Now Forum 2018

For the third year in a row, the NOW forum was held in Darling Harbour in Sydney, Australia over 9-10 October.

The first day was CreatorCon with half a dozen labs focusing on a wide variety of topics such as Service Mapping in the CMDB, accessing external web service APIs from the Service Portal, and using the Integration Hub within Flow Designer.

JDS had a strong showing with consultants, support staff and account managers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane present. Our booth allowed us to catch up with current customers and talk to organisations interested in how ServiceNow can transform business practice.

New features in London

The conference keynote focused on enabling business users to manage their own content, looking at codeless to low code, and how professional coding can ensure the smooth delivery of services.

The introduction of the virtual agent (using AI) and the new agent workspaces in ServiceNow London will change the way businesses interact with their customers, streamlining the user experience. There were also breakout sessions, labs and informal chats bringing customers up to speed with more new features in this latest release.

As always, there were some fun, innovative ways of looking at how ServiceNow integrates with other systems and processes, including a 3D printer modified with a laser etching names on pens (sharks with lasers anyone?). After completing a short catalogue item, attendees were treated to watching the device engrave their names on a custom memento of the NOW forum.

Making the world of work, work better for people

Although most customers won’t be considering 3D fabrication, this interactive demo did highlight how ServiceNow can become an interface for automation.

A key theme throughout the conference was looking at ways ServiceNow can reduce the burden of mind-numbing manual processes, allowing users to focus on more intelligent activities. Integration and automation should be part of any business transformation strategy as it frees up existing staff to provide greater quality of service to customers without the need for staffing increases. Watch this space, as with the advent of the Integration Hub, ServiceNow concentrates on how it can automate previously tedious, manual processes.

No conference would be complete without giveaways, swag, great food and some drinks—NOW forum being no exception. We branded ‘pop-sockets’ for mobile devices (so long dropped phones and cracked screens!), along with a draw to win a Google Home and a Sony wireless speaker.

If you missed NOW forum this time around, be sure to mark it on your calendar for 2019 so you can stay up to date with the latest innovations from ServiceNow.