Exploring Service Operations Workspace for ITSM

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Service Operations Workspace for ITSM

    Service Operations Workspace (SOW) for ITSM is a configurable, unified workspace designed to streamline the management of IT Service Management workflows, including incidents, requests, and walk-ups. It provides agents and administrators with a seamless interface to efficiently handle task records, prioritize work, and collaborate across teams within the ServiceNow platform.

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    User Roles and Access

    • Tier 1 agents: Focus on interactions, incidents, and requests; access tailored landing pages to prioritize work and manage performance tasks.
    • Tier 2 agents: Manage incidents, requests, changes, problems, and major incidents with advanced capabilities.
    • Administrators: Responsible for implementing, configuring, and setting up SOW for ITSM using guided setup tools.

    Key Features

    • Tailored landing pages: Provide quick visibility into assignments, outages, announcements, and performance metrics for agents.
    • Incident Management: Agents can efficiently manage incidents using contextual data, similar incidents, knowledge articles, and actionable recommendations.
    • Recommended Actions: Accelerate issue resolution by applying real-time, actionable guidance across various ITSM records.
    • On-Call Scheduling: Manage support team availability with schedules, rotations, escalation policies, and notifications to ensure timely issue resolution.
    • Collaboration: Integrated Microsoft Teams chat enables direct communication between agents, requesters, and peers from within tasks.
    • Request and Walk-Up Management: Agents can handle requests from creation to closure and manage walk-up interactions, appointments, stockrooms, and kiosks.
    • Guided Tours and Setup: Interactive guided tours assist agents in learning workflows, while administrators benefit from a step-by-step guided setup to configure the workspace.
    • Integration with Service Operations Workspace for ITOM: Enables a unified experience for IT service and operations management on a single platform, improving automation and optimization.

    Agent Workflow Highlights

    Agents begin their day by reviewing a prioritized overview of tasks, outages, and announcements. They can create and resolve incidents faster using related records and recommendations, collaborate with experts through on-call schedules, communicate via Microsoft Teams, and initiate change requests as needed—all within the workspace.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enhanced agent productivity with a centralized, intuitive interface tailored to different roles.
    • Improved incident resolution times through contextual insights, knowledge sharing, and recommended actions.
    • Better collaboration and communication directly within tasks, reducing delays and misunderstandings.
    • Streamlined administration and deployment via guided setup, ensuring quick and consistent configuration.
    • Unified IT service and operations management, supporting broader organizational workflows and automation goals.

    You can have a unified and seamless experience when managing the life cycle of task records such as incidents, requests, and walk-ups in IT Service Management workflows using Service Operations Workspace (SOW) for ITSM.

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM overview

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM is a configurable workspace that provides a unified experience for multiple IT Service Management and IT Operations Management workflows. Configure your agent experience using the easy-to-navigate interface of Service Operations Workspace for ITSM.

    Accessing Service Operations Workspace for ITSM

    For information about accessing Service Operations Workspace for ITSM, see Access Service Operations Workspace for ITSM.

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM users

    User Description
    Tier 1 agent User who has the itil or sn_sow.sow_home role and belongs to a service desk group.
    Primarily focused on the life cycle of the following records:
    • Interaction
    • Incident
    • Request
    Tier 2 agent User with the itil role.
    Primarily focused on the life cycle of the following records:
    • Incident
    • Request
    • Change
    • Problem
    • Major incident
    Administrator User who implements and sets up Service Operations Workspace for ITSM.

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Tailored landing page for tier 1 and tier 2 agents. It provides an overview of outages, service announcements, and assignments to efficiently prioritize the work. Tier 1 agents can view and manage their performance and learning tasks assigned by their manager.  Service Operations Workspace for ITSM landing page Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Agents can manage incidents effectively with contextual information and targeted actions. Streamline investigations and accelerate incident resolution with the metrics data collected from Agent Client Collector (ACC). Incident Management in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Agents can use information from similar incidents and knowledge articles to accelerate incident resolution. Recommended Actions for ITSM in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Agents can reach out to experts on-call for high-priority tasks.  On-Call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Agents can collaborate with the requester and peers from the task using Microsoft Teams chat.  ServiceNow integrations with Microsoft Teams in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
     Agents can create requests from incidents and interactions. Agents can also manage the entire life cycle of requests.  Request Management in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Agents and administrators can review and manage walk-up interactions, appointments, stockrooms, and kiosks at the walk-up service location.   Walk-up Experience management in Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    All logged-in users can view key features to get started with Service Operations Workspace for ITSM. Service Operations Workspace for ITSM landing page Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents
    Administrators can have a guided experience for initial configuration of Service Operations Workspace for ITSM. Using guided setup Administrator
    Agents can have a unified experience for services and operations on a single platform by integrating with Service Operations Workspace for ITOM. Automating and optimizing your services and operations using Service Operations Workspace Tier 1 agent, Tier 2 agent, and IT operator

    For information about key features in Service Operations Workspace for ITOM, see Exploring Service Operations Workspace for ITOM.

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM workflow for an agent

    SOW workflow

    • An agent can start the day by looking at an overview of assignments, outages, service announcements, and assignments in Service Operations Workspace to prioritize work based on service level agreements (SLAs), priority level, and urgency​.
    • The agent can create an incident based on the issue reported. Since the agent has access to related incidents and recent interactions, better and faster support can be provided. Agent also has access to all related information from the incident record page.
    • The agent can resolve the incident faster by using tailored recommendations.
    • The agent can reach out to experts on-call for high-priority tasks.​
    • The agent can collaborate easily with the requester and peers right from the task.
    • The agent can create a change request to fix the issue.

    Using guided tours to learn about Service Operations Workspace for ITSM

    Use a guided tour that is sequence of interactive steps to guide an agent through a specific process or task within Service Operations Workspace for ITSM. To access guided tours, select the Show help icon in the navigation bar and scroll down to find the Take a Tour or Select a Tour option. For more information about playing a guided tour, see Play a guided tour in Service Operations Workspace.

    Important:
    • A guided tour might break if you customize any of its associated UI elements in your instance, so ensure that you update your guided tours as well accordingly. For information on how to update guided tours, see Edit a guided tour.
    • The Take a Tour or Select a Tour option is available only when a guided tour is available for that UI page.

    Using guided setup to implement Service Operations Workspace for ITSM

    Service Operations Workspace for ITSM guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help an administrator configure Service Operations Workspace for ITSM on your ServiceNow instance. To open Service Operations Workspace for ITSM guided setup, navigate to All > Adoption Services > Guided Setup. For more information about using the guided setup interface, see Using guided setup.

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