharePoint or something and to your point like you there's little sites like Reddit and uh there's one we used to use all the time and you could get so far until you just hit a tactical wall and then you have to call Microsoft and oh my god um talk about such a customer but at least it was and you finally get to somebody who's like this engineer and they're just like all you hear is and they're like do this and they're like that worked great and you have no you're not learning anything you know what I mean you're just like they they fixed it for you you did what they you passed it or whatever right but it's like whatever they did I feel like the now community does that better in that at least what I've seen walks you through okay so you're trying to do this but you know it could be better done this way and it's more of a mentorship I guess than it is a cancer yeah and they're crowdsourcing they're allowing everyone to help each other which helps everybody instead of just you know one person yeah you're definitely drinking the service now Kool-Aid this week I've been in my immersion week I've been like really pumped up about it I know we're running over but you have another one coming up today right I do I've been up in the morning two hours in the afternoon and yesterday with secops GRC the day before that was SPM and I couldn't go to the afternoon one Tuesday to the morning one or vice versa and then Monday was itsm and because I sent you the devops thing which I was didn't know yeah so you have an itsm Pro you have devops devops Is My Jam I love it I didn't I know not enough people understand it and much less take advantage of it so how were you with the GRC secops that's one of the areas I like that it's not as popular I I kind of think it's snoozeville but I like how so when I was in the CMA program the person that came so we got to talk to like product by managers and things like that and I really like the people that they have representing it in these sessions because they they Associated to things they were like why do you brush your teeth are you being compliant to your parents or is it so you have good gentle hygiene like they put it in like these real world scenarios where you're like oh okay that makes total sense and you kind of you know because if you're not like a compliance officer or like in a sock or something like you're kind of like okay uh the woman who presented yesterday like she was amazing like there's some cool stuff coming and they have like different ones for like basic Enterprise and you know all of it was safe harbor so obviously I can't say a lot I have Snippets for my own yeah so but I mean it it's very cool to see to see what they're in best in the different Spokes and immigrations that are coming yeah yeah I'll just say that I've I've gravitated to it because of the same reason you mentioned someone early on in my career made made audit not a bad word in my mind and kind of explained like yeah you know it's not about finding what you're doing wrong or getting you in trouble it's about making sure that we're not going to get a fine or we're not gonna you know cause harm to our customers or you know I was in healthcare so it was patient you know so I I got it at a I have a better level that didn't leave it negative in my mind so yeah I'm I'm all into it but I think if I could fix anything about it is that it's so jargon heavy and there's a steep learning curve to the data models that that is it gives a barrier for a lot of our technical people it's just like they see that versus those new devops or itsm or CSM or something there's a definite definite learning curve yeah I don't mind audits like I actually was an internal auditor years ago when I worked at the airline the oil and gas company I worked for because there's tons of government regulations we have no say in but then also the Auditors what I actually learned I learned this from we had a very good auditor he was a nice nice man which apparently the audit people think Auditors are mean but he was like I am holding you accountable to your rules like you created these because I was getting frustrated about some of our socks roles within change management and I was like explain to me why we have to do this he goes I didn't create that you did I was like so I can change it he was like yes because I didn't it was before me and I was like so it I can change that he's like as long as you document it and send it to me yes that's my job is to hold you accountable to what you said you're gonna do in some of the areas I was like oh yeah and I'll we can end on like just the fact that servicenow um this is not a paid endorsement uh service now can do all of this on one platform because we've just covered like 20 different apps I mean 20 is probably exaggerating but you know all these different things on one platform and then we as professionals are moving back and forth between them and doing all those things with customers that you're talking about tech switching context switching yeah yeah it's good stuff so um are the Gamecocks still in the uh finals yeah so they're a women's team won last year they've won like the women's basketball apparently a men's basketball team isn't it the there goes a rating team though the yeah the head coach of the football team though used to work for OU chain Beamer so Beamer ball big fan and then their quarterback used to be at OU so I was like you know what my husband is now an OU fan and gets to be some of my players and coaches or at the Gamecocks they don't play each other so it's a win-win I thought that was a pillow behind you it's your dog I just realized it yeah it moved and I was like that's not a pillow yeah that's your dog how sweet yeah right it's one of Riley's favorite places to sleep very nice um any any closing parting words for episode number six I believe we're on did I hit record yes I had records yeah I have done that I have not for this one but yeah I've recorded a whole like YouTube video without record actually oh okay we get into this I did record you a video last night but this is what happened I double clicked the record button so it grabbed a screenshot of what I wanted to show you and didn't record any of the things that I went and did afterwards but um we'll announce this here YouTube came out with a new feature this week called podcasts so I last night I converted our utterly the utterly Allison podcast which by the way if you look at my calendar I now abbreviate as poop um so there's two prep and two follow-ups on my calendar um but good thing it's not backward yeah I didn't even think of that didn't even think usually I think of stuff like that um so on YouTube officially now our podcast playlist or no our playlist is now a podcast and it could be found in a directory now and you can share a link to the podcast now I have to say that link Allison um because I think we're working through a playlist like yesterday but I've converted it put the description the logo in and everything so um so yeah I don't know what that means long term for YouTube but it's a new feature and that's supposed to help the visibility and stuff like that and I know we're still babies in the podcasting stuff but yeah you're not oh I am this is my first box I'm figuring out social media so I think we all are it's like constantly changing on us so oh that's true okay now any final words any last thoughts no I'm gonna go into my immersion week there you go you can always add a little tequila I don't know what's your liquor Choice probably not at 10 10 39 a.m but yeah maybe I'm gonna keep that liver working here Tito's it's mine Cheetos Tito's in red wine well what did you call that box Bordeaux cardboard cardboard okay you need to give yourself well so my boss gets mad at me she's like I pay you too much to be drinking cardboard box I'm like yeah yeah it's fine you just could have peed away anyways so okay so it's like you know what I've had a rough day and just quickly do you ever go over like the tap I have not done that would be tempting I guess if you lived alone yeah I'll have to tell you okay and the cardboard wine cardboard maybe it's the name of the episode cardboard oh I like it we could be drinking fake glasses of cardboard oh so during our episode but there we go I'm drinking tea I'm drinking my Zevia because I've quit Coke Zero that's right you put it on like the worst day ever I did yeah not ever but I've stuck too that's good that's you went through the worst day so everything else should be easy from here and uh I'll end on um my pdis upgraded it literally upgraded while we were recording our podcast from Utah Patch Utah release candidate one to Utah patch one so that'll be good to go get your PDI I updated Allison yeah I need to spin up my I'm on a waitlist oh wow oh God what would I do I was on a White House I have access to yours though that's true oh no actually yeah I recorded an episode okay well I know we're supposed to end but I recorded an episode I disabled all my users in my PDI I locked it down so I wrote a flow with a decision table which is why I asked you about that uh in my first decision table and it uh locked down the entire instant here's the here's the here's why you should watch the episode there is an account in your PDI that you've probably never heard of that you can't inactivate because there's a rule relations always be the system property the system property you can lock out anyone who doesn't have it happen just with a system okay now I gotta make an episode on that all right send me that offline because I didn't know about that because that would have saved me time making a flow in but it was still fun but yes I did I learned and I learned about this special user which you probably still don't know about you may know about yourself you probably know about it oh you actually checked the Productions to see if this user exists I should I'm going to I was in demo 7 early looking something up oh oh yeah poor enough I'll have to go see if it's in there be careful in there because it's about to be exhibited like any second well you need to tell your I know I know I checked that box yes okay was it Connor no no oh was it no all right he's on PTU oh that's right no Conor is right yes we're gonna have to have Connor we talk about him episodes so we got to have lots of people know who he is yeah yeah all right so be excited will you have 17 minutes before you're immersion into the Kool-Aid pitcher yeah all right talk soon go Gamecocks all right all right have fun and don't forget to wait for the video to upload I will not [Music]