We might be 100% ServiceNow, but we have a soft spot for Game of Thrones too. So, we put together a GoT themed ServiceNow Survival Guide complete with features and their GoT alter-egos, helpful tricks, and plenty of GoT references to get you ready for the Season 7 finale.

1. EDITION:
Survival Guide for
the ServiceNow
Realm

2. At Acorio, we are obviously giant fans of ServiceNow -- our
entire business is 100% exclusively focused on guiding clients
through their personal ServiceNow transformation. While
ServiceNow is #1 here in our hearts at Acorio, we also have
some giant Game of Thrones fans on our team. So, in honor of
this Sunday's Season 7 finale, we put together a Game of
Thrones themed ‘Survival Guide for the ServiceNow Realm’.
So here you have it: a list of 9 notable ServiceNow features,
matched them with their Game of Thrones alter-ego. And like
any good maester in Westeros, Acorio has some tricks up our
sleeves to help you understand the people and powers that
surround you in the ServiceNow realm.*WARNING* spoilers ahead!

3. Take
Notes
on Ned
Stark

4. Out of box, ServiceNow’s Service Portal widgets offer a
simple, straightforward template for your company’s
service portal. And just like Ned Stark, they are
consistent and unambiguous. While we appreciate the
structure that these OOB widgets provide, their
consistency can also cause problems for clients looking
to diversify the formats of different pages within their
Service Portal. It is a double-edged sword: these
widgets act as a great accelerator for building a
functional Service Portal template, but clients must
pledge allegiance to the code (and its fewer options for
customizing Service Portal OOB).

5. For clients wanting to diverge from the consistency that
ServiceNow’s widgets provide, we recommend cloning
the widgets and then customizing their code to better fit
the specific needs of your business. But there are
certain risks associated with this approach. As you step
up to make changes to ServiceNow’s Service Portal
widgets, there is no guarantee that your code will
continue to be compatible with ServiceNow’s platform
past the current update.

6. We all know how Ned Stark’s story ends, and because
of this you may be hesitant to stray too far from
ServiceNow OOB Service Portal Widgets, but keep in
mind that Lord Stark did not have the Acorio maesters at
his side. If you are looking to step off the beaten path
and try something new, we have plenty of pre-coded
widgets to help you make the most of your Service
Portal and ensure that it is the perfect fit for what your
company needs.

7. Learn
to
Love
Joffrey
Baratheon

8. We get it, sometimes subcategories can start to feel like
a corrupt and malicious tyrant. They come off as
controlling and require you to abide by their rules or
suffer their wrath, much like the late King Joffrey
Baratheon. But don’t be fooled by their rigid laws;
subcategories stick to their rules because they want to
help and, unlike Joffrey, we promise that they ultimately
benefit the greater good.

9. To keep it straightforward for your fulfillers and help
them avoid confusion, do your best to limit the number
of subcategories they have to choose from, and the
number of options included in each of those levels. This
approach will turn King Joffrey into a ruler you can
actually get along with. Instead of micromanaging with a
million draconian laws, fewer subcategories will keep
things simple and light, which is exactly what your
fulfillers are looking for when quickly trying to categorize
items.

10. Avoid
the
Wrath
of
Ramsay

11. Big changes can oftentimes have unintended
consequences. Ramsay’s bold, brutal rise to power
ultimately united enough of the North against him,
bringing about his own downfall. Similarly, huge update
sets frequently create unexpected behaviors in your
instances, making you wish for the dogs to be set on
you as you comb through hundreds of updates trying to
debug your instance.

12. Learn from Ramsay’s mistakes. Lop off your update sets
into smaller chunks (too soon?), so that when you do
have to debug them, you can quickly narrow in on the
issue. Development is an iterative process. Taking the
time to follow best practice and process when building
something can yield great results – Just ask Daenerys
Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name,
the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men,
Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and
Mother of Dragons (We figure it’s best to be respectful,
after seeing what Drogon can do to a Lannister
army). Bottom line—massive update sets Reek.

13. Train
with the
Many-
Faced
Gods

14. As a “Faceless” administrator, you have the ability to
impersonate any user in Westeros and even those beyond
the Narrow Sea. It is so easy to bring our technically
unasked for “gift” to the uninitiated novices. Take caution
with this, and remember that “All men must serve; Faceless
Men most of all.” Even though our powers are sometimes
God-like… in the end, we only serve the deity of Best
Practice. Also, a girl must remember that the mask we wear
may become our face. To avoid getting stuck with someone
else’s skin, we recommend having two accounts: one for
your admin activities, and another for your day-to-day tasks.
This way you can switch faces at the drop of a Valyrian coin,

15. Make Use of The Ravens

16. Notifications are an essential part of working within the diverse
ServiceNow ecosystem. While working on your Epics and Stories, it is
vital to send word of any recent plot changes to your valiant
development team as they struggle to tame the Free Folk or slay their
coding dragons. Out of box, there aren’t notifications on the Agile
tables like Stories, Defects, Enhancements and RIDACs. With your
business needs still taking shape and often evolving with the many plot
twists that come with providing services in an ever-changing world, it is
necessary to deliver these updates efficiently and in a timely manner.
We have come a long way since messaging by raven, and these
simple notifications are packaged neatly inside Acorio’s Agile Boost.
A boos is a package of proven code that can contain hundreds of
updates and fixes to make your implementation start with a bang. Take
a look here at the notifications added inside this ready-to-use boost.

18. Look as
Good as
Jamie Lannister

19. When it comes to your Service Portal, we like to
say less is more (and we like to think Jaime’s missing
hand would agree!) To ensure that you are making the
most of your portal, our experts advise keeping things
simple. While ServiceNow’s Service Portal OOB looks
great, if you are looking to make the most out of the
application, you have to be willing to put in a significant
amount of time for planning.

20. You should strive to be as straightforward and organized as
possible, that way your clients are not overwhelmed with too
much information muddled onto one page. When it comes to
your Service Portal, minimizing clutter is a must. It is important
to put yourself in your customers’ shoes; think about why they
are using your portal, and anticipate what questions they might
have, then make sure this information is clear and easy to
find. Think of it like this: you don’t have to be trained on how to
use Amazon, it just makes sense. The same thing should be
true for your portal and its users. Make your postal clear and
intuitive to its audience, and just like Jaime, your portal will be
one of the best-looking (and highly-skilled) warriors in Westeros.

21. Outsmart
Littlefinger

22. We know that Littlefinger likes to stick his nose into
everything, pretending to be helpful, while usually not
having your best interest at heart. And just like with Lord
Baelish, we sometimes question if the Update Set table
automatically suggesting a new Update Set name on
Create New is really trying to help us, especially when it
often suggests an incorrect name.

23. During the “chaos” of performing a clone over your Dev
environment while development is still actively taking
place, and to assist you to “climb that ladder” (and avoid
the stresses of Petyr Baelish), we recommend adding a
simple UI Action to create a new Update Set from a
previously closed set. This UI Action will read the name of
a completed Update Set of your choice and then add or
increment an integer to the end. ie: “My Set Name 2.”
This should allow your Developers and Admins to
continue their work unabated while you maintain the
regular cycle of cloning from your Production
environment to your Development environment.

25. Befriend
the
3-Eyed
Raven

26. The 3-eyed raven is a powerful force within the Game of
Thrones realm. And for his ServiceNow alter-ego we
knew we had to pick an all-star application. With their
combined capability to not only get a definitive view of
your security posture, but also automate IT processes for
operations management and create actionable alerts that
enable IT to eliminate service outages, we think Event
Management, Security Operations, and Orchestration are
a strong triple-threat, rivaled only by the 3-eyed raven
and his ability to see into the past, present, and future.

27. Our advice to you is this: bite the bullet and commit to integrating these
three applications into your ServiceNow roadmap. To make the most of
remediation workflows, we advise integrating your monitoring systems
and carefully crafting your event rules. We all wish we could have our
own personal 3-eyed raven to warn us about upcoming attacks, but in
the meantime, we think Security Operations is an incredible solution to
keep your business protected. With its Trusted Security Circles, you
can define a list of trusted companies for LIVE threat intelligence to
thwart that upcoming ransomware attack. The recent Jakarta release
opened the door for even more Security Operations integrations, and
with the rapid7 integrations on ServiceNow, you can easily track
vulnerability and remediation information against your CMDB in real-
time. Our team is loving the capabilities of SecOps, and we are very
excited to see its vulnerability response and threat capabilities expand
with future ServiceNow upgrades.

28. Just like Bran was overwhelmed when first introduced to his new
abilities, we understand that these three applications can come
across as a tough beast to tame. We are here to assure you that
all of this time and effort is most definitely worth the investment.
With this dynamic trio of applications at your side, you can
eliminate risks and incidents by automatically kicking off scripts
and testing the security of your applications and network
infrastructure, leaving your admins with organized reports and a
clear dashboard right at their fingertips. This foresight, coupled
with the ability to prevent attacks before they even happen, is
something we wish Bran could tap into to help fight the Army of
the Dead, but we guess he has not gotten around to exploring
the ServiceNow platform (yet).

29. Fight
off the
White
Walkers

30. The White Walkers are the biggest villains our characters
have to face in Game of Thrones, so there was no
question as to who their ServiceNow alter-ego would be:
the competition of our clients. Looking at the competition
can be scary, especially if they hold some powerful
weapons in their hands. But Acorio is here to assist you
in your quest to fend off all of the other guys in your
industry, and we are confident that we have an
unmatched weapon to help you do it.

31. Think of ServiceNow as your personal, infinite supply of
dragon glass. You use it to craft creative, state-of-the-art
tools to fight off the competitors that make your life hard.
Sure, upon introduction those monsters might seem like a
tough power to battle, but with ServiceNow and Acorio on
your side, the odds are in your favor. With us on your
team, you are destined to bring an end to the long, cold
winter.

32. As Rowley Irlam, a stunt coordinator for the Game of
Thrones series, said:
We are a show that doesn’t sit on our
laurels, so we do try to top ourselves
each year, although we seem to
make it more and more difficult for
ourselves as we go on.

33. Game of Thrones never fails to push the envelope with
each season raising the bar, and the same rings true for
those at ServiceNow. With major platform releases
rolling out every 6 months, their team is constantly
looking for creative ways to improve the overall product
and user experience. Here at Acorio, we have no
doubt in their ability to deliver, and cannot wait to see
what is to come in the next major release: Kingston.

34. We love ServiceNow and the wonderful services it
provides to clients. At the end of the day there is no one
else that we would rather see on the Iron Throne. No
other product, we think, could rule over all seven
kingdoms, nor inspire so many to give themselves to the
cause. Our allegiance to the ServiceNow platform is
strong, and we will not be bending the knee for anyone
else anytime soon (except maybe Jon Snow).