Maintenance in ServiceNow Is About More than Schedules

As with all other aspects of the ServiceNow platform, maintenance is a highly integrated process that enables administrators to schedule, monitor, and update concurrent changes. Of course, with planned maintenance, ServiceNow administrators must also be capable of communicating with individuals and departments about specific needs that may be affected by changes such as version upgrades.

Issues Associated with Maintenance

During maintenance periods, it’s common for entire aspects of the ServiceNow platform and its applications to be down or have reduced functionality. As just one example, in the case of upgrades and the schedule for maintenance, ServiceNow administrators have sufficient lead-time to push maintenance notifications through the system. Even in these best-case scenarios, there are always departmental concerns with processes that may be affected during the maintenance period.

As a consequence, ServiceNow specialists must have superior problem-solving and communication skills (soft skills) to sufficiently address concerns put forth by the affected departments. That doesn’t necessarily mean the affected department head or manager can change the schedule. The ServiceNow specialist must have the skills and business process judgment to decide on a schedule that proceeds in a fashion that best serves the entire enterprise. The ability to provide explanations that satisfy concerns, even if the affected manager cannot get the desired schedule change they want, goes a long way to keeping the lines of communication open between IT and business users of ServiceNow.

Planning for Updates

Viewing changes through a calendar provides business and IT stakeholders with an easily understood perspective on when changes are planned. They can also readily see how these changes may conflict with each other. This may be especially true within a blackout or maintenance schedule.

The timeline for scheduled maintenance allows the enterprise to better deal with more complex concurrent changes across the environment. The goal of a ServiceNow administrator is to keep the platform infinitely accessible for users while also being a communicative liaison when instances of reduced access or even blackouts may be necessary.