One of our main customers asked us for the implementation of ServiceNow's Agent Workspace. The customer wanted to use ITSM Agent Workspace to simplify the work of the service desk and make it more efficient. The project had already been in progress when we entered.
Moving the Service Desk Work to Agent Workspace
Our customer asked us to move all service desk work to Agent Workspace. That includes creating an Interaction and consequently launching an Incident or Request from the Interaction based on the user’s needs. The customer preferred to use OOTB solutions as much as possible, but on the other hand, he needed to keep the customizations that work in the forms in the classic UI. Therefore, eventually, quite a lot of development was needed.
Development of Agent Workspace Components
The setting of Agent Workspace for incident management and service request management required basic configuration of Agent Workspace, creation of default lists, update forms or modifications of the existing script to be compatible with Agent Workspace. Let’s look at each component in more detail.
Lists
Agents see some default lists in Agent Workspace and every user can also create his own lists. There are some OOTB lists, but our customer needed a different default set of lists and their layouts, which had to be configured.
Interaction management
The customer used the New Call module in the classic UI and wanted to switch to the Interaction module in Agent Workspace. Therefore, the whole interaction process was set to be similar to the New Call functionality, as was required.
Landing pages
Landing pages are the pages agents see when they open their workspace. Each agent can see only one landing page and the agent can’t create it on their own as a specific role is needed. In our case, we created several landing pages for different groups according to the requirements of the service desk.
Forms
All forms needed for the service desk work had to be configured in Agent Workspace according to the forms in the classic UI. This also includes a review of all scripts and other components because of some differences. Let´s have a look at some of them.
- Client-side GlideRecord is working in scripts in classic UI, although this is not the best practice. In Agent Workspace it is not working.
- Agent Workspace does not support DOM-manipulation.
- There are special UI action types for workspaces ‘Workspace Form Button’ and ‘Workspace Form Menu’ with additional Workspace Client Script.
- Some UI pages must be modified. Getting the parameters is different in the workspace and there is an issue with the Cancel button, the processing script runs also when the Cancel is pressed.
Customer Feedback was Essential During Implementation
During the implementation, we needed to discuss the setting with service desk agents. This was crucial because their comments were important to ensure Agent Workspace would meet their needs. Although it sometimes delayed the project because we were waiting for their feedback.
We also created several HI cases regarding some issues we faced. Most of them have already been solved in the last releases but some of them still exist and will not be solved. E.g., there is a bug due to which the agent is unable to order the same catalogue item for two different users at the same time. Also, it is not possible to limit the number of rows per page by property ‘glide.ui.per_page’ that works in the classic UI.
Pros and Cons of Agent Workspace: Our Experience
Based on our experience during the implementation, we identified some major advantages and disadvantages of Agent Workspace. Those are:
Advantages
- All agent’s work is in one browser tab, the work is clearly organized into tabs. It is possible to work on multiple tasks more easily.
- The component ‘Agent assist’ on the right side shows recommendations of similar records and helps agents to solve the issue faster.
- Agent can easily chat with the end user and simultaneously work on the issue in one place, users are seamlessly transferred from virtual agent to live agent.
Disadvantages
- Agent Workspace is designed for large screens. It is not possible to reduce the size to be well-arranged in small screens and configuration options are limited.
- User can see only one of the landing pages and those landing pages must be configured by the user with a special role (mostly admin user) from scratch. It is not possible to use existing dashboards or reports.
- Some specific features available in the classic UI are not possible in the Agent Workspace, e.g., filter in the global search results.
- Dark theme is not available for Agent Workspace.
New Service Operations Workspace to Solve Disadvantages
A few months ago, ServiceNow introduced a new Service Operations Workspace, which is more configurable. Hopefully, it can solve most of the disadvantages of Agent Workspace. But the transfer to the new workspace will require additional work.
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Iveta
Medior ServiceNow Consultant