Universal Request for HR Service Delivery

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Universal Request for HR Service Delivery

    The integration of HR Service Delivery with Universal Request applications enables ServiceNow customers to offer employees a seamless and consistent experience when creating service requests. This integration simplifies inter-departmental request handling by providing a common help desk for all employees, hiding complex multi-department workflows.

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    A universal request is initiated when an employee selects the Request help option in Employee Center. A routing agent identifies HR-related issues and creates an HR case linked to the universal request. The lifecycle of these requests and cases is synchronized, ensuring employees receive transparent updates until resolution acceptance and closure. HR agents can transfer cases back to the universal request queue at any time, with all activities and notes recorded for full visibility.

    Key Features

    • Plugin Activation: Essential plugins include Universal Request, Human Resources Scoped App: Core, and Employee Center. Activating these enables form actions like creating HR cases from universal requests and transfer capabilities.
    • Seamless Case and Request Linkage: HR cases created from universal requests show the related universal request field, and vice versa, ensuring traceability.
    • Transfer and Collaboration: HR agents can transfer HR cases back to Universal Request or other departments/services, supporting multi-department collaboration.
    • Automatic Universal Request Creation: Record producers can be configured to create universal requests automatically when creating HR cases, including during Virtual Agent conversations.
    • Notifications: Employees receive notifications on HR case state changes using the universal request number for easier tracking.
    • Unified Ticket Experience: HR cases, regardless of creation channel, can be linked to universal requests, enabling consolidated tracking and management.
    • Multi-Department Ticket Association: From a primary HR case linked to a universal request, tickets for other departments can be created and associated, facilitating parallel work and centralized reporting.

    Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

    • Provide employees with a simplified, unified help desk experience for HR-related requests, avoiding confusion caused by inter-departmental transfers.
    • Enable HR agents to efficiently manage, investigate, resolve, and transfer cases while maintaining transparency and traceability for both agents and employees.
    • Leverage automatic creation and linkage of universal requests to HR cases to streamline case management, including Virtual Agent interactions.
    • Enhance collaboration across departments by associating multiple related tickets under a single universal request, improving visibility of efforts and outcomes.
    • Configure and customize state mappings and transfer behaviors only if custom HR states are introduced, as base configurations support standard workflows.

    With the integration of HR Service Delivery and Universal Request applications, you can provide a consistent user experience for employees while creating service requests. You can hide the complexities of inter-department request transfers and multi-department use cases by providing a common help desk for all employees.

    About Universal Request for HR Service Delivery

    A universal request gets created when an employee clicks the Request help option in Employee Center. A universal request routing agent analyses the issue (as HR department related) and creates an HR case from that universal request. After the case gets resolved by an HR agent, the state of the HR case changes to Awaiting Acceptance. Automatically, the state of the universal request changes to Awaiting response. Finally, after the employee accepts the resolution, the universal request gets closed and in turn the HR case gets closed.

    At any point in time, the HR agent can transfer the HR case back to the universal request queue with or without resolution.

    All the important details, such as, users who are working on the issue, inter-department transfers, and work notes, are recorded in the universal request ticket, providing complete visibility to the employee who has raised the request.

    Activating the necessary plugins

    After you have activated the Universal Request (com.snc.universal_request), Human Resources Scoped App: Core (com.sn_hr_core), and Employee Center (com.sn_hr_service_portal) plugins, you notice that:
    • The Universal Request form contains a UI action to create an HR case.
    • The Universal Request field appears on the HR case form when an HR case is associated with a universal request record.
    • The Transfer button appears on the HR case form to let an HR agent transfer an HR case back to Universal Request, another department, or service.
    • An HR case created from a record producer automatically creates a universal request. It happens only when the Create Universal Request check box is enabled on the record producer.

      Similarly in the Create a test case topic block, if the Create Universal Requestcheck box is enabled on the record producer, then a universal request ticket is created and shared with the employee on the Virtual Agent conversation.

    • When an HR case associated to a universal request goes through a state change, a notification is sent to the employee (requester) with the universal request number and not the HR case number.
    • On ServiceNow AI Platform, HR cases that are associated with Universal Request appear under HR Case Management > All.
    • On Employee Center, HR requests that are associated with Universal Request appear under Employee Center > Requests.