okay I think it's a great opportunity for us to kick this off and get started so hi and welcome to this introduction to servicenow support which is another installment of this servicenow webinar series now I asked you in the chat what fires you up what gets you excited and I'm here to share with you that John and I who are on this call what fires us up and kind of everybody at servicenow what gets us excited is you all it's putting you at the center of everything we that we do so that we can make your lives better more successful and the list goes on so with that being said we are going to kick off this session I do have to very quickly say that don't make any buying excuse me don't make any buying decisions based on this presentation we're sharing only information that we have up to this date so standard Safe Harbor notice don't make any buying decisions based on this presentation now we have a lot of awesome future webinars and events here at servicenow so I want to take a moment right now to have you all take out your phone scan that QR code and you can see the curated list of events that we have where we have experts and peers who share their insights their wisdom so that we can all achieve our value faster so if you happen to miss the QR code here don't worry the link will be shared in the chat but I'll give you just another second right now take out your phone open up that camera mode go ahead and take a picture I guess not take a picture scan the QR code load that up and you can see future webinars that we do offer and a couple housekeeping notes Here we have save time at the end for Q a but that doesn't mean you can't ask your questions along the way so there's a great q a button that's a feature in Zoom you can hit that q a button at any time drop your question in there and at the end of this session we'll take a look at all those questions and we'll answer the ones that we have time for cool okay cool number two this uh session is being recorded so you know if I or John we say something just like amazing and you're like oh my God John said this really great thing I want to come back to you can do that because this session is being recorded and will be shared on the servicenow community and finally at the end of the session we're going to send out a survey and ask you for feedback we value feedback I would say almost more than anything else because that'll help us continue to make these sessions more valuable more useful more engaging more delightful more entertaining and uh more beneficial for you all so a quick introduction my name's Kevin and I am a learning Solutions and delivery lead here at servicenow I'm a certified master trainer and all that is to say I travel all around the world teaching our teams how to serve you best and to share a little fun fact um just because I like to get to know each other I will share that I was a contestant on the prices right at one time and I didn't do very well I didn't get up on stage or anything I did get an area rug as a consolation prize but uh yeah that's kind of a little fun fact and with that said I'd like to introduce our special guest here John Gonzalez who's the senior director and Global leader for platform Tech John go ahead and introduce yourself yeah good morning Kevin uh good morning everyone uh it's wonderful to see all the cool things that gets you you get to see a jazzed up and Alive feeling alive and uh my name is John Gonzalez I'm the senior director with technical support I've been with technical support and service now for going on 10 years this year so I've got the I'm an old timer here at servicenow but still love it still love what I'm doing still love working and support um I'm gonna share a fun fact with you guys if that's okay since uh everyone else did in the chat uh that was awesome to see uh I'm from Sunny San Diego live here currently in Sunny San Diego just like you Kevin uh and I grew up by the beach so of course uh my parents threw me in the water very young and I started surfing so uh my whole life I've been surfing since I was about 10 years old and uh I'll transition to a fun fact in my professional career here at service now um in support we have a subject matter expert teams uh six primary ones and I've LED or been a part of each one of those subject matter expert teams so uh diverse uh background in our platform and applications and whatnot so um a little bit about me Kevin yeah awesome John Surfer servicenow extraordinaire uh we could not be more thankful for your time and for you being here with us so you've had a chance everyone here you've had a chance to meet me Kevin and you've had a chance to meet John now we'd love to kind of get to know you a little better so we want to know which role do you identify with so we just we sent out a poll right now you should see a poll on your Zoom screen there and go ahead and answer whichever one fits best for you so do you identify with the system admin role developer implementer role platform owner business leader let's see what you had to say I'm seeing the answers coming through here we got about halfway through our through our numbers here oh my gosh I just burnt my mouth on my tea there a little too hot all right so we have it looks like a good spread we have quite a few system admins we have several developers and implementers I see platform owners Business Leaders so we've got a spread now the good news is is at some point in this session we will talk about something that is relevant for each of you so whichever roles that you identify with there we will cover something that will be of value so I'm going to hit end pull and we're gonna pop back in all right so let's take a look at a road map like I said a couple times we have a lot of great content that we're going to cover today we're going to start by talking about an introduction to servicenow support we'll understand how servicenow has a unique unified approach to support we'll talk about uh the now support portal getting support when you need it when you need it and finally we'll do some conclusions some wrap up and we'll do some q a at the end so support at servicenow is actually we have a unique approach it's a unified engineering approach so what that means is customer service and support Global cloud services product development we're all unified so John what I'd love to better know is why does this matter and what are the benefits of that yeah um you've heard that uh saying one throat to choke well that's very true with our uh Chief technical officer he owns uh the three major components in technology and service now the development of our product the uh operations of that product you know serving it out to our customer base and then supporting that product uh and all of those um are they fall under the same umbrella so that's terrific in that if there's a problem if there's an issue if there's a if there's an initiative that needs to happen it's all happening under one umbrella and so I think that's that's a terrific thing I've been at other companies where things have been really segmented you know completely different business owners and whatnot uh and so uh this is you know when we go into meetings with other with these other teams supporters right in there uh with the development with the developers with the operations guys and giving feedback on what's happening on the ground what kind of cases we're seeing what kind of impact we're seeing seen on those cases directly to these teams so they can really understand where our customer base is coming from so I think that's a really uh unique uh visibility that uh our team brings to the table yeah absolutely and I think this actually fits perfectly with with our servicenow values one of our values is win as a team or win and work as a team and I think about this like there's no walls between these different departments so what ends up happening is there's a common goal everybody works together less silos less Walls and More unification which means better support for all of you so John thank you for sharing that now I want to better understand what support looks like across the map across the globe for servicenow so let's talk about what are all these locations what are these little colored icons what do these represent here sure sure um these are the the locations of our support centers primarily so uh the green indicates our support center so there is where we have all of our technical support Engineers management team the whole support staff uh taking in the calls answering the questions and working working with you directly along with those we have our site reliability centers that's where we host the actual servers uh the databases the app nodes cetera that's where we're doing the monitoring and learning and that's where those teams that are monitoring those systems are located at so the actual operations there uh you'll see that they're co-located they're they sit on the third floor right above me uh so we have a real tight interaction here in San Diego as you can see we have the data center and site reliability Engineers located here in San Diego and that's going to be true in all these other offices you know a lot of interactions with these teams you know when we get on bridges on p1s and and whatnot uh you know everybody's coming together real tightly so you know that's that's there for a reason we also have a couple of other teams such as the U.S federal uh support center and these are our Engineers that are dedicated strictly for fed type uh cases the the separate instance for the federal accounts and whatnot and then in Japan uh we have uh we have a Language Center specifically for the Japanese uh language um and so that's why that's co-located there in Tokyo so we have specific Engineers that are just handling uh for our customers in Japan in Japan let me just uh you only get a chance to list out the sites you know we have Santa Clara and San Diego on the west coast you know we're we're located on the east coast in Orlando so if you're out there on the East Coast you're going to be contacting one of our Orlando Engineers we have sites in Dublin in stains England and in Amsterdam and so in our Mia folks that are joining us from Amia you're going to be uh talking with uh someone from one of those centers and uh then we have uh and then we have Hyderabad uh you know handling our Asia uh southeast Asia and then we have Tokyo in Sydney sorry go ahead no it's all good but I'm seeing some numbers on this slide that I really want to call out there's a there's a couple numbers at the top left there it says 24x7 by 365. we see all these locations across the map so what does that mean 24 7 365 for support what does that actually mean yeah good point uh you know uh the 24x7 I think will fall into the next uh Slide the 24x7 365 and uh what that is is our follow the Sun so as you saw we're laid out across the globe and uh each of our centers uh is here 24x7 365 days a year holidays it doesn't matter when you call we are here uh to help and answer any questions and uh and take care of any any issues that come up so we're in technology you know uh we are in uh we do see uh Priority One issues priority ones are our highest kind of issue and so um this really dictates what kind of model we're using and we're using the follow this follow the sun coverage so say uh I'm just gonna use this as an example our critical cases P1 and P2 something hot comes in you know whether it's if it's an instance down or application down we're gonna throw the kitchen sink at this thing to get it get it up for you get it back up as fast as possible that's that's the number one priority for us so uh the cases have the ability if they need to to follow the Sun so let's say the case comes in during the America's time frame uh you know we're working it in AMS here and then come at the end of our shift uh which is usually at five yeah four or five o'clock we're going to be doing a handoff over to our Australian counterpoints located in apj our our apj counterpoints located in Australia I should say uh they're gonna work it during their shift and come at the end of their shift they're going to send a case over to Australia for that follow the sun you know uh follow the sun model now why that's why that's good is that we don't have Engineers here in the U.S uh staying up 24x7 uh working your case being burnt out at two or three o'clock in the morning fresh set of eyes you know going uh working on your cases now uh that does introduce some challenges in regards to handing the cases over and whatnot but we have a pretty robust follow the sun model in which when we do hand off these cases we're doing uh warm handoffs we're sharing uh what happened during our shift what uh you know what transpired what did we do what actions we took what do we need to do next these are all important things in order to have this model work properly um not to mention um you know for I want to also mention that you know the priority two cases they're eligible to go around the world so p1s and p2s they're eligible to go around the world the p3s and p4s those usually stay within the region where they're worked um for uh priority two cases if you're comfortable with the uh level up effort in which your engineer is working the engineer may ask hey can I can I keep this case here and work with you and a lot of the times our customers like that because they want one person to work with they don't want to switch the hands and whatnot and they're okay with with uh the next day so uh don't be surprised if you see uh our us hold on to the case within region um and so that's a pretty important Point another uh thing to pull point out is the p3s and p4s so these are our less critical cases doesn't mean that they're not they're not important but they're not as critical and they can be worked within region so that's how we generally like to keep these cases with us um yeah and so uh the cases can continue to Hyderabad into Mia and then they come back around to the US so that's our FPS model Kevin and that's what we use to keep the cases going when we need to yeah that's awesome thank you so much for sharing that so we know better now where support can cover and how we can cover 24 7 365. but let's actually talk about what's in scope what's out of scope what can support help with sure um you know uh support is considered to be a break fix entity you know that's that's like our number one thing is you get your instance it's out of box you start configuring it you start adding to it um if it's if it if you're writing your own custom code let's say you have your uh your own processes that you're writing code words and whatnot we consider that to be a customization uh you're customizing your instance to to do what you want because this is the way you've done it in your past and what not uh those kind of customizations those kind of implementations we're going to ask you to work with our partners or with Professional Services to kind of kind of work through that and we call those kind of out of scope and so we'll let you know our goal is to let you know from the beginning of the case like hey um this case is out of scope we want to let you know we're going to help you with the best of our ability that we may we may get to a point where we need to call you we're going to ask you to call in your your uh Professional Services or Partners to help you implement uh what you're trying to do or get that customization to work the way you want it to work uh but you know our team is very versed in knowing like this is out of the box or this is customized because we can easily see that um and decipher that and so we're going to try and help you as best we can but we're probably going to have to point you to the Professional Services or partners partners for those difficult things sorry about that um what's uh in support scope is the break fix so anything that you know we're replicating out of box anything that is um you know configured uh as is and whatnot we're going to go in there we're gonna we're gonna replicate what you're doing that's going to be one of the first things that we ask you is you know what what happened when did it happen why did it happen when did it start and uh and then we'll uh we'll know pretty quickly if it's out of box or not those are the things that are generally uh in scope Kevin okay yeah that's that makes perfect sense and so let's say you know the people on this call they're like okay great we we want to engage support when and how would they actually do that sure um you know when you have a problem uh you know uh we want you to uh engage us uh and um what this diagram is showing is the different uh is the different support levels that we offer our base is the most basic guided advance and total the advance in total you get a lot more things um the customer experience is showing that um you know for our base um we're gonna you're gonna rely on the self-service portion of things so later on in the PowerPoint you're going to see a lot more about self-service and what's offered there that's where a lot of the base customers are going to be uh working out of um they can create cases absolutely via the portal but they can't call in for that support um so that's the drawback for bass on the other hand the guided the advance in total you get the self-service you can create just like a base and but you cut can call in our number and get assistance um the advance in total they get a little bit more things in regards to an impact Squad so they get an actual you know a team of folks that are going to sit there and really help them through upgrades help them ensure that they're getting the most out of their servicenow package so that's the customer experience there um and the availability uh is is uh five by twelve for base and so let me say that for the base when you first come on as a customer you're going to choose what time frame you want your support to start so say I'm in Australia I'm going to choose 7 A.M to 7 P.M Australian time and that's my 5x12 coverage um for the guided advance in total it's 24x7 365. you're going to get help whenever you need it um and so this is uh you know so the the three three ways that you're going to be engaged with support are one um if you're guided advance in total you can call in and ask for help uh two primary way is going to be the uh self-service you know um and opening up cases via our portal and three uh we'll talk about a little bit later but um we may alert uh we have alerts running in our in our data centers that are letting us know when memory is high when when memory is low when data when space is getting low you know we may alert and we may contact you proactively to say hey something's going on we need to get in contact with you because we're going to do some work here to ensure that we uh ensure your instance is good and uh and do everything we can to ensure it stays up so uh those are the those are the ways we're going to get and hold get a hold of you or you're going to get a hold of us and uh and when so please Kevin thanks yeah and a quick question here so if there's a P1 outage what does that look like across these different packages is there a difference is it the same yeah there's no difference in P1 we treat p1s the same um so if a base customer has a P1 we're gonna call them up and we're gonna engage with them you know because our most critical thing is getting your instance back up and your users operational and uh back to running your business so no difference in P1 got it yeah thanks for sharing that so now how quickly should people expect responses when they do engage support sure um the response let me let me uh clarify and just say that you know what a responses the responses that you you open up via you open up a case and um it's uh it's for support it's in our contractor respond in a certain amount of time and that's what we shoot for that's that's the number one thing that uh our team is looking at is how fast now how fast but are we meeting Our obligation and acknowledging the case and taking ownership of the case um and that's that's Paramount for us um now this is not the resolution this is not delivering the resolution because quite frankly sometimes we just cannot put a time frame on how fast we can uh solve our problems so um I hear this question all the time do you have um slas for resolution uh we can't we can't do that because it's impossible um thousands and thousands of cases and we just can't do that um but the P1 uh response time on on base is 60 minutes so we're going to get back to you in 60 minutes um uh for p two four hours P3 three days and P4 four business days as you can see it's a little longer compared to the guided which is um P1 30 minutes and the two hours and one business day and two business days our advance and total customers you know we have uh our staff 24x7 365 ready to pounce on the phones ready to answer the calls because that SLA is 15 minutes for p1s so we got to be on the spot when it comes to answering the call and answering these uh outage situations P2 is one hour a lot more aggressive and p3's one business day and P4 is two business days so this is how quick we're gonna get back to you and say hey you know I'm the owner I got it and you're gonna you're gonna be working with me on this case awesome yeah thanks for sharing that I just want to emphasize uh the the part the point that you made about First Response targets and not resolution times that's that's absolutely vital so if you can just say you know remind them one more time about First Response targets versus resolution times I think that's key here sure sure so the the First Response the response is going to be uh you know I open up the case and Kevin you're you're the engineer that is uh drinking his tea right now and he sees that there's a P1 that's in the queue and uh it's been sitting there for um five minutes and it's in advance because I can see it on my I can see on the Queue that um it's a advanced customer I know I have 10 minutes to acknowledge that and so um for these fifth quick 15-minute responses it's going to be a quick summary of Hey Kevin my name is John Gonzalez I'm your technical support engineer I'm going to be working with you uh and and you know and then I take ownership of the case and then we're going to open a dialogue and work via the case now I'm going to shift it to like a say a P2 where I have a little bit more time for uh responding a base P2 I have four hours so so as an engineer one of the things that um you know this is one of the things we teach our Engineers is to provide meaningful first responses and we do this for cases for P2 P3 and P4 cases where we have a little bit more time to you know first ensure that we definitely read the case we understand what's going on sometimes our customers don't want us calling them via phones so you know they want to work the case via just the case itself um and so you know we may have to ask a lot more clarifying questions regardless even if they're even if they're willing to speak with us um you know we are going to really try and understand that case as best as possible and we're going to provide that meaningful First Response now that could include questions such as you know what instances do I need snc access to those instances so I can jump in there and start looking around and start troubleshooting um or you know get clarifying information to ensure that we start the case off as best as we can perfect thanks for sharing that so we've talked about we've talked about when to expect responses how to engage support what support actually does now I think we should talk about some of the really good stuff here which is the now support portal so our now support portal is it's an ecosystem of support tools Technologies and content so that you all can find answers and get the support that you need quickly so we have three different pillars that we're going to cover in this session here today the first will be self-service where we'll talk about things like service catalogs P1 dashboards user Administration we'll talk about unassisted support which includes knowledge bases and communities known error portals and finally we'll finish up with assisted support which is really about where you're actually submitting those cases and getting an Engaged support team member from servicenow so starting off with self-service I'd love to start with just some of the main features here in the portal for self-service John what let's go ahead and talk about some of these features sure um you know I think the number one feature that sticks out to me is that little search bar at the very top um you know this is where you're going to log in and you're gonna you're gonna have questions about something um you're gonna you know I think that the number one thing here is this is the whole idea of self-service in being able to take care of issues as quickly as possible I know I'm used to I have a question on something I Google it and I go and I research it for my let's say for photography or something like that um when it comes to your instance it's going to be the same it's going to be the same thing I have a question on how to set up this uh admin group to ensure that they all get emails as an example I'm going to go ahead and plug in a question here and I'm going to have the opportunity to search our knowledge base to search our communities to search our documentation um and everything like that so that that top bar there is a great place to start um but there's a lot of things that we can do here um at the now support portal such as uh you know the uh the onboarding assistance um you know in regards to hey I'm new here servicenow what is it that I have to do to get started um the uh instance uh and user management that sticks out to me um I think that you know uh knowing how many instances I have uh what version are they on when is patching gonna you know apply to these um instances are there any emergency patches that needed to happen uh and if I do have an issue on my instance you know opening up a case uh with support in order to get assistance uh or if I want to modify something on my instance opening up changes with support so that I can get those changes implemented or if I'm reporting an issue I click on this and this is supposed to happen and if it happens on my out of box instance and it's not happening over here and I think that there's a bug I'm going to report a problem I'm going to open up a case and try and get this link to a problem so um these are some of the major things that we can do here with our now support portal awesome so I'm thinking to myself you know one of the things I I hear a lot maybe maybe I'm unique but at the dinner table or at work I'm hearing a lot of uh just like how do I how do I automate more of my work day how do I leverage automation to make things better and so I think we should talk about that how can we automate some of the things that we can do in the in the now support portal yeah this is a a real key here uh to the power of of now in this automation uh you know in some of the things that come to mind are um this is really small so I'm trying to look at the uh the the the tiles here my apologies um but you know plug-in activations um you know if there's software that I've gotten and I want to add to my instance I can activate the plugin here cloning instances uh is near and dear to me because I'm on the platform team and this is an area where my team lives is in cloning um if I have my production instance and I want to make a copy of it and I want to you know Run update sets on that and I want to make a lot of changes I'm going to create update set based off of those changes but I don't want to run into my production instance I want to run it in another environment then I'm going to clone down and I'm going to do my testing there and then promote those changes up to the production instance so running clones or creating uh you know creating a copy of your production onto your sub production instances if you haven't um is very important and this is where you do that kind of work um either your version entitlement taking a look to see you know hey what where am I at am I on Tokyo my am I on Utah uh is Vancouver coming up pretty pretty soon here um plug-ins uh you know do I have entitlement to this type of plugin um so this is where you're gonna go and find that information out and then if I have a training uh credits uh and um I have my admins that need uh some servicenow training so they can get proficient on the platform they can get proficient on on installing applications and whatnot this is where I'm gonna go check for those and do some Administration there but John real quick you've been saying this is where they do all of that I just want to be hyper clear so that we can be very helpful for everybody how exactly do they get to these automation tiles in the now support portal what button for them to click they click on that uh automation uh that's where I'm I'm uh it's it's real tiny my apologies uh the uh it says automation store yes you go to that automation store right there and this will get you access to these tiles very important um you know one that comes up here is the upgrade in patch and instance so let's say you have uh your own personal instance that you've been playing on uh because you want to get really proficient proficient in service now so you request a demo instance um and you know you would come over here and click on hey I want to go to Vancouver because there's a there's uh this is we're an early release and um you know they have some exciting things in there that they're doing that I want to start taking advantage of I'll click on here I'll go to my find my instance and this is where I'd upgrade um so yeah um automation store is where you find this stuff at Kevin perfect and let's just talk a little bit about that last bullet point there the the Z boot in instance can you tell us a little bit about that yeah um Z booting in instance is something that um uh you know uh what Z boot does is it takes an instance and it reverts it back to factory settings that's the easiest way I can explain it so it's going to clear out any data it's gonna it's gonna zero out the data you have the option to add uh fake user data so you can see fake names and whatnot um but what that does is um let's say you've gone in there and you you have an instance a subprod instance and you've um configured it you don't like the way it's turning out you're having problems with it and you want to start all over again this is what you would do you would go and you would request a z boot of the instance to return it back to factory settings the way service now gave it to you initially now um this is this is important to know because you never want to Z boot your production instance uh let's say you know you're you're into running your instance and um the last thing you want to do is is fat finger and Z boot that so we do have a lot of guard rails in place so that not only our customers but our Engineers do not zboot production instances so don't be surprised if you're um you know if you hear that one of your users is trying to z-boot an instance and we call you up and say hey um we're not going to allow this you know unless we speak with the the business owners and everybody like that you know to really uh ensure that uh we're protecting your data as much as possible yeah that that makes sense and uh just between all of us here I've heard a rumor that there is a rock band in San Diego with servicenow employees and the name of the band is z boot is that correct that is correct yeah these guys uh Z boot um is a rock band they play at all of our major release major releases which is pretty cool uh they play at our um at big company events um you know the unified technical uh group gets together once a year utg gets together once a year and Z boot You Can Depend is always going to be there so fantastic rock music and uh wonderful to see those guys and you know out on the stage always reminding people do not Z boot your production instances so awesome yeah thanks for sharing that now let's talk about uh when we do need to manage an instance how can we what are some of the features of the now support portal for doing that yeah clicking on instances here um you know you're going to get a view of what's hap what's what's what's what instances do I own and what's going on with them and what can I do with them and uh scheduling patches and upgrades is a key thing um you know being aware of uh release new releases and whatnot um you know we're going to be sending a lot of uh updates to a to your users that you designate as to when we're going to be having scheduled patches and upgrades happen we have a program here of n minus one where we want our customer base to just be one uh major release behind the latest um and so um that that is uh you know something that you're going to want to stay on top of because it's real important that you know you're getting those security fixes uh that are coming out um you're staying at the latest and greatest and be able to take advantage of the product as best as possible so um scheduling the patches and upgrades being proactive there um is one of the major things that you can do to manage your instance as healthy and robust as possible um you know we are going to send maintenance uh activity updates out as well so if you want to find out hey um what is servicenow saying that I should be uh you know uh doing to keep my instance as healthy as possible uh that's where you're going to want to find this information out um I talked about security recommendations uh and resources this is a this is an important one in that you know we come out with the security patches every so often um and uh we need to get them into your systems uh as quick as possible to ensure that you and your user base is uh protected and that you know you're you're having the latest and greatest when it comes to ensuring a safe and environment and that's that's the thing is we want you to feel like hey when you put it in service now your servicenow you're putting it in a vault and we do that by you know staying current with our security recommendations um you can check on the size of your your uh the database uh what kind of footprint do I add do I have and whatnot and you can find out IP information this is important because you may have Integrations uh that you need to run with servicenow maybe I have sap that I tie into Oracle that I need to tie into and they need to IP address from servicenow in order to you know tie it into their application and whatnot or um so um this is uh this is where you'd pull that information from so great place this is this is a good landing spot for you to you know definitely bookmark sounds good so we've talked about managing instances now let's talk about managing accounts users and how all of that can happen in this now support portal right um so clicking on the your name you'll see this drop down here and you know one of the things that I'll call out is you know you can edit your own profile but even more importantly manage account and users especially if you're going to be a part of that team for your company um you know this is where you would set your support contacts and this is important because either these are the folks are going to be able to open up cases on your behalf they're the ones that are going to get these updates in regards to maintenance in regards to upgrades in regards to security patches and whatnot and if you're an administrator that's responsible for uptime and you want to open up um uh windows then this is where you're gonna upgrade Windows or or or or uh what am I trying to say maintenance windows for your company then you know you're going to want to know what's happening with the service now and this is where you're going to want to grab this information you're going to want to set the right people so that these emails are going to that right right team whether it's an alias or whether that's uh specific people so that they know that something's happening to these instants and you're marking your calendars that hey something's happening in this instance and we're not surprised that we're going to be getting this patched on a certain day or we're not surprised that servicenow is saying that there may be a window of five minutes or an hour where my my instance won't be available uh because of a major upgrade or something like that or I'm planning for my upgrade that's even more important is hey I'm going to be moving to to Vancouver here shortly I'm going to start testing I want to start you know getting uh my sub prods up to Vancouver to ensure that all of my all my update sets are working properly and all changes are are um are going through as smoothly as possible so it's important to keep the the users um your support contacts um up to date uh because they're going to be doing the administration and opening up cases on your behalf you can unlock accounts you can reset passwords you can personalize your profile those are all the key things that you can do here under the user admin area so yeah so what I'm hearing is let's say you know user account gets locked or someone forgets their password they need it reset what you're saying here is we don't have to create a case to get help from you know servicenow support team we can just self-service that by clicking our name at the top right clicking on manage account users and taking care of it from there is that right correct exactly cool so let's uh let's find out from the audience I mean we just talked about managing catalogs managing users service catalogs managing instances so let's find out how many of you are using self-service today uh let's see we we have the answers here we have yes love it nope never tried it or I tried it and I don't like it and uh what self-service hopefully nobody asked the question what sells oh we got a few all right I'm seeing a lot of yes loving it coming in I see a few that have never tried it we'll keep this open for another 15 seconds and what I'd also love to do is if you've already answered the question go ahead and drop into the chat there let us know what stood out the most what did you just learn from you know the talking about managing instances managing users and accounts talking about service catalog and automation what's something new that you know now that you didn't know 25 minutes ago so go ahead and drop that into the chat we'll let the poll run for about five more seconds and it looks like the majority of our answers from the poll are that yes we love using it and we have used it uh it looks like the next Quest the next answer would be nope I have never tried it so then I guess one I would say for those of you that use it and love it awesome keep doing that we appreciate you and support you for those of you that haven't tried it I recommend at some point today log into the now support portal and just try one new thing that has to do with self-service and you'll start to see how these things snowball and and become you more useful over time so we've talked about oh the poll is back up here we talked about Kevin can I jump in real quick and uh Paul Mercer had asked a question that I'd like to answer real quick because it's kind of still on the topic here and his question is do we need a separate account to use the now support portal and um my my uh my answer would be you're going to want that account tied to your company account uh because that company account is going to be tied to the company instances and so if you're using a separate account it's not not going to be tied to the resources and where the instance is located and whatnot then uh it's it's not gonna you're not gonna be able to open up cases questions and whatnot and you're not going to be tied to those instances so the best practice would be you know uh being under that company account I hope I hope I answered that question from Paul but I was just taking a look at that please continue sorry off Rhythm no that's great it's it's absolutely essential to know that and it's a good opportunity for me to say for those of you that do have questions we have a q a button in our Zoom window if you hit that q a button you can drop those questions in and we'll have a chance to to come to all of these questions at the end and answer as many as as many of them as we can so John we've talked about uh we've talked about self-service and I want to move into some other amazing features of the now support portal specifically around unassisted support so things like knowledge base and community and known error portal so if we dive into the knowledge base I think most of us know what a knowledge base is it's a collection of easily discoverable articles and specific topics are covered but here at servicenow we actually create and update these knowledge-based articles while cases are being investigated and resolved that's huge I'm going to say that again at servicenow we update and create these knowledge-based articles as cases are being investigated and resolved why is that so valuable it's valuable to our to our customers in regards to uh you know every time that they open up a case our Engineers are searching to see if we have already created an article against this uh issue that's being reported uh and uh when we do find when we do find relevant knowledge we close our cases pretty quick and um when we don't the expectation is is that we search and if we don't find then we create articles um and what that does is that and you know part of the KCs philosophy that service now implemented about I would say about six almost seven going on seven years now part of that philosophy has been uh no article is too even if the article is never used it may be used one time and it's important to have in our database and so it's worth the effort um and so um the philosophy of you know search and if we don't find create and if we uh when we create ensure that you know to the best of our ability it gets published to the public viewing so that anybody all of our customers can see uh answers that are out there in our knowledge base so that's why it's so important it just lifts the footprint of uh of uh what our customer is able to self-serve on um very important piece uh to you know keep our support cases under control when when when customers are are able to search things such as patching and um you know this is the uh this is a part of that self-service you see the Articles being um displayed in the in the right box and we have a filter on the left box where you can choose from different knowledge bases maybe you want to look at our documentation uh and read on a certain topic such as patching maybe you want to search support uh specific KBS out there or maybe you want to look at the communities and see what's being set up there in regards to patching topics um so very very important um and uh and uh we mentioned over here join our smug uh Knowledge Management User Group um and you can do that uh through the communities but I'll let you continue Kevin yeah so one of the things I want to highlight here is we make it easy to find the right knowledge base article that you're looking for by using that search bar up at the top and those filters on that left side it becomes very simple to find the answer that you're looking for but John let's just quickly touch on the known error portal sure um known errors are are tied to our uh problems that are found AKA also known as bugs and uh you know the this allows this allows our uh customers and Engineers to be able to search for certain let's say they we get an error string we pull up the error string and uh we uh we uh report a prv a problem against that error string and uh the idea here is to one have have it published so that it's uh consumable not only by our customers are not only by our Engineers but by our customers as well now there may be a code fix that needs to happen against this prb and that code fix may be a release or two away uh and um you know and maybe that's not going to solve it for our customers so they request hey is there anything else that we can do can you help us find a workaround for this well this this uh known error article that they create based off of the prb will have that kind of information not only that information but it have uh you know until that bug is fixed until that prb is fixed um it'll remain active and you'll be able to see once once the fix is uh released so it's integral uh integral part of support and development and our customers to know what's happening when it comes to problems excellent so let's keep talking about some unassisted support unassisted self-support that we do have in the now support portal we have something called virtual agent which is really it has to do with common Solutions can you just touch quickly on this one yeah um you know the common common issues is where virtual agent really stands out uh you know if you go in there and you ask um some some common common issues a virtual agent uh it's been pretty uh it's it's been it's been implemented for a while now it's it's getting good Traction in regards to being being able to answer a lot of common questions and being able to uh provide quick easy answers I know I use it a lot more um in my daily life so it's something that definitely give it a try yeah I can definitely attest I also use it in my daily life too for sure all right so uh I want to talk about one of my favorite aspects of unassisted support from now support portal and that's our community which our community is incredible it there's over 300 000 active users and there's all kinds of highlights and benefits for why the community is so valuable John I'd love if you could just touch on a few of these yeah um one thing that comes to mind you know when you're searching is so definitely you're going to want to start the community uh because boy our our community base is fantastic at getting back answers um you know we see a lot of uh articles from our Engineers being created based off of community dialogues uh Community uh responses and whatnot and our Engineers are also involved in the community you know they go out there and they're trying to answer questions and help our customers along the way so you know support benefits uh both ways uh in regards to you know the community answering questions and and our support Engineers answering questions and it benefits our customers so you're gonna probably be able to answer a lot of your questions um via the community it's a great place to start um in addition to the the knowledge base you'll also find discussion boards here where you can pop in and ask a question and you'll see this just get lit up with with answers and they're pretty quick to respond um and then this is where you'll be able to find uh certain events such as our snugs um servicenow user groups uh where they'll get together in certain areas certain locations you know certain sites and uh you know actually have uh you know cocktail hours and and discussion discussion boards and discussions and and whatnot fantastic place to link up and get connected with other servicenow user groups um and then you can definitely find the platform release information what's happening what's our roadmap what's what's going on with our product when can we expect releases and whatnot so uh valuable asset that's intertwined with support that we're definitely uh members and participate in awesome thanks for sharing that so when I think about you know getting help and support quickly I think about Community I think about knowledge base I think about known error portal virtual agent we have so many tools and features available at everyone's fingertips but there are times where we do need to actually create a case and I think it's important that we actually zoom in on this idea of when we create a case how can we as customers how can we make sure that we're doing the best thing possible for our support team to be able to help us with that yeah this is that this is the important part here um you know especially being as part of technical support you know in creating cases what's the best way to go about doing it um you know first off what you're looking at here is our incident record producer AK IRP and um it's going to ask you a series of questions so I log in to my uh to my account and I go and I navigate to the to you know uh I navigate over here uh to creating a case and um I think that you're gonna have to choose what's effecting you're in what you know what's what's affecting me is there something wrong is there an actual outage because if there's an outage that's going to create a high priority case if I'm having performance issues if I just have a general question um if I have a service request or uh I can't read the last one uh too tiny trust Assurance trust Assurance okay um so for any of these situations um you're going to want to provide as much information as you can to help that engineer zero in on the problem as best you can zero in on the issue as best you can um so what helps him there is a clear description of what's the issue um you know when did it start and who is who is it happening to those are those are you know extremely valuable because maybe it's happening to four or five users maybe it's happening to a thousand users maybe it's happening to your whole user base that's all important what uh instance is it happening on am I running tests in my sub production instance or is it happening in my production instance uh this is you know extremely necessary information to Center engineers in the right direction supporting information such as screenshots especially if you're you know if you're clicking through and you're and you're doing things um we call that steps to reproduce that is valuable information so that we can hop on that instance start you know doing this exact same uh thing that you're doing in order to try and replicate the issue are you getting error messages that are that are being generated in your logs or popping up on your screen you know all that stuff is is absolutely critical so the who the what the when the where the why all that is is absolutely necessary when you're creating a case to get to get the fast um you know uh solution to get the quickest solution um to your issue yeah so the key takeaway that I'm hearing is the more details we provide the better able servicenow support team is is able to support and help us is that correct absolutely that's 100 correct cool all right challenge for you John Let's uh let's talk about a typical case workflow in 30 seconds or less oh 30 seconds or less um the support case comes in to you know uh in my queue and I answer it and um the uh the engineer will will again assess you know the who what and where and why and what uh to the best of their ability and if it's something that they're not used to something that they're not uh they don't have knowledge on uh or whatnot they're going to open up a task with either a subject matter expert in their team or if they need to go out to our um operations side of the house because uh something needs to happen outside of our realm or if there's a something that we just can't get to the bottom of then they'll go to development um and so you know we have the ability to engage any resources that we need here in-house because we own it all uh to engage the help that we need in order to provide the solutions as quick as possible now a key thing before I I you know my 30 seconds is up it's probably over but a key thing is um the solution proposed because U.S customers we're gonna we're gonna propose a solution to you um so you'll see your case move from a new state to work in progress state to a solution proposed state to a closed state so don't don't accept that solution if you don't understand it or if you want Clarity on it you know and you want to hear more information about you want to have a discussion about it don't accept the solution until then and then once you accept the solution then it'll close out so don't make the mistake of accepting the solution right away always wait until you have a chance to review it and understand it and then I'm good I'm good I'm gonna go ahead and close the case out sorry about that Kevin that's all good and so when a case does close we've talked about how much we actually do truly love feedback and how much we value it here so when a case closes you you all are going to get a survey invitation that is an opportunity for you to share with us how we can what we did well what we could do better and all of that is going to be the data and the information that we use to continue to provide you the the absolute best world-class support and service that you deserve so wrapping this session up I know we got just a couple minutes left we have a number of helpful resources that we'll be sending to you afterwards so this will be available in the deck and the deck will be available in the community page these are all actual hyperlinks that you can click so we have a number of very helpful resources and this like I said before this will be shared uh in a deck that will be shared on the community final reminders register now for servicenow.com Community like we said before 300 000 active users an amazing amazing resource for you so go ahead and register now you can visit support.servicenow.com for access to that now support portal that we've been talking about throughout this session and finally most people don't know this but we actually have a YouTube channel for servicenow support so head to youtube.com user servicenowdemo you can see all kinds of great helpful videos there and if you're like have you just said a bunch of hyperlinks and words it was hard to catch all that all of this will be in the deck on that community page in the link in the webinar chat so with all that said a big thank you to John for being here to answer my questions uh for you all for taking time out of your day today to to join us and and learn about servicenow support and just a big thank you to the entire servicenow Community for really putting people at the center of everything that we do thank you so much everybody we'll see you again soon thank you Kevin