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Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
Duke: All right, Corey, what
are we talking about today?
CJ: All right, duke.
Today we're gonna talk about, , our
favorite things and this one is, is kind
of a little bit all over the place, but
it's all over the place in a good way.
I think.
Duke: all over the place.
Ha.
Oh, all over the place.
And that is like a few of our favorite
of things, and we're gonna like
different things in the I get you again.
CJ: Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, right.
So, you know, it is not like,
okay, we're going to get into like
the incident management lane and
we're gonna stay there, or we're
gonna talk about, you know, this
particular job type or anything.
We're just gonna talk about some of
the things that we like in ServiceNow.
I'll kick us off.
All right, so one of my favorite
things is, , script rest APIs.
, first of all, the platform
is amazing, right?
If you've worked on ServiceNow for
anything longer than a month or if
you've built anything in it, ever, right?
Like, you know, how amazing and
how powerful the platform is.
, What enables it to be super powerful
is the fact that you can access the
platform from any other device that
supports REST APIs and having a scripted
rest a P I is just like a game changer.
For me, it's the ability.
to send data to the ServiceNow instance,
run a script against it directly
in the a p i, and then manipulate
it on the backend and the table
structure or whatever I want to do,
literally whatever I wanna do, right?
Like I can have that spawn an event
that sends a report to somebody, I,
I can have that kickoff a workflow.
I can have it, you know it,
I can have it do anything.
Updated record.
Updated record.
That's so blase, right?
Like, I can have, I can have it
kick off other integrations, right?
Like it, it's basically giving you, , the
ability to have something external to
the system, . Ask the ServiceNow instance
to do whatever it is you want it to do.
Right.
, and one of the reasons I find this
so powerful and so interesting,
right, is because I do a lot of stuff
with home automation, ? And in home
automation you often have triggers.
I.
That you want to enable or kick
off a flow to do something, right?
We have that same thing in service now
with, , with business flows and so on
and so forth, , like if I close my door,
I close the kitchen door, after 10:00
PM I might wanna send an email letting
me know house is locked down, right?
That's something you can do with
a scripted rest, a p i, right?
Like you close the kitchen door, that's
gonna send a a, a rest, rest post
message over to ServiceNow instance.
You're gonna kick off that scripted
rest a p i and boom, now you
got a notification locked down.
Perfect.
Love that.
Right?
That's just a minor, example of, of one
of the reasons why I love this thing,
but I just love the flexibility of it.
It just really to me amps up the
power of a already powerful platform.
Duke: What's the coolest thing
you've done for a client with that?
CJ: The coolest thing I ever did
with it, was the integration
between a Microsoft product.
It was , a product that they were using to
track all of their work in, and I can't
work items and so on, on for so forth.
Right?
And I can't remember
the actual name of it.
It's gonna pop to me at
the end of the episode.
But anyway, the way that the rest
a p i with that product was set up is
that, It was a lot of sending of post
messages and they wanted to really
like kick off things in ServiceNow that
would then send things back to them.
Sometimes with a client, you get into
a situation where there's multiple,
work management products, right?
And you've got one that
is driving the others.
That was the case here.
, so this Microsoft product was the
product that was driving all of the
work, , through the enterprise and
though they had ServiceNow and need light
ServiceNow, and they utilize ServiceNow.
For some things, right?
They wanted to have, , maintained
that Microsoft, , system
as the source of, , truth.
And so what would happen is we'd send.
A post message, , from that system
to ServiceNow, we pick it up in a
scripted rest, a p i, and then we
have to massage it because the way the
data came over was pretty horrible.
And so we had to parse through it,
we've gotta, manipulate it a little bit.
We've gotta enrich it, ? Because
some of the information wasn't
sent, but can be inferred.
Based on the process, right?
Like they send two, three
different attributes, but
they didn't send the fourth.
Right?
But we can look up, but based on those
three attributes and us knowing it, right?
Like we can create a lookup table
and now we can look, send those three
attributes, pull back the fourth, and
then send that into the process, right?
and the reason this was really cool is
that , it was really hard to do this
in something like a scripted clue or
a business rule, , just because of
the number , of moving parts in it.
And it was a lot cleaner to put in a
scripted rest a p I and have the scripted
rest a p I then spit out the cleaning data
that can then be utilized throughout the
, rest of the platform, which would then.
It was used to send data
back to where it came from.
Duke: Hmm.
CJ: So it was just like
this virtuous loop.
Anyway, it's probably my favorite
because it was the first thing that I
worked on, , with a scripted rest, a p
i that really showcased the power to.
Duke: I still gotta
really go deep on that.
I think I've used it once, but wasn't
one of those things where you got enough
death for it to stay, in your head is
kinda like, wow, that was super powerful.
Alright, , my favorite thing is
Flow designer and it took me a long
time to get there and I have had on
again, off again with Flow Designer.
But it's back on and it's still
one of my favorite things.
And I think the last time, like it's
always given me good vibes in terms
of like, wow, this is really powerful.
But I think the last time it
really rang a bell for me was
in my last, , coaching cohort.
It was the second session
we ever talked to each other.
And we had already gone over data
structure and we'd always kind of
built out the tables that we wanted.
And then I said, let's
do this piece of logic.
Okay.
Essentially it's my Soaping app, right?
You have, just real simply, we have
recipes that have ingredients, right?
CJ: Yep.
Duke: So there's a recipe table
and an ingredient table and a
table where you store the linkage
between recipes and ingredient.
Because an ingredient could be on
multiple recipes and a recipe can
have multiple ingredients, right?
So, But when I do a batch, I wanted it
to air quotes, actualize the ingredient.
So I wanted to have a
batch ingredient table, you
feel you with me so far?
And so basically it would say, okay,
I'm doing this recipe, so make a
similar record, but we'll call it a
batch ingredient and make one for every
ingredient that I need for the recipe.
So now I have these batch
ingredients, which is like the
literal use of the ingredient.
Not the theoretical use of the ingredient.
And so it's like, how do
you get it to do that?
I mean, just thinking about the
code, it's like, okay, glide record
here and then like another glide
record and insert multiple and even
I was starting to gag a bit at the
JavaScript I'd have to pull out.
, but here we are, , a team of
ServiceNow beginners and me, and they
basically built it in flow designer.
And they didn't use any code.
CJ: Nice.
Duke: You could wizard it out if you
could just think about it and just
like do it in little simple steps
CJ: You know what that brings to my mind,
constraints breed innovation, right?
Duke: Yeah, no, absolutely right.
It, yes, that's exactly what it is.
it's true.
There are some high
powered devs out there.
They could probably have written a
script to do that , in a shorter amount
of time than we did in Flow Designer,
but like, how many of them are there
CJ: Right.
Duke: how many beginners
are there in ServiceNow?
Right.
CJ: Absolutely.
Duke: It's, it's a scale thing.
A lot more people can do a lot more stuff
and that stuff is just easier to read.
Anybody could pop up that flow and
say, okay, that's what the flow does.
Then we got it to do something way
more complicated, as you're adding the
ingredients to the batch check to see if
we actually have enough of it left, and
then set a flag , if we're deficient in
that ingredient on the batch and that, was
still in the flow designer, but that took
us all of like one line of JavaScript.
CJ: Which, you know, is, there's a lot
of ways to get that one line right?
Like Google's your friend.
Duke: exactly.
It wasn't even a complicated line of
JavaScript, but just thinking like for
one line of JavaScript and this Wizard
e component based workflow builder, I got
a simple supply chain management solution
CJ: Yeah,
Duke: and we did it in
like hours, you know.
So it wasn't like this big,
huge, hard, difficult thing.
And , you stack that up against
solutions where it's like, man, I've
spent days on scripts trying to get like
assessments to do what I want 'em to do.
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: know what I mean?
CJ: Yep.
Absolutely.
I know what you mean.
Like beating your head up against
something that you're, yeah.
Duke: And I think about all the
solutions I've ever had, and the reason.
I couldn't just get somebody to mock
it up was because it needed JavaScript.
And not only JavaScript, but familiarity
with ServiceNow objects in JavaScript,
right?
So like glide record and glide aggregate
and glide system and all that stuff,
which you couldn't ask a low-code
dev to really, you know what I mean?
CJ: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Right.
Like those are all things that you know
are outside of the typical common lexicon
when you're just starting in ServiceNow.
Right.
And Flow Designer just gives you
that stuff to pick off the shelf.
Duke: And the deeper I go, the
more I love it, subflows love it.
and , now that you can actually
take , the flow and convert
it to Subflow is super sweet.
, yeah, the more components that they add
to it, just the more interesting it gets.
And so I just.
I love flow design.
It's like the, you know how it's
like the first tool you reach for?
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: what it's like for me.
Just, oh, we need something to do this.
Yeah.
Let me just, uh, yeah,
I got a couple ideas.
Lemme just mock pick up a
flow designer and Bingo.
Bingo.
There it is.
CJ: Yeah, right.
Like we all got that one screwdriver
that we keep around the house, right?
That's got the interchangeable
bits and it never fails you.
Right.
Duke: Oh man, here it is.
Okay, here it is.
So I got , this customer, , and
they have this really.
If you hear them explain it, it's
really simple, but it's just because
the assessment and surveys module and
ServiceNow is just, uh, that way, um,
you like getting it to do anything.
Then that one supremely
narrow use case is ServiceNow.
Imagine when they built it is just
like you might as well be pulling
your teeth out with a, with a
wrench or with a, what would you
CJ: Yeah, man, I, I still
write my own survey module.
I don't, I don't, I don't use, yeah.
Duke: So at any rate, , what
they wanted was just a lot more
notifications along the way because
they wanted , their surveys to be open
for a long time, a long, long time.
you gotta think like they're a P M O
and they want every project that they
finish, they want the stakeholders
of that project to do a survey on.
And it's kind of like a mandatory thing.
And so they're basically like three
months later they'll be going back to bug
these people, Hey, fill out the survey.
'cause it goes towards our, personal
assessments and what our personal reviews.
so.
I'm just like, oh God.
Like how do I make it do that?
Like, am I putting in a scheduled job that
fires an event and I'm making a new event
and then I'm having a mail script, do all
kinds of blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
CJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Duke: or what else am I doing?
Am I cracking open the legacy
flow so I can look at the, the
default assessment workflow?
Am I like gonna have to have
multiple assessment workflows?
Like how do I even.
At that point, you're even looking at
how assessments launch themselves with
that stupid business rule they have,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: and it makes a separate business
rule for whatever assessment you
have, but they're all named the same.
I'm just like this,
CJ: Oh, I'm gonna stop you there.
Like, you obviously know way more
about this process than I do.
Duke: but I'll bet you, you're,
you're as happy about the prospect of
working on it as I am working on it.
Anyways.
to make a, an extremely long short, I
spent like an afternoon literally just
working out in my head, how can I possibly
get this to work with all the scripts and
all the different ways of doing it, and
how much am I gonna break this to get it?
And I'm just like, you know what?
Screw that.
, I'm just gonna make a flow that as
soon as assessment's created, I'm gonna
manage all the , notifications to fire.
I'll do that from a workflow,
and it was stupid easy.
And so now it's almost to the point
I'm not quite there, but I'm at
the tipping point where I can say,
look like I, I'm not even, I'm not
even starting with business rules.
I'm gonna start with script
with, uh, flow design.
CJ: Yeah, , you and I both have , a
shared client, ? That built their
instance, , flow Designer first, right?
And they had some constraints that
they were working around to do that.
But again, it goes back to,
constraints breed, , innovation.
And so the, some of the things that
they're using Flow Designer to do,
our literally amazing and things
that I would've never considered.
So , it's getting there, right?
And so my next one, right?
One of the favorite things that I'm
seeing is the momentum of the product
towards low code and ease of use.
There is just , this large,
unstoppable force of at ServiceNow
that is just pushing the product into
corners where it's never existed
before in terms of approachability
of folks, , of diverse skill sets.
. So a as you were just saying,
dude, like a lot of the folks
that you're mentoring, right?
They don't necessarily have years and
years of service now experience, right?
But they built the SOAP app for you
in the matter of a couple hours.
. You couldn't have done
that 10 years ago, man.
Duke: No.
No, for
CJ: It, the, the pro like
part, the product was great.
, it wasn't there yet though.
It wasn't non-technical jump
in build app, it wasn't there.
Technical jump in, build an app.
Sure.
Probably in a week, not in a couple hours.
, I just love to see it.
, there's so much of this
that makes my life easier.
Because even though , I'm really
proficient with code at this point and
I'm really proficient with ServiceNow.
Anything that allows me to scale my
skillset and get through, , client
requirements faster is a win for me and
the client . And so I know a lot of folks
out there are thinking, oh my God, you
know, they're moving towards low code,
they're moving towards ease of use.
They're not gonna need us senior
level folks, bss, they, they will
always need senior level folks, right?
In this ecosystem, ? Because the
things that you know, are things
that other people don't yet know and
take a long time to learn, right?
And so when you get into a situation
with a client and they're like,
Hey, I need to do this one thing,
and , you jump into flow design and.
Well, flow designer can't
yet do that one thing, right?
, or you know, you want to do it in
a low-code way and it turns out
well, you can't actually do that
thing with condition builder.
Now what do you do?
Right?
Or you've seen this before and
because you've seen it before,
you know exactly where you need
to go do it to tweak it, right?
Like there's always gonna be the market
, for a skillset in this, ecosystem.
But, We should all be embraced and
the fact that all of this stuff is now
easier for all of us to do, and that's
really appreciated from my perspective.
, Duke: I totally get you.
It's like the stuff that's coming
out with Vancouver with the new,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: The easier to describe conditions
so you don't have to write scripts for it.
Like are, is the user logged in,
like it's just menu driven now
CJ: Right, right.
Duke: Or are the impersonating and Holy
cow, dude, I just had an aha moment.
CJ: Oh, oh.
Duke: Okay, so this is all coming
from the screenshot that we got
from Vancouver and blah, blah, blah,
safe harbor and all that stuff.
but there's that thing that they're
adding to acls where basically like you
can add those new types of conditions
CJ: Right.
Duke: one of the ones I saw on
that list was, is impersonating,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: which is awesome
because have you ever been in a position
where it's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know I, I need to impersonate
this person, but I'm not going
for the a c l experience.
Right.
CJ: Right.
Duke: You know what I mean?
Just let me do what I wanna
do as this person, but you
can't do it as that person because
CJ: Oh my God, I didn't even think
Duke: like,
CJ: changer.
Duke: it could be, I remember a
couple times where it's happened,
it's just like, I get it.
I know.
I know why you're trying to
stop me, but I promise you, I'm
not here for the a c L stuff.
I'm here for something
completely different.
CJ: Right.
I'm here and I need to be in this context,
but I need to have powers in this context.
Duke: just let me see the record,
please just let me see the record.
CJ: Right.
And you know, and, and, yeah.
Oh man, that's game changer.
That's awesome.
I didn't even think of that.
So that goes back to my point, right?
There'll always be a market for
expertise , in this ecosystem, right?
Because , folks like us have seen this
before and know that this can be an
issue and know how to now to go fix it.
And it's easier now to also fix
Duke: If only for the reason
that it makes life easier for me.
CJ: right?
Duke: You know, 'cause I didn't,
like, I didn't grow up building
solutions with JavaScript.
Like, I didn't come at it from I'm
a hardcore developer, a full stack
developer, welcome to ServiceNow.
I came at it from, hey,
totally average guy
CJ: Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Duke: mediocre man, here's ServiceNow.
You're in charge of it now.
I'm like, oh, okay.
You know?
And over 15 years it got good,
but , as they make that stuff
more and more easy, oh dude.
Pray the Lord that they hear
this for the, , UI builder.
Can we please just make that easier?
CJ: There, there,
Duke: please make that easier, please?
CJ: there's some stuff in
Vancouver about that too.
Right?
And I'm not qualified enough in UI builder
to talk about how easy or how much easier
it'll actually make the process go.
, because it's been hard.
Um, but you know, I, I do think that
they hear us and I do think that, , The
gods of ServiceNow , are moving , their
hammer in that direction, right?
To get that working, , for
more of us average folks.
And I agree with you, , I'm
not a coder dude.
At least I wasn't right until ServiceNow,
because I grew up in the days of Doss.
But like the first time I wrote
JavaScript, It was the first time
I, , logged into a ServiceNow instance.
It's one of those things you, I built
the muscle and, , as a side note,
right, if you listen to this and you
don't know how to cope, it's possible.
I didn't know.
I now know it is possible.
Duke: I go a lot of that in my,
coaching cohort, like a lot of
people are too approaching it
that they don't have a technical
background or that kind of technical
background, and I'm just like, look.
You're gonna learn how to code.
And it's not the end of the world.
It's not as big a scary
thing as you think.
'cause it's, again, I think you,
I think you said it in one of our
episodes, like, look, we're not training
you to be a JavaScript developer.
You know what I mean?
We're training you to know enough
JavaScript is to work in ServiceNow.
And there's a big, huge difference
between the two of those.
Anyway, we're going way off topic
CJ: No.
Yeah, no, but, but here, I
gotta rant for this, right?
Because I think a lot of
people forget this, right?
, or sometimes , they never knew, right?
But in this market, in our ecosystem.
Co companies aren't hiring
you like in in clients, right?
Like the ServiceNow customers.
They're not hiring you to be like
amazing JavaScript developers, right?
They're not hiring you to do
wizardry, ? In the platform.
They're hiring you to solve
problems with technology.
That's what they're hiring you.
They don't care if you do that with
the Condition Builder or JavaScript or
Doss Script of 640 K of conventional.
They don't care.
They don't care.
They got an outcome that they're
looking to achieve, and you are
there to facilitate that, right?
You're there to get them to that
outcome and so, When you start thinking
about, oh man, coding, I'm got, I
gotta be able to be a full stack dev.
You don't, you need to know enough
JavaScript to get you to be able to solve
problems on the ServiceNow platform.
That's what you need.
You don't need anything else.
Sorry, ran off.
That's
Duke: that's okay.
That's a good one.
alright, let's see.
Um, whose turn is it?
CJ: uh, is yours?
Or, yep.
'cause I, uh, 'cause
Duke: got two of these now.
CJ: so, right.
So I, so well, let's, let's, let's
meta this one out a little bit, right.
Took us 20 minutes to figure out
what we're gonna talk about today.
And now 20 minutes in.
We've talked about two of those things.
Duke: Two of the six things.
, okay, well, I, let's just roll with it.
I'll tell you another
CJ: Go for
Duke: I mean, it goes off of your
rant though too, is that, there are
different things when I'm putting 'em
together, explore and S N U tills,
CJ: Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Duke: And I know they were built for
serious developers, but it makes life
so much easier for even beginning level,
devs and ss n u util specifically.
Like I know that thing does a
ton of stuff, but I use it every
single day in background scripts.
It just makes background
scripts so much better.
. Color coded and, , it does that whole
type of head thing on the object.
So it's like glide record.
Ah, and it's like aqui.
CJ: It like clip without the clippy.
Did you mean tag?
Duke: But even variables
that you described, right?
Like and then, then becoming
that type of head thing.
I know there's a proper name for
what these kind of tools are.
I don't care.
Like ss n u till is red hot that way.
CJ: Yeah.
I'm, I'm with you a hundred
percent on these, right?
, I think anything that makes the,
development experience easier right?
And allows you to scale, , your time
better, ? It is akay in my book, and so I,
I totally agree with you on both of these.
So they're both awesome.
And it goes back, to , my
previous ran, right?
This stuff going low code and ease of use.
We've already in the ecosystem have
been building those things, right?
Like in ServiceNow, it's just getting a
hit and starting to build it themselves.
All right, so, um, my next one
is , data certification right?
Is an.
Unsung hero of a ServiceNow instance.
It is Really?
Yeah, man.
Like it's, so I built the whole app
using this thing, , that allowed, I.
Organizational wide, , certification
of distribution lists, right?
The idea behind it was there's
a ton of distribution lists here.
Nobody knows who owned, who owns them.
People often transition
between departments, , or
out of the, , organization.
Somebody needs to, , do the care and
feeding of the membership, , of these
groups, and nobody's willing to do that.
So how about everybody do it?
. And so using data certification, I
hacked it a little bit and had it running
against, , group objects and ownership
and, but boom, bad bing bad, boom.
Now you've got data certification
objects going out to the owner
of every distribution list
that you have in your C M D B.
Another thing about it
that was just so cool.
Cool.
So cool is that , we had this
concept where you could then
nominate a new owner based on the
people in, , the membership list.
Anyway, I'm going on the tangent.
My point is, is that data certification
built was the , backbone of that app.
Right.
And it allowed.
This ability to run on a schedule, to
run ad hoc, to be a good front end
for the user experience so that folks
can just go into the portal, click a
few buttons, you know, that stuff goes
back to data certification and gens
it up and then it, either re accepts
or rejects it, that sort of thing.
Right?
It's just such an amazing thing that
I think is underutilized because it's
often only looked at through this.
The lens of the C M D B and not
what other processes that you
might need to certify, right?
What do you need to understand, , whether
or not it's been done or needs to be
done and who owns it and, , attributes
that might need to change on a fly.
You know, all of these
sorts of things, right?
, there's a whole list of things
that I can think of, right?
That they,
Duke: fundamental thing, right?
Like data goes stale.
CJ: yes.
Yes.
Duke: and it's like, how
would you normally make sure
that this data is not stale?
And so why not put a workflow around the
upbeat band certification of the data?
CJ: Yes.
Duke: it's kind of one of those things
that you have to sit back and just marvel
at the simple, elegant beauty of it.
What I mean, , and plus they
did need a certain specific
in interface for that, right?
Because it was kind like, Hey,
are all these a hundred records?
Correct.
And of course, you don't want
to be pulling each one of those
things up on a form like a pleb,
CJ: Right.
Duke: it gives you the interface
to say like, change five or six of
'em at a time this way, that way.
CJ: yeah.
And it also gives you the interface
two of grouping them together.
'cause you'd also don't want to
go in and have to say these six.
, servers go to Mike and
these 20 go to Jen, right?
Like, you don't want to
have to be able to do that.
So you go in and you can set
condition builders, boom.
And now Mike gets everything that's
a VMware server, and Jen gets
everything that's in Azure, right?
Things like that.
And if you do it correctly, this thing.
Practically runs itself after you
set it up and you get the be, you
just reap the rewards of that.
You can get a report that says, yeah,
everything is solid, and you can stand
behind that because you know why you
can stand behind that because other
people have validated that is solid.
The subject matter experts like.
You don't understand like how, like most
people don't understand like how important
this is, , for business when they're
doing things like asset management,
especially things like asset management.
What do we have?
I dunno.
Right?
Somebody needs to figure it out.
Duke: I mean, doesn't everybody on the
process world say like trust but verify?
Okay.
So tell me again how you're gonna verify.
CJ: Right, and now that we've validated
it, we've gone through this asset
management process, we've got all of
our assets logged into, , ServiceNow,
we've got correspondence, c MDBs form
right now, how do we make sure that we
don't have to redo this work again in six
months or a year or a year and a half?
Data certification takes
care of that for you.
This stuff is expensive, right?
In man hours, like certifying data.
Duke: Yep,
CJ: So, yeah, this one's
an unsung hero in my book.
I love it.
Duke: I, I remember that app you built
with it and I haven't had a good
opportunity to really leverage it, but
ever since I saw what you did there,
I was like, it always something, it's
a checkbox in my head when somebody's
describing an app to me, I'm like, Hmm.
Is there anything in here that
sounds like I'm gonna have to
babysit the data a little bit
CJ: Right.
Duke: if so, let me get data
certification underneath it.
CJ: Exactly.
It's like, let's go ahead
and get you in here.
Let's do something with it.
Duke: Yeah.
Um,
CJ: got, duke?
Duke: Okay.
A lot of things at once.
Reporting in pa, I know it's a big thing.
I.
love it and I, I don't love it in terms
of fulfilling the insight minds of
people like, oh look, could you gimme
a report with incidents by priority?
And since that didn't illuminate
the many, he is like, well, gimme
one by incident by category.
Um, I love the mindful.
Thinking of the outcomes that the
process is trying to achieve and then
measuring for the support of the outcomes.
And I, and I especially
love building dashboards for
different roles in the process.
Like it's
not like everybody in the process
has to have the same dashboard
where you have one dashboard.
It's like, that's such
a stupid idea, right?
Like, well, these four things are for
you and these four things are for you.
We just put them together
and mix it up because, yeah.
Anyway.
CJ: Yeah.
No.
Right.
Duke: I love, I think the
unsung hero of the platform
is, , like the number reports,
do this query and show me the number.
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: there's 42 of them and , if
you just think about an operator
report, I call 'em operator reports.
It's the reports that go in
front of people who are required
to do the day-to-day activity.
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: And all they care about is,
dude, just show me like what the
next most important one to do is.
CJ: Right.
Duke: And that could be boiled
down to a dashboard with three
or four numbers on it, you know,
how to make it super complicated.
Let the
analysts go deep on the, line
graphs and the paretos and the pie
charts and the, and the whatevers.
Let the analysts go deep on that.
But for the operators, it's just like, get
the most important work in front of them.
CJ: I still think that you talk
about reporting in probably the
best way in this ecosystem because
you see it from the perspective of
the people who are doing the work.
People who need to analyze the results of
the people who are doing the work and the
people who need the plan, the next thing.
Right?
And, reporting is the thing that allows
you to know that you're achieving the
outcomes that you're trying to achieve
and where to adjust if you're not,
Duke: That's right.
I mean, I always beg my coaching
cohorts to , think about the outcomes
first, or just imagine that you're
paying for this thing in pushups
CJ: right.
Duke: or your own money.
Why are you gonna spend this money for it?
Like it would won't blink an eye like,
is it six 600 or like a hundred thousand
dollars implementation of whatever.
But what if you had to pay for that?
Like I don't, I don't have six
fees just lying around and so I had
better be damn sure that's gonna
improve something for my life.
Okay, so you get it implemented.
Okay.
Did it improve my life by like a
hundred thousand dollars factor?
How do I know?
CJ: Right.
Duke: Well, you don't, because
most people put, do reporting error
quotes on their scopes of work.
But I love, I love the
capability that sits underneath.
I love just thinking about reports, like
what report indicates performance and
then putting PA on top of that, right?
So if I know my outcomes, I can get PA
to measure the outcomes and like every
single day I can see, am I getting.
Closer to what I need.
Am I getting farther
away from what I need?
And I guess the last thing I'll
throw in here too, is that it
allows me to make smart decisions
about managerial energy, right?
Like it's not like we could just say, make
all the outcomes we're pursuing go up.
And in fact, that would be a
stupid way of operating, right?
CJ: Yep.
, Duke: if you're in the
incident domain, and.
, everybody's super ultra responsive to the
tickets, Ultra responsive to the tickets.
Do you want to force it to
improve when it's already up
above everybody's expectation?
Meanwhile, you're some
other metric is down.
why would you, like, you only have
a, you can only have a time enough to
drive one or two elements, and so it's
like, PA allows you to get to a point
where you don't care about a metric.
We solved that whole response time thing.
We've solved that.
Now we're onto the next big
managerial dragon to slay.
CJ: Exactly.
, allows for the efficient
allocation of resources.
. And that is something because
we all have finite resources.
, this reminds me of a quote by
a, a guy named Red, uh, red aar.
He was a firefighter.
And the quote is, if you think it's
expensive to hire a professional to do
the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
Right.
and so the reason that popped in my head
based on what you're talking about, right?
Is, is because all of these things are
things , that professionals bring to
the table, and every company, no matter
how big they are, has finite resources
devoted to specific tasks, right?
if you want to actually
get the job done in a.
reasonably, , respectable man manner
you need to have a professional,
this is how professionals think.
So anyway, that's kind of the tangent.
I, I probably took it just because
I really liked the quote, but, do
we are at like 40 minutes to record?
Uh, do you, do we have
time for anything else?
Duke: We have time for one more.
CJ: I got.
All right, so here, , I'll
jump this one in here.
Virtual agent is one
of my favorite things.
, What I love about virtual agent
is, , aside from all of the exciting
possibilities now with, , gen ai, , I
love that virtual agent allows folks to
interact with the system in a different
way, in a more approachable way, in a
way that a lot of people are getting
more familiar with, because they're often
interacting with other services that
they consume in the same way, right?
, The ability on the backend of
virtual agent to structure these
conversations and to utilize
different, , integrations and resources.
One of the things that I did that
I thought was, , really cool was.
, I was able to, there, the client had
a, external knowledge base and what
they wanted to do was to have the
virtual agent search both their internal
knowledge base on the ServiceNow
platform, but then go out and, search
their external knowledge base as well.
I think it was like write something
or other Right Answer, write check.
I dunno.
And, , and it had a rest, a p i, right?
And so, boom, by the b by the boom.
, in the conversation designer,
we pull a rest, a p i, we loop
through those, returns, right?
We get a little bit of a snippet.
And now you've got in the chat window,
you've got a return , on your search
that has searched both, your on site
and offsite knowledge basis, right?
, and folks can page through that and select
the one that they want, and, Incident
deflection is my point here, right?
You have a robot and the robot
basically allows you to deflect an
incident and it again, dovetails
into more efficient use of resources.
, and it's just really cool.
I like playing with it.
Duke: Oh man, I have a feeling that
there's gonna be some, , greater than the
sum of their parts collaboration between
generative AI and virtual agent, right?
CJ: Dude.
Duke: Because virtual agent,
, you had to structure it.
You had to say, here
is the best next step.
But , now with gen ai, , if the
language models are built correctly,
maybe the virtual agent could be a
little bit more, figure it out itself.
What to do.
CJ: That's what I'm hoping that the
partnership in this direction goes.
Right.
Like the ability to have a bit more
, open-ended conversations where, the
coding that you do is more guiding.
. , the AI to help the user get to the
point where they want to be, but, not
having to, structure each, step in the
process, , very deliberately, right?
, I think there will be
a lot of value there.
And the thing that I've always wanted,
and we're so close, , is to be able
to log into a virtual agent, right?
And it's like, and I think you could, you
can do some of this 'cause I have right?
Say, oh, hey Corey, I see that you
are in office building number seven.
What can I help you with?
Like I can't print.
Oh, let's take a look.
Looks like you're close
to printer number three.
Is that the printer that
you're talking about?
Yes it is.
Okay, great.
One second.
It looks like that service is offline.
Here, let me restart it for you.
Try again, right?
That's what I want.
That is where the solution that I
wanna deploy to clients and allow
them to like just relu revolutionize.
Revolution change, transform the
way , that they do internal IT
support and other process support.
So that's why I think virtual agent
is cool and that's why I think
it's pretty much has limitless,
potential, especially now with gen ai.
Duke: Alright, those were a
few of our favorite things.
Why don't you, wherever you see this
put in the comment section, what some
of your favorite things are and why, and
maybe we can bring you onto an episode.
CJ: Yeah, and uh, and like it smashed that
subscribe button or something like that.
Duke: All right.
We'll see you on the next one.
Folks.
CJ: and still no outro,
Duke: Still no outro 90th episode.
No outro.
CJ: no outro.