Take your operations to the next level with automation

Automation is everywhere. From smart home appliances to customer service bots and even self-driving cars. It’s also the key to ensuring the ServiceNow platform performs at its best.

If you’ve found yourself asking: ‘How can I spend less time on managing the ServiceNow environment and more time on developing new features and making sure it’s stable?’ Then, let me introduce the answer you’ve been looking for - the Ops Automation app.

The app provides a clear view of what’s going on in all of your environments and facilitates an integrated way of working between development and operation, speeding things up in the process.

That might sound too good to be true, particularly for those suffering from long hours spent managing the ServiceNow environment and those dealing with lengthy release cycles. So, don’t just take my word for it. Let’s get into the details of the app’s capabilities so you can start reaping the benefits of Ops Automation - fast.

1. Monitor

Monitoring is the core functionality of the app and this capability is vast and flexible. Ops Automation can monitor and collect data from any of ServiceNow environment. It can even collect data from instance A via B and move it to instance C. Whether it’s performance, security or usage you want to monitor, no problem. The app can monitor any kind of data that’s available.

As part of the monitoring functionalities, the app makes use of controls. You can define your controls or make use of the out-of-the-box controls available. Based on these controls you can set thresholds, so if something reaches a specific value the application will orchestrate an action and notifies you.

Data collected also covers historical data. If the data is already in the system and you want to conduct a trend analysis, you can do so with the click of a few buttons. This is especially useful for root cause analysis or analysing performance issues in some modules - helping you spot what may have gone wrong.

Historical data collection can also be leveraged in threshold setting. If you’re not sure what to set your threshold as, and you certainly don’t want to be spammed by loads of emails, go back to past data to help make the definition and decision.

2. Action

Ops Automation’s actions include notifications or emails - generated through the creation of a ticket and sent out automatically. The app enables you to play around with orchestration. Based on the threshold you have set, you can write your own script and with that you can integrate with any other functionality in ServiceNow. You can also make use of data sync and keep different environments in sync automatically.

Documentation plays a key part in taking action, especially when you want to manage your ServiceNow landscape seamlessly. Let’s say a MID server goes down and you have an expert in your team who knows how to restart it. You can also ask your expert to write a Knowledge Article and then set a threshold. So, if one of the servers goes down again, you’ll be notified and then receive a Knowledge Article on how to restart it again. Saving you from pulling in an expert the next time around.

3. Insights

Analytics and insights are fully automated by the Ops Automation app, both everyday and those that are more detailed and sophisticated. Through the intuitive and user-friendly dashboard, you can access quick insights (such as cause-effects).

Additionally, based on your controls, the app shows you automated trend analysis and can correlate activities. It can even correlate ticket creation within your reports. With all this data in one place, it’s easy to access and pull out relevant insights as and when you need them.

Move from managing to developing

These automated functionalities take a huge burden of manual labour off your hands across daily operations and analytics. The app makes managing the ServiceNow platform seamless as you’re notified of issues immediately and incidents in production are therefore reduced dramatically.

Via our detailed diagnostics, you can get an overview of what kind of releases are happening. Tailor this by configuring yourself what kind of release information you’d like to see.

Ultimately, the application makes it possible to move to a level of maturity where you can let your development teams move to production and deploy quickly and effectively, whilst monitoring alongside.

Ops Automation in action

The instances where Ops Automation can be leveraged are numerous. From business processes such as ITFM - where the app can give you a clear overview of costs and budgets per day. To configurations, such as being notified about stuck schedules, or integrating with scoped applications. As well as shortening development feedback loops and using the overall landscape overview in your go/no-go sessions, turning your gut feeling in measurements or automatically applying known workarounds.

Frankly, the sky’s the limit for this data-driven low-code no-code solution.

Find out what Ops Automation can do for you by requesting a demo. A consultant will be on hand to walk you through the app and answer any questions you might have. Register for your free demo here.