ServiceNow Platform Overview (J3)
Summary
TLDRThis video tutorial focuses on the ServiceNow platform, guiding viewers through the fundamentals needed for System Administrator certification. It covers the platform's architecture, applications, workflows, user interfaces, and role-based access controls. The lesson introduces ServiceNow's founder, Fred Luddy, and explains the concept of Application Platform as a Service (APaaS). It also details the platform's multi-instance architecture, security features, and various user interfaces, including the Now Platform UI, mobile apps, and Service Portal. The tutorial is designed to prepare viewers for practical, hands-on experience with ServiceNow, enhancing their journey towards certification.
Takeaways
- 😀 The video series is designed to guide viewers through the process of becoming a certified System Administrator in ServiceNow.
- 📚 Lesson Two focuses on the ServiceNow platform overview, covering architecture, applications, workflows, user interfaces, role-based access, and authentication.
- 🛠 The ServiceNow platform is an Application Platform as a Service (APaaS), combining aspects of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS to provide a comprehensive cloud solution.
- 💡 The platform was founded by Fred Luddy in 2004 with the vision of empowering business people to solve their own problems with intuitive technology.
- 🏢 ServiceNow's architecture is unique due to its multi-instance architecture, which provides separate instances for each customer, enhancing control and customization.
- 🔒 Security is a priority with ServiceNow, offering daily backups, multi-factor authentication, and adherence to third-party security standards.
- 👥 Role-based access in ServiceNow is managed through a system of users, groups, and roles, with roles defined as collections of permissions.
- 📱 Three primary user interfaces are available for interacting with ServiceNow: the Now Platform UI for desktop, mobile apps for various functions, and the Service Portal for customized user experiences.
- 🔑 Authentication in ServiceNow is handled through local database authentication and supports external systems like LDAP, OAuth 2.0, and multi-factor authentication options.
- 📈 The platform is built against a single common database and data models, allowing for a unified approach to business processes across various functions.
- 🚀 The video promises a hands-on approach in upcoming episodes, encouraging viewers to set up their own ServiceNow instance to follow along with practical examples.
Q & A
What is the main goal of the series of videos mentioned in the transcript?
-The main goal of the series is to guide viewers through the process of learning everything they need to know to become certified as a System Administrator in ServiceNow.
What is the focus of the second lesson in the ServiceNow fundamentals learning path?
-The second lesson focuses on the ServiceNow platform overview, covering topics such as platform architecture, applications and workflows, user interface types, role-based access, and authentication.
Who is Fred Luddy and why did he found ServiceNow?
-Fred Luddy is the founder of ServiceNow, who established the company in 2004. He was driven to automate the flow of work throughout a business, frustrated by the inefficiency of IT staff making business people look foolish and ignorant when trying to explain requirements.
What is the significance of Fred Luddy's educational background and net worth in the context of ServiceNow's success?
-Fred Luddy's status as a college dropout and his net worth of 1.3 billion dollars as of 2021 illustrate that formal education is not always a prerequisite for success, and his determination led to the creation of a highly successful company.
What is the meaning of Application Platform as a Service (APaaS) in the context of ServiceNow?
-APaaS refers to ServiceNow's delivery model that combines aspects of Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. It provides infrastructure, a platform for development, and a suite of applications to support business processes, allowing for custom solutions to be built on the platform.
How does ServiceNow's multi-instance architecture differ from other cloud delivery models?
-ServiceNow's multi-instance architecture provides each company with its own separate instance of the application server and database, unlike other models where data from multiple companies might be intermingled within the same database management system instance. This offers more control and customization for each company.
What are the four primary categories of applications that ServiceNow offers?
-ServiceNow categorizes its applications into four primary workflows: IT Workflows, Employee Workflows, Customer Workflows, and Creator Workflows.
How does ServiceNow ensure the security and availability of its platform?
-ServiceNow ensures security through third-party certified technology and provides four weekly full backups and six days of differential backups. It also offers multi-tenancy with domain separation for different groups and ensures availability and redundancy through paired data centers and built-in redundancy at every layer.
What are the three primary user interface types provided by ServiceNow?
-The three primary user interfaces provided by ServiceNow are the Now Platform UI for desktop or laptop use, the ServiceNow Mobile Apps for mobile device functionality, and the Service Portal for a widget-based, customizable interface for specific user groups.
What is the recommended approach for assigning permissions in ServiceNow according to the script?
-The recommended approach is to assign roles to groups rather than to individual users, as this provides more flexibility when changes occur or when personnel move within the organization.
What types of authentication does ServiceNow support for user login?
-ServiceNow supports various authentication methods including local database authentication, external single sign-on, LDAP, OAuth 2.0, digest tokens, and multi-factor authentication.
Outlines
📚 Introduction to ServiceNow Certification Learning Path
This paragraph introduces the video series aimed at guiding viewers through the process of becoming a certified System Administrator in ServiceNow. It continues from the ServiceNow Fundamentals learning path, covering topics such as the ServiceNow platform architecture, applications, workflows, user interfaces, role-based access, and authentication. The presenter, Jeff Tease, encourages viewers to subscribe and utilize the resources provided in the description for a comprehensive learning experience. The importance of the ServiceNow platform overview is emphasized, setting the stage for a detailed exploration of its functionalities and features.
🛠️ ServiceNow Platform Overview and Architecture
The second paragraph delves into the ServiceNow platform, describing it as an Application Platform as a Service (APaaS) delivery model, which is a blend of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). It highlights the platform's unique multi-instance architecture, which provides individual instances for each customer, ensuring data separation and increased control. The paragraph also touches on the platform's robust suite of applications categorized into IT, employee, customer, and creator workflows, emphasizing the platform's comprehensive nature and its ability to support a wide range of business processes.
🔐 ServiceNow's Security, Backups, and Domain Separation
This paragraph discusses the security measures and backup policies of ServiceNow, including daily full backups and differential backups for changes. It underscores the platform's adherence to third-party security certifications. Additionally, the concept of domain separation or multi-tenancy is introduced, allowing for the segregation of applications and administrative tasks into different domains to enhance security and control access based on user roles and permissions.
📱 ServiceNow User Interfaces and Access Methods
The fourth paragraph focuses on the various user interfaces provided by ServiceNow, including the Now Platform UI designed for desktop use, mobile apps tailored for different user needs such as the ServiceNow Agent App, Now Mobile App, and Onboarding App, and the Service Portal for a customized, widget-based user experience. The paragraph also explains the concept of role-based access, detailing the use of users, groups, and roles to manage permissions within the platform.
👤 Role-Based Access and User Authentication in ServiceNow
The final paragraph of the script explains the role-based access control in ServiceNow, advising against assigning permissions directly to users and instead recommending the use of roles assigned to groups for flexibility. It also covers user authentication methods, including local database authentication and support for external authentication mechanisms like SSO, LDAP, OAuth 2.0, and multi-factor authentication. The paragraph concludes with a teaser for the next video, which will provide practical steps for setting up a personal ServiceNow instance for hands-on learning.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡System Administrator
💡ServiceNow
💡Platform Overview
💡Architecture
💡Workflows
💡User Interface
💡Role-Based Access
💡Authentication
💡Multi-Instance Architecture
💡Domain Separation
💡Applications
Highlights
Introduction to Fred Luddy, the founder of ServiceNow, and his motivation to automate work flow for business efficiency.
ServiceNow's inception in 2004 with the goal to empower business people to solve their own problems with intuitive technology.
Fred Luddy's background as a college dropout and his impressive net worth, showcasing the success of ServiceNow.
Explanation of the NOW Platform as an application platform as a service (APaaS) delivery model.
Differentiation between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
ServiceNow's unique approach combining elements of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS into their APaaS model.
The architecture of ServiceNow built on a single common database and data models for all functionalities.
Categorization of ServiceNow applications into IT workflows, employee workflows, customer workflows, and creator workflows.
Quantification of the number of application modules within each of the four primary workflow categories.
Subdivision of applications into sub-workflows for more specific business process support.
ServiceNow's multi-instance architecture providing separate instances for each customer's data.
Redundancy and failover mechanisms in ServiceNow's data centers for high availability.
Backup and security measures including weekly full backups and differential backups.
Domain separation or multi-tenancy feature in ServiceNow for secure and scoped application access.
ServiceNow's three primary user interfaces: NOW Platform UI, Mobile Apps, and Service Portal.
Role-based access control in ServiceNow using users, groups, and roles for permissions management.
Recommendation against assigning permissions directly to users, instead using roles and groups for flexibility.
Overview of user authentication methods supported by ServiceNow, including local database authentication and external options.
Upcoming hands-on videos providing step-by-step instructions for setting up a personal ServiceNow instance.
Transcripts
in this series of videos we're working
through the process of learning all you
need to know to become certified as a
system administrator in servicenow
this episode picks up where we left off
in the servicenow fundamentals learning
path by covering lesson two the
servicenow platform overview topics
included in this video will be the now
platform architecture
applications and workflows
user interface types and role-based
access and authentication
at the end of this video we'll introduce
to you how you can get your very own
servicenow instance fully functional
that you can use to follow along and
test out everything we're learning in
this series of videos on a journey to
servicenow certification
hey it's jeff tease here from servicenow
simple.com where we help you understand
the ins and outs of servicenow keeping
it simple
all the way if you've been here before
welcome back hopefully you're a
subscriber if you're new here please hit
that subscribe button and know that you
can look in the description box below
for links to any of the resources we
mentioned in the course of this video
now let's get simple with the servicenow
platform overview
welcome to lesson two the servicenow
fundamentals learning path uh the title
of this lesson is servicenow platform
overview
uh the topics that they covered in this
lesson included the now platform
architecture the applications and
workflows
user interfaces and role-based access
and authentication let's talk about what
the highlights and what i think is
important to know from this
lesson
the course starts out by introducing us
to fred luddy
fred is the founder of servicenow he
founded servicenow in 2004 and the
marketing lingo is to automate the flow
of work throughout a business
interestingly
i i watched a couple of videos where
fred was being interviewed and and he
said it best i think
when he explained that the real reason
he
began this whole initiative in the
servicenow corporation was that it
infuriated him when he saw it staff
members
making business people look foolish and
ignorant
um trying to explain requirements and it
just drove him nuts so he came up with
the
great idea that how awesome would it be
if the business people themselves the
people that understand the business
could actually solve their own business
problems with technology that was
straightforward and intuitive
and built simply and easily to use so
rather than having to explain
all of the business problems to it
staffers
and then re-explain it you've seen it
before
those folks are often more interested in
the technology than they are actually
solving the business problem in the
first place fred identified that and
said i want to build a suite of software
that would allow the business people to
solve their own problems a great idea
um
interestingly fred fred was a college
dropout
so there's that um it's worked out well
for him though fred is as of 11 22 2021
from some googling and research that
i've done you know how accurate some of
that information is but i thought it was
interesting to share that
he's got a network net worth now of a
1.3 billion dollars so servicenow
um has grown and was a great idea not
sure there's anything there that that
you'd need to know
related to a certification exam but i
thought it was interesting that they at
least introduced us to fred seems like a
really interesting guy
now let's talk about the now platform
itself this is where i think we begin to
get into the actual meet of the content
some things that we're going to need to
know
the now platform is described by
servicenow as an application platform as
a service or
apaas delivery model
that was a new term to me i've done some
research on cloud delivery platforms in
the past things like microsoft azure
amazon web services
normally when you're talking about cloud
delivery models you get three flavors
the first being infrastructure as a
service
in in a scenario like that it would be
like you're leasing out a data center
uh and they're providing all of the
infrastructure so all of the hardware
compute resources you can think of it
that way they they
they supply the hardware the disk drives
the fans the racks the building the
power
and they guarantee to keep it up for you
but from there you're responsible for
using it however you'd like you need to
install the operating systems you need
to install the software that you need
you need to manage all the patches and
upgrades to the software and things like
that
that would be an example of
infrastructure as a service very common
uh delivery model
the second of the normal or common
delivery models is a platform as a
service
in that scenario they take their their
services a step farther so they do
provide all the infrastructure so
everything with infrastructure as a
service is provided
in addition they also take care of
managing all of the software that you
need so
they will take care of the operating
systems all the patches and upgrades
related they will also take care of the
software you would need to deliver your
solutions or build your own solution so
databases for example
application servers web servers all the
things like that they take care of and
your responsibility really is
building the applications that you need
uh on their platform
to get the work done that your business
requires so
that would be platform as a service
and then the third delivery model is is
called software as a service and in that
situation or scenario they take their
they take the services up even further
and they say okay we'll provide the arc
the infrastructure
we'll provide the platform we're also
going to provide
the tools and the applications that you
need to to get your work done so gmail
google mail would be or some of the
google doc doc
[Music]
applications would be an example all you
really have to do
is log in and start working so that is
software as a service
what servicenow has done is they've sort
of combined it combined and molded the
three of those together into what
they're calling application platform as
a service so
they do provide all the infrastructure
it's cloud-based
they provide the infrastruct
infrastructure and compute resources and
they maintain it and they ensure that it
stays up
they also provide the platform as in
platform as a service that you would
need to do any development that you
needed
to build solutions for your company
further
they provide a robust set of
applications and workflows that allow
you right out of the box to get your
work done and support most of the common
business processes
all of it combined and you can still
develop your own solutions
on the servicenow platform so that's
what they mean by application platform
as a service i would
i would recommend that you know that
term that's probably going to be a
question
on a certification exam so just know
it's cloud-based they provide the
infrastructure they provide the platform
they also provide
a great suite of applications that you
can use out of the box to get your work
done
the other interesting and important
thing to know is that um
the entirety of uh the
the servicenow platform
is built against a single common
database and data models so servicenow
is not built specifically for a single
function within your company so it's not
like it's it's got a it's a staffing
application or it's a sales application
it's the whole thing it's trying to
replace your i.t department
with a cloud-based software solution and
the cool thing is is that across that
entirety of the breadth of the that
functionality
everything resides within a single
database and data model
so
pretty neat stuff there are some things
i think that
that you'll need to know now let's talk
about
those applications and workflows that
come with servicenow
comes with a robust suite of
applications and they categorize
their uh application offerings
functionally into four
uh different categories and they call
them workflows
and those categories are it workflows
employee workflows customer workflows
and creator workflows i would recommend
that you know those four
categories of applications
you can see here on the slide i've
listed the number of applications in the
current release that exists within each
of those categories so i t workflows
there are 79 different application
modules within servicenow that support
that function
employee workflows have 43 applications
customer workflows have 93 applications
and creator workflows have 23
applications naturally we're not going
to learn and memorize every single one
of those applications but i do think
it'd be a good idea to know those four
high-level categories or workflows that
they divide their applications into
further drilling down a little further
on their application offerings within
each of those four top level categories
they divide and subdivide their
applications into
sort of like sub workflows so you can
see here for example in the it workflows
application area
they have it service management i t
operations management i t business
management i.t asset management devops
security operations
governance risk and compliance and
telecommunication network performance
management i'm not going to go through
all of these you'll have access to the
slides i will link to those in the
comment in the um
description box uh below the video
but you can see here how they subdivide
the four top level uh categories into
the further lower level categories and
then you can see uh in parentheses there
i've included the number of applications
that uh that reside within each of those
subcategories again
i don't believe
we need to memorize every single one of
those subcategories but i just wanted to
present them here just to get your
eyeballs on them just in case there was
a question uh
related to one of those so the big thing
is the four
primary workflows
in the way they divide their
applications
now let's talk about the the
architecture itself
when you purchase an instance of
servicenow servicenow takes on the
responsibility
of managing and supporting the it
infrastructure and the compute
environment
so we've talked about that
enterprise cloud um one thing that makes
it a little different from other cloud
delivery models is this thing that they
call multi-instance architecture
probably something we should know
normally when you sign up for a cloud
delivery platform say microsoft azure
for example
your database
uh the data that resides in that uh in
that platform for your company is often
intermingled with data from um
other companies so there's a large
database out there somewhere
and they've got it broken down
into the different companies that
they're serving
um
but they're all running on the same uh
database management system instance for
example what that means
is that when servicenow needs to make an
upgrade or make a change or
take down an instance for for example
for for a patch or something
um
you're intermingled with a whole lot of
other companies so you have way less
control there
what servicenow has done
is what they call multi-instance
architecture in the in this scenario you
have your own instance of everything so
your data's not intermingled and
dependent upon a database that other
companies are using you have your own
from the application server down to the
database much more control there you can
then work specifically with servicenow
when it comes time
to to have upgrades or patches run
schedule a little more specifically to
your liking so
multi-instance architecture
availability and redundancy that comes
along with uh the servicenow instance um
each of the data centers that servicenow
has in their their global
um each in each data center is paired
with an additional data center
um to provide redundancy and failover
and and this is something i think we
need to know too is redundant redundancy
is built
into every layer and that includes the
devices the compute devices themselves
the power
and the network resources so
that's availability and redundancy
let's talk about backups and security uh
servicenow when you when you purchase an
instance they provide you with four
weekly daily full backups so four full
backups each week of your data
then they also include six days of
differential
or uh changed
uh backups
the entire platform is secured
um using technology that has been um
certified by third-party security
organizations so that's kind of what
they're offering for backups and
security
and then finally on the infrastructure
stuff domain separation or multi-tenancy
servicenow provides
the ability to separate
your applications
and administrative tasks into different
uh groups that they call domains so for
example you could have like
a staffing domain where only the
staffing people could have access to see
the data that was there
you could have a marketing domain so
you can build your applications in
scopes or domains
that would allow you then to a little
more tightly control
uh the security around a specific area
so that's the domain separation
they it also comes with a global domain
which is kind of across the board
everybody has access
to the global domain as long as they've
got the appropriate permissions so
that's domain separation
next thing they talk about in this
lesson
is the three primary user interface
types so now that we have this great
platform that we've learned about how do
we get access to it or how do users get
to it
from a user interface perspective
servicenow provides three
primary methods of doing that the first
and the one that we're going to spend
most of our time in and the one that
frankly most people spend most of their
time in
is the now platform ui
it's best to use on a desktop or laptop
computer so this is like a web-based
application that you'll open up
in your browser using your the the
instance to your or the url to your
instance so that's the primary uh
user interface that people use
in addition servicenow provides a
service now mobile apps they provide
three mobile applications
each targeted at a different function
you can go and you can install those
from
your devices app store for example i
have an iphone and i've installed these
from the apple uh apple store
just go in and search for servicenow and
you'll see those listed there you can
install those and test those out
uh the three that servicenow provides
are the servicenow agent app which
targets uh fulfilling requests so
requests from customers request from
other employees
it's targeted fulfilling those requests
the now mobile app which is built for
the needs of employees so employee type
functionality you can you can get to in
the mob in the now mobile application
and then the servicenow onboarding app
uh is a mobile app that's targeted at
fulfilling the needs of new hires
so
and then finally the third method that
servicenow provides to access the
platform
is the service portal uh the service
portal also web-based like the now
platform ui
um
it's kind of more user-friendly widget
based
environment that you can set up just to
kind of customize and pretty up
um the interface for
some specific group of users so that's
the third it comes with a specific url
that you'll that you'll be able to use
so you can kind of build your own
nicely formatted
user interface for a specific audience
using widgets that's the service portal
so i think those are three things that
we probably need to know
the now platform ui the mobile apps and
the service portal are the three
primary user interfaces that come along
with
servicenow
role-based access
uh next topic covered in this lesson
as you're aware not every member of an
organization needs access to everything
so
applications need to be able to
determine who's logged in and what do
they have access to
servicenow is built in infrastructure
around that
where they primarily use three entities
um and these are pretty common uh but i
wanted to mention them there's the user
there's the group
and there's the role those are the three
things i think we need to remember
about role-based access a user is what
you often think of as a user it's a
person who has
access to
the instance
users are usually assigned to groups you
don't have to be but normally users are
assigned to a group it's possible to
have a user of your instance that is not
assigned to a group and that has
absolutely no
permissions
they call those self-service users so
they can still log in and they can get
to some very very basic functions like
the home page and reading
articles and knowledge base
articles and things like that but for
the most part
users have a login and a password
and they're normally assigned to groups
and then eventually we'll get to where
they have permissions
a group
is a set of users normally a set of
users that have some common function and
that need access to common tools
um
so
the group the user the group and then
finally a role and this is where it gets
a little bit different than what you
would think of normally when you think
of a role it is kind of your position or
what you do in the company that's still
kind of the case in service now
but the the official definition of a
role in servicenow is it's a collection
of permissions so
um think of a role as a group of
permissions rather than what you do it's
what the system will allow you to do
a role is often assigned to an
individual user so a user can be
assigned a role in which case they will
get all of the permissions they're
included within that
role a role can also be assigned to a
group so
if a user is a member of a group
and a role has been assigned to that
group then the user will have access to
all of the permissions that exist within
the role that's been assigned to the
group
interestingly a role can also be
assigned to another role
so you could have a a larger sort of
parent role
that
is made up with sub-roles
each of which have their own permissions
in which case users that are a member of
that group would have access to all of
the permissions
that exist
across all of the roles that were
assigned either to that parent role or
to that group
one thing to mention this may be asked
about
on a certification exam
is they don't recommend
that you
assign permissions directly to a user
you can you can go in and you can assign
a permission specifically to user
bypassing the the role
but normally it's best to assign roles
to a group
rather than to an individual user it
gives you more flexibility
when things change or when people move
around
so
that's what was covered in the lesson
related to role-based access
now let's talk about user authentication
uh this happens when you log in you have
to have a username and a password
this is the first level of security that
servicenow provides
uh to any user they log in and they have
to authenticate
first at which point when they're
authenticated it will then go on and
start to look at roles and permissions
that would allow you to get to certain
parts of the application
servicenow out of the box comes with a
local database authentication that they
use to manage
user authentication
but i think it's important to mention
that they also support
other types of authorization or
authentication
like i said they they have the local
database authentication they also
support external single sign-on
ldap
oauth 2.0
digest tokens and multi-factor
authentication so it is possible to plug
in
one of those different authentication
types into your instance
i don't know the ins and outs of each of
those maybe you do i don't think i'm
going to spend a great deal of time
studying the ins and outs of each of
those but i do think it's important to
understand that from an authentication
perspective there are various options
and these are the primary options that
are offered by servicenow
that's it for what was important from
lesson two the servicenow fundamentals
learning path i apologize for the slide
heavy presentation style i don't
normally like to use slides
but this content for this first couple
of lessons was high level enough that
doing a hands-on demonstration
was nearly impossible that is about to
change however
in our next video we're going to take a
brief break from the fundamentals
learning path and we're going to provide
you step-by-step instructions of how you
can get and set up your very own
instance of service now the videos going
forward will will be very hands-on
working within the application and
you'll be able to use that instance to
follow along and test out everything
that we're learning you don't want to
miss any of these videos so if you
haven't already hit the subscribe button
and you will then get notifications as
videos are added to the channel as
always we'd love your feedback put them
in the comments
and you can look in the description box
for links to any of the resources we
used in this video we'll see in the next
video
[Music]
Weitere ähnliche Videos ansehen
What is ServiceNow?
ServiceNow Branding Overview (J6)
What is .NET MAUI? [1 of 8] | .NET MAUI for Beginners
L'APP DI IA CHE TI FA FARE IL TRIPLO DELLE COSE NELLA META' DEL TEMPO! [Writener tutorial completo]
Glide Apps Tutorial for Beginners | How to Use glideapps.com (2024)
ServiceNow Access Control List (ACL)
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)