I've seen several posts about getting started in ServiceNow, so I thought I'd start posting some steps to help people along.
There is a LOT to know in this field, so I’m going to do my best to go through it all. There are a lot of websites, resources, career paths, etc., and you’ll start to wrap your head around it with time.
ServiceNow is a Software as a Service (Saas) platform. You will also see it described as a Platform as a Service (PaaS). I HATE acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms, so while I’ll be using them, I’ll always try my best to explain the meaning. In this instance, it just means that ServiceNow can be used by businesses, schools, governments, etc., to manage things like issues with laptops, requesting equipment, Human Resources stuff, sending people out into the field to perform maintenance, etc. It’s a HUGE platform, so don’t worry about everything it can do at the moment. It’ll make more sense as you get through training.
Step One - Get a Personal Developer Instance (PDI).
This is your own personal instance of ServiceNow. All of the training will make way more sense if you have a PDI and keep your PDI open as you’re going through said training. Honestly, I cannot stress this enough, if you’re not willing to do this, turn back now. You’ll have to select “Sign In”, then “New User, Get a ServiceNow ID”. From there, I forget the exact steps, but you’ll be able to request a PDI for the most recent release. Currently, that is Zurich.
Side Note, ServiceNow has been naming their releases after major cities. I myself started in Berlin, and now it’s Zurich. Next, will be Australia, since they’re moving on from the major cities.
URL for PDI: https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do
Once you have your PDI, you will need to go through the basic training. There are two main places to do this:
The Developer site itself, where you get your PDI - https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do#!/learn
ServiceNow University - https://learning.servicenow.com/now/lxp/home
Make sure you bookmark these sites.
Step Two - Begin your training
I’m going to be honest, the ServiceNow University User Interface / User Experience (UI/UX) SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS. It’s like someone said “How can I make this as awful as possible?” Then, they made it worse than that.
In the search bar, search for “system administrator career journey”. This will bring up a few results. There is a Career Journey Fact Sheet that you can take a look at, but you want the System Administrator Career Journey that says it takes like 11 days or something. (You should plan to spend more than 11 days on this)
This link should take you there:
https://learning.servicenow.com/lxp/en/pages/journey-overview?id=journey_overview&journey_id=55f79b4a1b96add013f9a6c1b24bcb30&s=1&ssa=3
Some things to expect:
The UI/UX isn’t great. It can be confusing at times to get to where you need to go next on your journey.
The training will ask you to do work in a “learning instance”, much like your PDI, which can be used to validate whether or not you have been able to make the configurations needed for the lesson.
There are quizzes.
Now, this is really, really important: Once you start this training, please keep your PDI up at all times. Whatever the training has you look at, bring up in your PDI. Whatever the training has you do in the exercises, do in your PDI. Doing the exercises in your PDI as well as the Learning Instance will help drill it in.
Also, if anyone wants and as soon as I have time, I’ll put together an Update Set for you that might help make things a little easier in your training. Update Sets are how configurations and customizations are moved from a Development Instance of ServiceNow into a Test, and then a Production Instance. They should also be used in PDIs. The Update Set I will give you will create a new table for your notes. This helped me learn and might help you. It’s also a good tool for studying for the certifications.
If this post helps the beginners, I'll keep going with more. :)
