ServiceNow-ServiceNow was developed to help businesses automate outdated legacy systems and manual documentation hassles through a single platform for contact. The service management software not only increases visibility over all the organisational processes but also helps to streamline them.
ServiceNow is a ticketing tool that processes and catalogues customer service requests. You can raise requests that deal with incidents, changes, problems, and other services using tools like ServiceNow. ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) has become the industry standard in cloud-based IT service management.
Why test ServiceNow? ServiceNow is a single data model enterprise cloud platform, meaning that each customer gets their own copy – or instance – of ServiceNow in the cloud. These are rarely built in the same way, so each organisation has its own custom ServiceNow instance.
Not only that, but businesses also adapt and evolve across time, and so does their ServiceNow instance. In order to keep up with business demands, instances are continuously changed or upgraded.
It is common knowledge in the software testing world that whenever a change is made to an application, no matter how minimal, this may affect existing functionality. Therefore, every time something is changed in an organisation's instance, its functionality must be tested.
However, it doesn't stop there, as frequent updates from ServiceNow will lead to the same need: more testing to make sure that ServiceNow's update didn't ruin any of your business-critical processes. Twice a year, ServiceNow releases new updates with bug fixes and functional and performance upgrades. Every time there's an update, you should mitigate any possible risk to your own organisation's instance.
In summary, testing is necessary when Developing an instance, Customising an instance, and an update released by ServiceNow.
Validating Various ServiceNow ITSM Modules, The ServiceNow ITSM offers various modules to improve business function.
Validating Incident Management Module In the Incident Management module, to report an issue, the user can contact the support team/ IT Team. The issue can be assigned to multiple users based on the situation. Here, the issue can be either network issues or mobile issues. The user must record the incident details to track it if in case the issue is not resolved by IT Team. The user can create another new incident to work on it or to track it.
In Incident management, issues can be prioritised based on the seriousness of the issue. ServiceNow provides four types of priority levels:
Critical
High
Medium
Low
An incident is assigned a critical priority level if it has a high impact on the timeline. If the impact of the incident is very little, it is then assigned a low-level incident and so on. In the testing incident management module, we create a new incident and process them at each state, step-by-step, starting with assignment group, work in progress, pending state, resolved state, closed and cancelled state. The incident can be recorded until the service is restored and the issue is resolved. Incidents will have various tasks. When the issue is resolved, the incident will be closed.
Validating Problem Management Module This is the process of identifying and fixing issues that results in incidents. We recorded all the problems, and all these problems are managed in the problem management life cycle. In the ServiceNow Problem Management module, we identify the root cause of all the incidents and the problems are resolved accordingly.
For each problem, a group is assigned from the knowledge base, requests changes and assigns the groups through resolution and reporting. If the problem is resolved, the incidents related to the problem are set to an 'On Hold' state, and the state will be closed immediately.
We must identify and log the problem, then create the record manually and make a note of the problem.
Users can log in or update the incidents. It can be generated using email and will have the inbound email to configure and achieve this.
The problem will be resolved, and when the problem is resolved, the incidents will be closed automatically.
Testing is the process where we have to close problems from 'Pending State' after the change request is closed. If the problem is closed, then the state sets the state to 'Resolved'. If all the incidents associated with the problem state are 'On Hold', then it is termed as an 'Awaiting Problem'. Once the problem is identified, the issues are fixed from the problem.
Validating Change Management Module ServiceNow Change management enables users to make changes to any details of a ticket related to the IT environment. In simple words, we can add, delete or modify anything under IT services. While creating an incident, details of a problem are provided based on the current problem, and one is made eligible to create one more problem. The testing of the change management module involves the process of creating the change request and types of changes. We can select the assignment groups and select the impact of the change, like, Large, Moderate and Minor. Once the change request is approved, an email will be triggered to the user. The tester can view all the awaiting approvals items. Change requests are then defined as Standard Change and Emergency Change types.
Standard Change: It is defined by low-risk and low-impact changes for pre-approved.
Emergency Change: It is defined as an unexpected delay to be resolved as early as possible. If it is a major incident, we can consider it a high priority to understand the impact and to handle approvals that can be authorised by the CAB approval group.
Validating Knowledge Management Module ServiceNow Knowledge management is aimed at sharing the information of knowledge bases for employees. Customers can get access to it easily. Users are allowed access to portals that facilitate the functionalities such as: Creating, Reviewing and Approving articles. Knowledge management can have multiple groups and can be assigned to individual managers. Knowledge management has the facility to publish articles so that users can search the relevant information from the knowledge repository can quickly resolve the issues. The knowledge base article Segment has two facilities:
Approval Publish: It enters the Draft state, and it is forwarded to the review, for it is either approved or rejected.
Instant Publish: This article is published immediately and appears on the knowledge base. From this, users can view all the knowledge articles from the knowledge base who are retired.
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PS: Please write back to me if you need assistance, so I can help you with ServiceNow validations.
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