How to simplify ServiceNow Configurable Workspaces delivery

What is ServiceNow Workspaces?  

Workspaces is a feature that provides ServiceNow users with a personalised and configurable view of their work. It consolidates the tasks, reports, and tools that users need to do their jobs into a single, unified interface. Workspaces can be built for specific roles, teams, or processes, and can be customised to include different components and layouts. 

Knowing all too well the struggles that his customers faced before migrating to Workspaces, Tony Fugere from Thirdera explained that, “a client was frustrated about their disjointed user experience from bouncing around different ServiceNow systems. Now they are developing a unified workspace experience, to consolidate their systems onto one view and make life easier.” 

How workspaces can help you  

Workspaces has been designed with the end-user in mind, it is agent-centred and built on a mindset that prioritises supporting users to perform at the highest standard and maximise outcomes.  

Customised Workspaces tailored to specific roles and tasks enhance productivity and team efficiency. By consolidating data from multiple sources, users avoid the hassle of switching between tabs, saving valuable time. The dynamic presentation of information not only delivers a more engaging experience but also simplifies access to context-driven resources, allowing users to focus on more business-critical tasks. 

One of the greatest benefits of Workspaces is that it can help to reduce resource overhead. Seamus Scullion, AutomatePro’s Sales Engineer, explored how Workspaces can empower organisations to “unlock newer technology within ServiceNow, such as Generative AI and chatbots”. Helping users not only stay ahead of the curve but do more with less, resulting in a welcome reduction of resources. 

The challenges of configurable Workspaces  

The widespread interest in configurable workspaces is evident, with over half of the webinar attendees either already utilising them or in transition to Workspaces. While we encourage ServiceNow teams to embrace this new technology, it’s crucial to first establish your testing strategy and outline how ongoing maintenance will be handled. Without effective management, maintaining workspaces can become overwhelming, potentially overshadowing its benefits and leading to costly upgrade defects. According to Seamus Scullion, “Particularly for heavily customised workspaces; thorough testing is essential before upgrading to Washington.” 

Below are the main challenges you need to keep top of mind: 

Technical expertise needed - Although Workspaces deliver best-in-class capabilities, the journey to create a new user experience is complex, requiring technical expertise, which sometimes comes at a high cost.  

Testing can be complex - Unlike ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box instances, which are easy to test because they reflect the baseline installation, customisations made to the UI throw a spanner in the works. New customised components create Shadow DOMs in the system, which are difficult to identify and can result in automated testing limitations and defects.  

Limited documentation - A new user experience calls for a comprehensive documentation process to onboard users onto the new UI. However, creating user guides and training documents is time-consuming, costly and tends to fall by the wayside. 

How AutomatePro can help:

Developing, testing and deploying ServiceNow Workspaces can be seamless. Here are the key benefits of ServiceNow workspaces and how AutomatePro can help you achieve them:  

Accelerate the DevOps lifecycle – developers can save significant amounts of time and effort writing code for new customisations and checking for defects using AutomatePro’s low-code, no-code Actions and Checks library.  

Manage testing – easily schedule, execute and manage test runs and nightly regression results across all instances on one centralised repository using AutomatePro’s Control Console. 

Reduce overhead – expedite the testing process, increase test coverage and maintain accuracy with minimal user input using Quick Start AI. 

Achieve end-to-end test coverage – Simplify the user-accepted testing (UAT) process and automatically identify defects with a step-by-step playback of your test execution using AutomatePro’s Test Run Viewer. 

Automate documentation – improve end user support and knowledge sharing by automatically generating and updating user guides and test reports with our AutoDoc module. 

Are you ready to roll out Workspaces to your organisation? Contact us today to learn how AutomatePro’s suite of Test Automation, DevOps and Documentation tools can help you simplify your Workspaces delivery.