ServiceNow Fundamentals for the Average Jackson

Welcome to my beginner’s series! I’m calling this ServiceNow Fundamentals for the Average Jackson (previously Joe, but Joe is called Average too often, so be it).

In this series, I’ll introduce you to ServiceNow and provide an easy-to-understand, educational explanation of various topics. These articles are tailored towards a non-technical audience and will walk through the fundamentals of ServiceNow as a system. If you are a business analyst or new to ServiceNow in general, this series is for you. By the end of this series, you’ll be comfortable using a new system.

I highly recommend non-technical users also take this quick, on-demand training from ServiceNow titled Welcome to ServiceNow. If this stuff starts to peak your interest, I would point you to the slightly longer on-demand ServiceNow Administration Fundamentals course next.

This is the first of many posts. This post will introduce you to ServiceNow and will serve as the main “table of contents” with links to future pages. At the bottom and top of each subsequent article will be a link to another post!

Series Table of Contents

Use the sidebar on the left side of the screen to navigate through this course.

What is ServiceNow

Simply put, ServiceNow is a relational database that you can interact with from the “front-end” and the “back-end”. It’s a collection of records, and the rules behind those records, and the rules behind who can access and interact with those records. It may make more sense if you’ve ever “submitted a ticket” for something:

• Have you ever booked a movie ticket online?
• Have you ever booked a hair appointment online?
• Have you ever ordered something from Amazon?

In many ways, ServiceNow could power each of the situations above, because ServiceNow can be the collection and response mechanism for requests. You fill out a “form” of sorts (picking your movie, picking your showtime, picking your seat), pay, and you can walk into the theater. You select a timeslot from a schedule, you show up, and you get a haircut. You pick an item from a catalog, and boom, 2 days later it’s at your doorstep.

I want you to think about ServiceNow like a platform designed to help workflows + processes run more smoothly.

To help illustrate this point, let’s imagine a scenario where you apply for a credit card. After filling out your application, some logic in the system determines whether you automatically are accepted, rejected, or someone needs to manually review your application. All of this can be baked into behind-the-scenes logic with ServiceNow. It can go further than just those simple if/else statements though — for instance, the platform can automatically determine which manual reviewer should be assigned to you based on specific criteria. The approvals, the email notifications you receive, the hand-offs to other departments down the line — the entire process from application to opening-the-letter can be managed in ServiceNow.