This video explains what Workspace is, shows the user interface, and demonstrates how you
can use it to find, research, and resolve issues.
You can skip to any of these topics from the YouTube description for this video.
A workspace is a graphical user interface that puts on one screen…all the tools an
agent needs to find, research, and resolve issues.
ServiceNow provides different workspaces for different types of issues.
For example, agents use ITSM Workspace to track and resolve IT issues, while those using
CSM Workspace resolve external customer cases.
Workspaces can be customized by system administrators, so your workspace may not look the same as
what’s shown here.
But the purpose and most functions will be the same.
Here we’re logged in as Beth Anglin, who uses the IT Service Management workspace to
resolve IT incidents.
The itil role is required to perform the tasks shown here.
The workspace landing page opens in a new browser tab.
It provides an overview of incident-related information in the system, such as cr¬itical
performance problems… …as well as links to issues already assigned
to the logged-in user.
By clicking one of the IT categories, such as Open P1 Incidents, we can select an issue
to work on.
Another way to find issues to work on is by opening the list view…
…which shows multiple lists of issues, such as—under Incidents—Assigned to me, Open,
Resolved, and All.
Each row in the list is an incident record.
When we click a record number, the incident record opens in a new tab.
The view on this tab is called the record view, because everything displayed is related
to the selected incident.
The information in record view helps us understand and resolve the issue.
At the top of the page, the short description summarizes the issue.
At a glance, additional information—including the issue’s Priority, State, and Category—provide
context about the incident, such as its urgency.
And below that is the ribbon, which in our case is configured to show Customer 360 and
Active SLA widgets.
This information shows who opened the issue, and how long it’s been in the system.
Down here are the Form, Activity, and Agent Assist panes.
On the Details tab in the Form pane, we find in-depth information about the incident, such
as notes and related records.
We can add data to the incident record by entering information, for example, setting
the Contact type.
And the record view stays open until we close it.
Now let’s see how agents use Workspace to resolve issues.
Transition to new topic: How do agents use it?
Here’s the general workflow for agents using workspace:
First, find an issue to work on using the landing page or list view.
Then, research the issue in record view to find a solution.
And finally, resolve the issue and communicate the resolution to the requester.
Let’s find an issue to work on.
We’re supposed to take care of critical priority incidents before handling lower level
incidents, but none of these are critical.
So let’s see what’s in the list of incidents that have been marked priority 1, critical.
Hmmm…
A couple of them are related to email.
In workspace, we can open and work on multiple records at a time.
Let’s close the ribbon to give us more working space.
We gather as much information as we can about the issue, by
• Reviewing details of the incident on the Details tab in the Form pane.
• Looking at notes in the Activity Stream left by agents who worked on this incident
earlier.
• And checking the search results automatically displayed in Agent Assist.
Sometimes the related list tabs also contain helpful information, but not in this case.
Let’s see if we can resolve this.
We fill in whatever missing information we can.
We had a similar issue with this email server last month, so it’s the likely culprit.
There.
Now these other related lists are populated.
Okay….
We need to find a solution.
Agent Assist provides search results with possible solutions from a variety of sources,
such as service catalog items and KB articles.
By default, the search field is automatically populated with the value in the incident’s
Short description field.
If the default search didn’t provide useful information, we could manually enter other
search terms to get different results….
…But the likely solution is right here.
It’s an item from the service catalog: Reboot email server.
When we click Order… …verify that this is what we want…
…and submit it, workspace displays the change request form in a new tab with some fields
filled in.
We complete the rest of the form and save it to create the change request.
Now let’s go back and update the incident record.
First, we’ll mark that card as helpful.
Then we fill in the resolution information: It’s solved permanently because we submitted
a request to restart the email server.
And finally, we notify the caller by filling in the Comments field with an explanation.
The system will automatically send an email notification to the caller and any other stakeholders.
We also add a work note—which the caller can’t see but other agents can—explaining
that this incident is similar to a problem we saw last month.
If we still had work to do on this record, we would save it so that we or another agent
could continue working on the incident.
But we’re going to consider it resolved.
And now the record reflects that.
So on to the next one…
For more information, see our product documentation, knowledge base, or podcast.
Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.