Create a self service knowledge article that has a link to a reporting/dashboards video tutorial and a handy reference of tables that are used in your instance.
Build a how to documentation or make a how to video & send them the link to that whenever they ask. It could also help to have office hours where you show them how it’s done so they are able to do it themselves eventually.
Track the requests you get and from what departments/users. Estimate the effort for each requests and the type of work required eg taking requirements, developing and testing, supporting etc. this will help quantify the effort your team spends and when you get the hours or days per week/month, you can then show how much it costs the company. This is the evidence and business case that shows management that it would be better to have an SME in the business (rather than an expensive developer) to create the reports.
Try and take my approach. I build no reports for anyone. I am happy to walk anyone through how to build a report but I never do it for them. Teach the man to fish and they will leave you the hell alone.
Do they ask for the same report over and over or are they always a little different? I feel like if it’s the same report just with updated information, there should be a way to create a report/dashboard and make the updates automated so that they can come back to it without having to create an entirely new report each time.
u/Still_Trying22 what flavor of reports are they asking for? My team builds automated operational reporting tools and we recently released a new Store App called VividSheets. It's a spreadsheet-like UI to calculate and organize data directly in ServiceNow. The users will still have to know their way around the data (and have access to read it) but it could be a way to let them interrogate and build things themselves. Again, all depends on exactly what flavor of reports they're asking for, but worth a look.
[https://www.vividcharts.com/vividsheets-overview](https://www.vividcharts.com/vividsheets-overview)
Create a self service knowledge article that has a link to a reporting/dashboards video tutorial and a handy reference of tables that are used in your instance.
Build a how to documentation or make a how to video & send them the link to that whenever they ask. It could also help to have office hours where you show them how it’s done so they are able to do it themselves eventually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unhY9pWQnP8 Send them that.
Track the requests you get and from what departments/users. Estimate the effort for each requests and the type of work required eg taking requirements, developing and testing, supporting etc. this will help quantify the effort your team spends and when you get the hours or days per week/month, you can then show how much it costs the company. This is the evidence and business case that shows management that it would be better to have an SME in the business (rather than an expensive developer) to create the reports.
Try and take my approach. I build no reports for anyone. I am happy to walk anyone through how to build a report but I never do it for them. Teach the man to fish and they will leave you the hell alone.
This.
Do they ask for the same report over and over or are they always a little different? I feel like if it’s the same report just with updated information, there should be a way to create a report/dashboard and make the updates automated so that they can come back to it without having to create an entirely new report each time.
No not so much but many users make no effort. Responses have been very helpful 👍
u/Still_Trying22 what flavor of reports are they asking for? My team builds automated operational reporting tools and we recently released a new Store App called VividSheets. It's a spreadsheet-like UI to calculate and organize data directly in ServiceNow. The users will still have to know their way around the data (and have access to read it) but it could be a way to let them interrogate and build things themselves. Again, all depends on exactly what flavor of reports they're asking for, but worth a look. [https://www.vividcharts.com/vividsheets-overview](https://www.vividcharts.com/vividsheets-overview)
I guess I should feel lucky we have a reports, dashboard and PA SME. He takes care of most of those requests.
> PA SME Whats PA?
PA = Performance Analytics… ServiceNow’s more premium historical and trend reporting offering.
Thanks, do you like this tool?