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What started off as talking about all ServiceNow job types ended up focusing exclusively on the ServiceNow admin. Fine with us, as many new entrants to the ServiceNow space don't have a clear picture of what the ServiceNow admin is and does.
Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
[00:00:00] Duke: . This episode is brought to you by clear sky clear sky is the better way to do ID governance and automation. And it's on the ServiceNow platform now, why is it better? Well, it's better because they've taken all these years, decades plus now of ID management. Practices and experiences and they've rebuilt it fresh.
And it's on the ServiceNow platform. Advantage one. You're on the same platform of work and work consumption as all the rest of your other processes. Advantage two. And this is the first time we're talking about is advantage Corey. Like, you know, people are talking, it's gonna be hard times for a bit.
Right. And.
[00:00:39] CJ: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, you know, the market's in market's crazy and everyone's a little skidish right now.
[00:00:44] Duke: Yeah. And what do you do when times get tough? You tighten your belt a bit, and that is a clear advantage for clear sky, because now you have, , an ability to rationalize your application portfolio a little bit, all these other ID management solutions you might be carrying on. And could you have a cost savings by switching this clear sky, but also rationalize your applications?
Like I don't need two different. Pieces of software that I have to have separate expertise on. I can put this all on the platform for work service now.
and just make myself smoother, leaner and meaner.
[00:01:17] CJ: Yeah, duke, not enough enterprises are looking at, their app catalog in this way. having worked for like most of us having worked for like an enterprise, a large one too, you know, there are often a lot of applications out there that overlap and where you can reduce spin by accommodating.
So clear sky is definitely the way to go to help in that.
[00:01:34] Duke: So if you're interested in ID governance and automation, there is gonna be a link below in the description of this podcast. go check out clear sky and tell 'em that.
the duke and CJ sent you.
[00:01:44] CJ: That's right.
[00:01:45] Duke: All right.
Corey, what are we talking about today? I.
[00:01:48] CJ: All right, duke . we're having a service now jobs jam session. We're gonna talk about how you work in service now, from the perspective of actually being the person that's doing the.
[00:01:58] Duke: Yeah.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna cover, The basic job types, and then we're gonna break down, ways you can be employed in the service now ecosystem beyond just the titles, right. I'm talking about like different paradigms of work. so why don't we kick it off with the types of roles that you can do in service now, and specifically, Cory, I wanna start with the basic building block, the service now.
Because I've been talking to a lot of new entrance to the ServiceNow ecosystem. And if there's one thing I wish more people knew, it's what an admin actually does. If You don't know, what an admin actually does in real life how are you prepping? How do you prep for something you don't know?
[00:02:39] CJ: You know, that's, that's a good point, duke. , and you know, what doesn't help is the fact that these titles are often. Really fungible across, , job descriptions, right? , what some folks think might be an admins role might be a BA role or, a project management role, so on and so forth.
Not typically it doesn't overlap in that way. Those were just examples, but. You need to know especially when you're looking at certifications and entering the, , ServiceNow job market, What's expected of a person who is coming in as a ServiceNow admin so that you can properly execute those duties and Excel above them.
Because nobody wants to just be regular. And so, you know, I think getting started, like where I would say, you know, a ServiceNow admin, , role starts is the per is the caretaker of the instance. Right. Not, not the, not the planner of the instance, not the person who's drawn out the direction in the future, but the caretaker, right?
Like this is the person who is making sure folks have access. , that folks, , are removed from access when they leave the company, that folks can do the job, , using the service now tool set, , that, you know, everyone else is building inside of the.
[00:03:42] Duke: you in principle.
[00:03:45] CJ: I love it.
[00:03:46] Duke: Down in the weeds though. I think there's something that's like, there's like a, There is a pervasive idea in the space that the admin is a maintenance role. Right. tune it every once in a while, like a mechanic and, do a lot of data administration. So the most common descriptions I get from new entrances that the ServiceNow admin basically does air quotes stuff like user and group, , relationships.
[00:04:12] CJ: I mean, I I'd say that's, that's certainly a baseline of it. Like at least one of the things.
[00:04:17] Duke: And then also doing data admin, like put in new locations, put in new departments and companies. Okay. But here's my challenge with that description
[00:04:27] CJ: Uh, oh
[00:04:28] Duke: is that if I started over and I was an admin, the very first thing I would do. To prove how awesome the platform is automate those two things. you know what I mean? Like isn't the dream to just have ServiceNow and ad talking in such a way that I get the users and I get the groups and I get the relationships between them.
[00:04:51] CJ: Absolutely. talking to an, an it guy, right? Like, you know, a person who cut his teeth on, on windows networking and has still has an MCSE. , Yeah, I totally agree with you, right? You want, you definitely wanna get that data into service now and, and have all of those kind of functionalities automated behind some kind of service request, or if not a service request, just an automation that keys off of different attributes.
[00:05:13] Duke: this is a posture of mine if you are having to have your service now, admin do data administration, like every Monday, go and see if there's new groups, then add them to service. Now, like you're doing it wrong. Like I understand like, yes, you will be the person that does that.
No, it's not a good place to be.
[00:05:30] CJ: Yeah, totally agree.
[00:05:31] Duke: my contention is that the ServiceNow admin is the one that is tasked with, excuse my French shit jobs like data maintenance. But that should always be stuff that you, source to people who, who manage a solution. Right? Like maybe you've got some custom table storing widgets and ServiceNow, admin doesn't know anybody, anything about widgets, but the widget manager does.
So give them a, a, a list view, , write some ACLS and give them a role so that they manage it. Or if you're not doing that, Build in some kind of automated import where's your source build a connection to that source, build something in flow designer that goes every, every once in a while, look at it and pull it in.
[00:06:13] CJ: I guess this is where I challenge your challenge, right?
[00:06:15] Duke: Oh.
[00:06:20] CJ: because I do agree with you. I think all of those are functionalities of an admin. And, but I, I look at all of that as like a comp it's like a comprehensive kind of evolution of the role. Right. So initially back in the day, it was much more manual, right? It was go look at this list of groups in ad and recreate them in ServiceNow, to match right now.
I feel like it's, the manager of the automations that do the jobs, right? Like it's kinda like the robot caretaker and from a certain perspective, Like you want, like you said, those imports, that automation, those building outflows and service requests to kind of do all of those things.
I think that's definitely in the wheelhouse of the, of the admin and definitely those expectations, but it's also. The person who gets the ticket first is the person who's ensuring that everyone, you know, has the access to the tool set of service now in order to do their own job and doing the first level troubleshooting and probably maybe first level and a half troubleshooting to make sure that the system is actually performing the way that the developers and architects kind of envisioned it.
Right. So it, it is, you know, I, I some, and maybe I'm not challenging your .
[00:07:26] Duke: No, we're, we're totally not in contention there. Like I'm, I'm like, I guess what I'm saying is that there's an idea that, oh, I'm like a data admin, . But not a caretaker of the automations because that's a lot more deep into the.
[00:07:40] CJ: right.
[00:07:40] Duke: right.
And so I guess what, I'm raging not raging against, you know what I mean?
I'm just in the best way, I'm trying to empower these people to understand what they're getting into and prep for that, which is you're not a data admin,
[00:07:51] CJ: No agree. Absolutely.
[00:07:53] Duke: and it's not, it's not a maintenance only role cuz here's the second thing. And you know what? This is very rapidly turning into a WTF as an admin episode. we're 12
[00:08:03] CJ: gotta let
[00:08:04] Duke: in
[00:08:06] CJ: we're just gonna
[00:08:08] Duke: Okay. Yeah. Let's see what happens. Let's go with the flow. Okay. so you're not a data admin, right?
You mentioned it too. You're the first person to get to ticket. So I would say you are also the front line of the admin team. If indeed there is a team,
[00:08:20] CJ: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:21] Duke: you will get all the stuff that comes in. Maybe your, like, who knows what tasks you're working with.
Enhancements, defects, stories, epics incidents, catalog request.
[00:08:33] CJ: Task records yeah.
[00:08:34] Duke: yeah.
Like you're getting the task records and you're probably doing a whole bunch of stuff, which would include story grooming. First line troubleshooting.
[00:08:43] CJ: Yep.
[00:08:43] Duke: But what is the one variable that makes being able to do that way better?
And I would argue it's knowing how to build on service.
[00:08:54] CJ: Ah, I see where you're going
[00:08:55] Duke: You see what I mean? Like, which is definitively a completely different skill than data admin, I wait, I do clerical stuff. I, I take a record. I update it in service now versus I have to know how a script include works. I have to know how to do basic troubleshooting, but that necessitates that, you know, a little bit of the component. handyman aren't necessarily carpenters, right. Or plumbers or electricians, but they know enough about each to get some basics done.
[00:09:27] CJ: So that's a good point, right? Like I, I kinda like the comparison to like the handyman in this situation. Right. You know, whenever I hire a handyman for something around the house, like you said, they do know, some basic electricity. They do know some basic plumbing. They do know some, basic carpentry.
They do know. and let's not diminishing, right? Like a lot of these folks actually have advanced skills in a lot of those areas, too. Right. definitely not, using this as like a, a diminished kind of comparison. What I mean by that is it's more of a Jack of all traits, kind of, um, solution.
And I think the admin has to have that Jack of all trades mentality. and this takes me back to when I was like fresh on the platform and, you know, I went to the assist admin, um, and then the advanced, this admin courses, which I don't even know if they still run or not.
But, , when I left that second course, the advanced CIS admin course. I walked away with knowledge that was far greater than what a data admin would have. Right. Like I knew how to, how to utilize the platform. I can write code on the platform, Business rules, client scripts. I could utilize script includes, could do glide, AJAS, right?
Like all stuff was taught in those classes and demonstrated, you know, writing workflows and how you do, you know, request, manage all that kind of stuff is in this, kind of course. And I believe all that stuff is the core. Competency of being an admin in the service now, world, right?
Like it's, this is not a, I'm just gonna go in and, and administer list kind of job. At least I've never viewed it like that. I viewed it as like, you know, a stepping stone towards being either a ServiceNow developer or a ServiceNow architect, but basically being the person who can turn the wrench in any part of the platform to ensure that it's working properly or at least identify problems when you're not right.
[00:11:05] Duke: Amen. Is that's exactly what I'm trying to teach people. Another way that might make this make sense is that most of the customer ecosystem, isn't huge teams of ServiceNow people, They have like a ServiceNow person, maybe a couple of them. right. That's I think that's the, the, the experience of the majority. So when they say we want a service now, admin, they're not thinking, gosh, we need somebody to do the data maintenance or the low level maintenance or Just keep this thing alive. K T O keep the lights on. They are thinking about, I want somebody who can manifest what we want on the platform.
They think it's bigger than just maintenance. Mm-hmm
[00:11:46] CJ: Yes, absolutely agree. you know what I think too is. When I think admin, I think, you know, CIS admin in, in the it world. Right. And that person is the caretaker of systems. And part of being the caretaker of those systems, right. Is doing the upgrades on those systems, doing automation on those systems to make them run better, being the, the face of those systems when you're out and about in, in the business.
Right. And, and evangelizing and discussing and. soliciting input, there's a whole lot there, right? that's not just right. Click on the list and delete a, you know, delete a line item or update all or something like that. Right. Like there's a whole lot here. And, and in the ServiceNow admin role in, and duke to, to what you just said.
Right. I think a lot of folks are thinking that this is the person who can be my general go to person to actually improve the system too. Know, so I, they expect, you know, if, if not some, some decent development chops, they expect you to be able to understand how that works and, and at least use the condition builder around those areas of the system to make things happen.
[00:12:50] Duke: Yeah, and I think like the word admin is a little bit diminutive.
[00:12:59] CJ: it, its kind of both, right? Like it, it,
[00:13:01] Duke: But the term, like when, when you use it, and you hear it you feel like it's, a smaller thing.
[00:13:06] CJ: Yes.
[00:13:07] Duke: And my contention is that it is not. And all of us who started like over 10 years ago were kind of de facto admins. That's what we were, cuz we had to basically like run the system, learn as much as we can about it and be the one person for the.
[00:13:25] CJ: Yeah, dude. Absolutely. Right. Like, so I, I don't think there's anything tive about the word,
[00:13:30] Duke: It's almost like a, it's like a proto architect.
[00:13:34] CJ: Yes.
[00:13:34] Duke: right?
And some people go that way. Some people don't whatever. But, uh, and, and I don't wanna minimize architects either, cuz it's a big, important job. but if I was starting over as an admin today, I would just have eyes on. an architect position further down the line, which basically means
I'm gonna like contradict myself here, but going wide a bit. like, but going wide on platform, knowledge versus deep on process knowledge, I guess, is what I'm trying.
[00:14:05] CJ: you, right. A hundred percent always go wide on the. Always right. Like, that's just gonna pay back in spades. you know, and maybe I'm a little biased because I learned that way too, but I, I think it's helped me. I know now ServiceNow is starting to bake in processes a little bit more, uh, detailed and a little, a little deeper than it used to, but for a long period, a stretch of time, like a ServiceNow app that came from ServiceNow was just a ServiceNow app built on the platform, right.
It was just a different collection of forms and business rules and so on and so forth. And it's still that way to a certain degree. so if you knew the platform, you could deconstruct the app and understand how it was, how it worked and how it was made, and then how you can map it to your own business.
So, yeah, so many benefits to going. Why?
[00:14:49] Duke: Another spin to give you a, a perspective on like the totality of what an admin is. And let's say you're lucky enough to get onto a service now team. Okay. You got a customer that, has big investments, both, monetary and people wise. and you become an admin on that team. What makes you a standout admin and what gives you the, best future potential for what you can do and where you can go?
And I would say the admin that makes everybody else's life a lot easier. Is the one that progresses the fastest and by everyone, I mean the stakeholders, well, like by everyone, I mean everyone. So stakeholders, if you're interacting with them, trying to understand their needs so that you can groom better stories so that the people who build it are closer to what the customer needs. I mean, the developers, meaning the developer has an entire app to create and an admin can say, well, listen, I know a lot about ACLS. Let me build out the ACL component for you. And you go write the script includes with the deep code stuff.
[00:15:52] CJ: Right.
[00:15:53] Duke: And I mean, the architect in terms of prepping the architect, like maybe it's the admin that runs the instant scans, Or the, uh, upgrade center work and informs the architect. Like we are having problems here. Instant scan is flipping out about all these goddamn ITBM app things that were put in by that vendor who had the fucking accelerator that put three instant scan is totally flipping out about
[00:16:20] CJ: alert.
[00:16:22] Duke: thought. You should know, oh, here we go.
[00:16:27] CJ: And where's the documentation.
[00:16:34] Duke: I feel a lot better though.
[00:16:38] CJ: glad you got that out. I feel like you need to get that out once a show is so in order for you to be right.
[00:16:42] Duke: it's just this primes me for my we, but you know what I mean? Right. by knowing as much as you can experiencing as much as you can and essentially making yourself the best builder on service now, as you can be. You can help out all teams. And then that way, you might start as an admin, but who knows where you're gonna end up after that, if you're helping the customers, you're basically taking on the role of a BA.
If you're helping the developers, you're taking the role of a BA and a developer. If you are helping the architect, you're basically being an admin and a developer. You know what I mean? Like you just you're scaling into everything, then go where you want. But the key here is the more you know, about building on service now.
And yes, I also mean code the better for you.
[00:17:27] CJ: you know, dude, I, I, I, I distilled this down into like, you know, one sentence, uh, worth of advice that I give to folks. Right. And it's everything that you just said. I mean, it just kind of front ends everything you just said, it's basically get away and make yourself useful. Right. You know, so no matter what's going on in the instance, on the team, and no matter who has the responsibility of it, right?
Like get yourself in the. Of whatever's going on. So that you're part of the talk you're part of the process. You're soaking up that knowledge just by being in the room. And then, like you said, duke. Make yourself useful. If you can write ACLS better or good enough for the, for the app and you can, kind of offload that, um, that responsibility from the developer who's doing like more of the deep code stuff do that, make yourself useful in that way. And then you'll notice, especially from a career evolution, perspective and career. You'll start to see yourself taken on more and enhanced, um, job responsibilities, which, like you said, duke again, opens, opens the door to whatever kind of, um, you know, more advanced career and service now that you want to have, whether that's, you know, architecture, development BA so on and so forth, right?
Like all of that stuff, , starts in my opinion from being a good admin. Now you can go about it in different ways. Sure. But I. A good solid framework. Good solid platform. It's an admin makes you more prone to be success
[00:18:49] Duke: I couldn't agree more and it makes me sad that there's so much, it's not, there's not like there's a maligned presence behind this driving this, but it it's sad that, people coming into the ecosystem today have such a pressure cooker of you gotta find a niche.
[00:19:05] CJ: successful later in your career than less right.
[00:19:06] Duke: you haven't spent day one as an admin on an instance, actually doing stuff.
[00:19:11] CJ: Yeah,
[00:19:11] Duke: if it's just, somebody came, came up to me and said, Robert, what kind of plumber do you mean? I'm like, there's options. Like I don't even know what the tools look like.
[00:19:22] CJ: a wrench. How about that?
[00:19:26] Duke: Like you just, and by the way, there are plumbers, wrenches, and they're awesome. But you just, if you looked at one, you wouldn't even know it's a wrench.
[00:19:33] CJ: Right. It does look different, you know,
[00:19:36] Duke: where was I going with this? But it, I don't know where I
[00:19:39] CJ: yeah. Home
[00:19:40] Duke: Oh yeah. The pressure, the pressure cooker of like select a niche, select a niche.
Do you wanna do I, Tom, like why on how on earth are you gonna do? Be a good I Tom person, if you've not like, if you don't understand the rest of the platform,
[00:19:52] CJ: Yeah, no, I'm, I'm gonna stop you even there, duke and interject my own. Ran here. You can't do item unless you got a background in it. so there's gonna be some exceptions there, but it O is literally the, me the merging of service now with the it portion of your enterprise, right?
Like, so knowing how. knowing the existence of different types of it, infrastructure, number one, knowing how you access those things in the levels of security and how kind of that auth authentication happens, especially around like ServiceNow discovery is, definitely a mandatory and don't even get me started on what you need to know in order to kind of make service mapping work.
And again, this all requires general. it knowledge, and I'd probably say a little bit more, a little bit more knowledge than you'd acquire on the service on a it help desk. Right? This is probably like level two. It kind of knowledge that you'll need to have before you even start considering, you know, item.
So if you don't have that. You're new to service. Now drop that right now. Like just drop it in the bucket, boo, and find something else you know, and that's not to say you can't come back for it, but it's way too much to try to learn generalized it, knowledge and generalized service now knowledge at the same time, and then try to figure out how they work together.
Ran off
[00:21:04] Duke: Like that's a great tangent to do, cuz I, I find that there's a huge misunderstanding on I Tom, as well. there's a population of people who are looking at the, the old part in I Tom, and have a completely different idea of operations.
[00:21:16] CJ: Yeah,
[00:21:17] Duke: They're looking at it as like human operations.
What are the people doing? And it's like, no, if you don't understand protocols and
[00:21:27] CJ: power shell.
[00:21:28] Duke: I don't, I wouldn't even touch I Tom, with a 10 foot pole. Like I'm not good at that. I didn't come up that way. I didn't manage those things. but shoot Manny. We were talking about data admin earlier. there's your master data, administrators, your it people like just getting discovery to, to figure out the right things to discover
[00:21:46] CJ: No, you're absolutely right. I mean, so they're gonna own all of that stuff. Right. And, you know, and assuming that it's, like you said, with the automation component of it and that's being done, then all of that's going to filter down to the CIS admin. Who's now gonna be the caretaker of those, you know, automations that were created in those integrations.
[00:22:04] Duke: but discovery admin is a job in and of itself.
[00:22:07] CJ: Woo.
[00:22:07] Duke: saying like how technically , demanding it is, nobody just walks off the street and becomes a discovery. I mean, you said you need to have that it systems' background before discovery even starts making sense.
[00:22:20] CJ: Yeah, because you're going to run into, to scenarios where ServiceNow discovery won't natively discover that thing, that you're point at pointing it at. And so how do you communicate that then to your stakeholders on the client side, the customer side, rather, um, in terms of like, Hey, I need somebody to go and.
And figure out, blah, blah, blah, right. And blah, blah, blah, is gonna be something like authentication or firewall or access or lots of different kind of techy, really techy stuff. Right. And if you don't know even how to ask for that, I can guarantee you that the PM's not gonna know how to direct it for you.
[00:22:53] Duke: I hear you.
brother.
[00:22:54] CJ: Yeah, dude, I, I got over 20 years of experience in it. Man. I, I still take, ServiceNow discovery jobs, like very cautiously, because like, they just have a huge potential to go left. especially in scenarios where they don't know you coming. Right. And by they, I mean, security and that that's a tangent for another show though.
man,
[00:23:16] Duke: All right. Do you think we hit this one?
[00:23:19] CJ: I think we, I think we did pretty good on this one. I think we really outlined what, , What folks are looking for, , or what an admin does or should be doing, maybe from our perspective, in terms of, creating the Genesis of a successful ServiceNow career.
[00:23:32] Duke: So for All
you out there who are aiming at ServiceNow admin, go in with, clear eyes and our recommendation to you is that you become the best builder on ServiceNow that you can be. Yes. We also mean code, , Check the description below. There's gonna be tons of links there, for ways you can, ways we can help you with that.
Check out. Our last episode, the work is bullshit episode and the episode before that, which is, uh, what to build when you're building on service now. And those two things combined will at least put you on the right path for building and becoming, the best admin that you can be. Thanks for listening.
And we'll G see you on the next one.
[00:24:10] CJ: right guys. Bye-bye.