welcome back to another episode of titans of now titans reaches a wide audience of servicenow admins developers architects and product owners so if you want your brand in front of this audience check out the description below for how to contact me about sponsorship opportunities if you want to know what i'm up to lately i invite you to discover vivid charts vivid charts is a visualization and storytelling platform built on servicenow stop exporting data off platform to get the aesthetic control and storytelling experiences that you want hey everyone welcome back to another episode of titans of now folks today i've got a titan amongst the titans he is an apex servicenow developer and a massive source of deep dive development education within the community he is the author of the witch doctor's guide to servicenow and has a youtube channel named after him ladies and gentlemen joran the witch doctor one fist thank you very much robert ford's kind word i'm honored to be here and yeah the honor is mine my friend we always start at the start tell us how you got your start with servicenow so let's see where did it start i i'm not the normal developer or maybe i am because i don't have a degree in development or javascript or anything like that and perhaps most of the people in servicenow administration doesn't have it but i mean i started at nine with my nice commodore 64 and those kasich types and trying to to hack those games with some basic and i guess that's where my developers started but besides that i guess the closest education i have is being a three-year education of a technical project manager to build like metropoles and the era network but then again when i graduated the dot-com bubble burst and i started selling kirby vacuum cleaners instead of doing it stuff so i kind of twisted around but i got lucky i won actually uh ten thousand dollars on the lottery so i quit that job and started at the service desk a couple months later on being around most of the roles being the tech guy the assistant admin manager a lot of ideal process and incident manager and all that stuff but like you said the love story i think it started in 2014 when we had in that time ca which was a beast with a lot of stuff and we were looking around we're going to re renew the licenses or not and i barely grasped servicenow to be honest we looked at a couple of other systems and my boss came and said like hey take a look at this servicenow application i have no clue what it was but sure we asked him come and the sales guy that was pure energy to be to be honest he had his long-sleeved shirt and the first thing he did he came in and he rolled off the sleeves and then he started to talk about servicenow and he captured all of us i mean for me it was the easy peasy stuff instead of having our consultant coming around for a couple hours to fix a form he has quickly clicked and it was done so i mean then we said hey we want this one there were no competition at all so it was insane and it was a standard itsm installation i guess i think we were kind of special that way we didn't really want to have like the consultants coming in doing implementation and then leave us and we have no clue how to do it so we were a team of i think we were like four or five people so we took the system admin course and stuff like that right at the store and then pretty much these specialists they instead held our hands and told us how to do stuff but we actually did the work ourselves which was in our eyes a really good way to stop learning what you can do and how you can do it and then again when the implantation were done we were not left there and had no clue how to do it because i mean we know what we say about servicenow i mean good thing you can do everything bad thing you can do everything it's amazing and it speaks to how complicated things were in that era that you could take a team and ask a few intelligent questions of an external party and then essentially deploy it yourself faster easier less costly than if you had brought in third-party vendors i remember in our own case we had just deployed hp service desk and it was just this horrific experience and when we brought servicenow in the purchase cycle and the deployment together was less time than the workshop phase than we spent on hp and it was just yeah i mean it's a more complicated tool now that they're putting in like the virtual agent stuff and the service portal and there's just a little bit more devi bits that are more complex but man what uh like you had to be there right you had to be there to fully appreciate the scale yeah and understand the difference between sitting with those giants that's been around for eight years and the foundation where that and that here comes servicenow cloud-based and all that oh yeah you didn't even think it was true yeah what do you mean we don't need a what can i only server here and do that and it's done or just oh do you want a demo like okay well how many weeks do i have to wait for the cd to be mailed to me cd what are you talking about man it's insane i mean and i i have to mention i mean just when we started as well i mean the community as well that was a really what you call a turnover for me i mean the experience i had i asked questions how can we solve this and no one replied at all i mean you not even almost a consultant there everyone wanted to keep their solutions and how they did by themselves and then you entered this community then everyone helped out oh yeah everyone shared i mean it was just like what how long ago did you come on did you have the servicenow community there like the new one that's run by dan brown and his team oh i don't remember to go i mean i i started out in 2014. okay so i think dan and the guys were around but it was still very small and i mean it's not like now when you go to the community and look at new questions and 10 seconds later that page is gone with new set of questions again so i mean no hold on yeah we have an old community right we did that moving what was it called it was a third party community we had right and then when servicenow released their community we went over to that one yeah what a brilliant move that was what a brilliant move i'm really proud of them for that and beyond just the community capital t capital c the actual website you can go to don't you find the servicenow community small c in general there's so many places you can go to get the knowledge and you yourself have been a massive contribution to that with your videos and your witch doctor's guide to service now tell me a little bit about how you manifested that book i mean basically it all started with the community to be honest i mean i i started here and i had a lot of friends that were like mvps and microsoft and stuff like that and i saw how they helped out and i really liked that kind of mentality so when i started looking at the community and just like everyone else you have no clue you just read the question but from that moment like in 2018 i started to write down stuff that i found i might not feel like i need it right now but ah good to have and when we look at the book that book was actually the data of i don't know not all of it but of the things that i have gathered over the years that i like decided like okay i got a lot of stuff and i really want to share it because i mean i saw the questions popping up on the community and all that and it felt like how can i share that amount of knowledge to people the easiest way and my wife always says that i i i show that nothing is impossible when i decide to do something you can do it mm-hmm i mean it felt something like that i decided like hey i want to write a book let's try that and see how that was and i have talked a lot with the team woodruff to help me out like how hard is it really is it this is worth the tears and sweats and uh it's amazing how easy you can do it on your own going through like fiverr to get some good images for the books and stuff and kindle have all those how you can write it in docs and just translate it over to amazon and all that stuff i mean so you did it completely self-published yeah awesome good for you man yeah and that's thanks i need to reach out and say i told him before but that's thanks to tien who said that hey dude it's so simple just do like this and now like wow yep tim's another uh titans alumnus yeah yeah and i consider your book and his kind of like the seminal works of the servicenow ecosystem everybody should have those on their bookshelf for sir well thanks writing a book on top of a day job is no small feat and i wonder if you have any stories where you felt like your back was just completely against the wall you weren't sure if you had what it takes to to make it to go to overcome this challenge can you tell us about a time where you really struggled in the servicenow space oh yeah i guess there is a lot of times one of the biggest i guess was when i still was a customer we were a customer for like one one and a half year and we were doing we were having like everyone else the cms homepage and all that yelling fun stuff and i knew that i think it was i mean the search photo came in helsinki but i think it actually was supposed to come in geneva but was postponed one release by some reason and we were starting to build something like uh what's it called like a service page or something where you can see how the services are up and running or not yeah and i like okay if helsinki in service portal or geneva in that case is coming and we heard all of this about angularjs and all the wows that were in those years then i decided to say hey let's i'm going to make this in cms but with angular instead and to go back when i said i was not the developer so yeah my front-end skills they were kind of zero i guess i never built a home page and css and what's that so when i said to my managers and all those hey let's do this i can do it and then after a couple of weeks i really felt that i have taken it over my head but yeah a lot of courses and books on angela and and we made it but that was one of those times that i felt like okay perhaps i shouldn't be so positive how hard can it be it can be pretty hard yeah so that's one of them i guess what about something where besides the books we already mentioned that something that you're most proud of your accomplishments in the servicenow space it's got to be a lot to pick from but yeah it's hard to say i guess i'm most proud of of being an mvp and being selected to that because it means so much to me that's having that title and a lot of responsibility as well but i mean in my case that means that people are really happy and appreciate what i'm spending my time in and helping people do so i mean when we talk well it's not like something you built but it's just i know i like helping people and i mean getting that kind of gratitude really shows people appreciate what you're doing and that that means it means the world to me i gotta say servicenow really goes the extra mile to showcase their their mvps wouldn't you say yeah totally agree i don't i don't remember even like i worked in a couple predecessors to service now and i look at some of the competing communities and i just don't see the equivalent action going on but then when you get received into the mvp program you get the nice little swag and whatever but also that knowledge they have those huge dinners and you know they're always giving us previews to new releases and stuff and i feel like i certainly wouldn't be where i am today without the community but even the mvp community has been a real like staple of my growth i mean just like saying it really feels as well that they are listening thing to you what you're saying and they do that even if you're not the mvp but i mean as the mmp act it does help i mean of course it does yeah i think that's the whole how the servicenow company works i remember when i was a customer i might be over to the consultant side but i even emailed pharrell who was the vp of one of the areas and she responded back to me like within a day and i never supposed to think i would get an answer right but i think that's the whole foundation of servicenow i mean you can ask almost anyone i mean of course they have a lot to do but they are so helpful and that goes over to community as well and that i think that is why they understand how important the community is for servicenow as a product as well they're they're a listening company right and actually you know farrell hoff you mentioned her i had a similar experience i went down to california to sit in their first store user group and i got this email while i was in the session and she's like i heard you're in california i'm like yeah why she's like i want to meet and pick your brain on stuff and i was like [Laughter] you want to pick my brain it's like the heavens open up and god's like hey hey come here for a minute i want to talk to you about something with me yeah yeah it's really it's really cool and you feel appreciative yeah that's that's really apparent that's certainly true it's obvious from your youtube channels and from your book that you have a wide wide array of expertise on servicenow but what aspects of the tool do you feel like you most resonate with oh that's that's a good question i feel like one of the persons that knows a little bit about a lot of stuff but i mean if i look at what i've done the last since i joined servicenow to be honest i'm basically just into the scope at sphere and the platform side i'm building a lot of integration so i'm working a lot with flow designer integration hub and that stuff and i mean if you look at my time here i'm basically i would say like 50 80 the normal administrator developer with a team helping out the team handling the the training instance which pretty much handles the whole process of booking the the training courses and all that logistic behind it i guess that is where i will glow i guess i mean sure i've been in the itsm and csm square as well but don't tell me to do its i mean implementation or csm because yeah i need to read up on that one in that case well i can't believe we got this far in and you're that level of developer and you do custom development day-to-day and i haven't asked you what's the coolest thing you have built on the platform oh what's the coolest thing i don't know if i build cool things ah good question i honestly can't say i mean for me if you look i think the coolest thing i built that i thought was the coolest thing that was pretty much that angelar uh page which i did for like four years ago i mean the other stuff sure you might feel it's cool i mean i heard some of other titles would be like spotify integrations and all that stuff sure i built a lot of integration but and they might be cool if you look under the hood but i mean it's not like sharks karaoke or something like that and i guess that is because my imagination sucks to be honest when it comes to ideas i know i went to i think i wasn't one hackathon or something for a couple years ago and i have no clue what to do when i just ended up with someone else asking me to join them that's me i mean i had to break it down but i don't build so many cool stuff in my eyes i don't know to be honest that's a weird question i should have a good ass right is it that swedish humility we hear all about yeah i i guess i don't know i don't yeah probably i i hope i've done some good stuff but in my eyes cools is something i'm i mean i've done oh what's his name who did uh amazon button clicky yeah exactly i mean he did that and then shaq did his videos and then i did it for myself i bought one of the buttons and tried swedish but i mean that's not my cool stuff i mean that's someone's else cool stuff i i normally just take other pieces and just tweak them a little bit to get them to work like i want and so on but i can't say i have a cool stuff that i come up with from the start i i won't take that credit from someone else to be honest we're gonna have to ask somebody else who works with you i guess so so i rarely get the chance to interview somebody on the inside and i'll understand if you can't give a lot of detail here but is there anything coming down the pipe that just gets you super excited i know there are basically two things i know i just talked to and mentioned about flow designer but another thing actually popped up that actually gets me even more excited than flow designer stuff and you have seen screenshots you can tweak a little bit i mean the new ui how you can actually build that with kind of reminds you how you build stuff in in service portal right with with a more a graphical way but the the seismic way of building stuff that is to not say too much i think that will rock the world i can't wait i i i literally can't wait like i've seen a few demos and all i can say is imagine a world where you don't have to live in a form list report dashboard paradigm right where those things are all separate things that you must you know what i mean like you have to go different places for it but it can it can just bring all that together like you could have a form that's got a list of other stuff on it yeah exactly and and a counter and a dashboard and you can mix it all together i cannot wait yeah i mean in my case who's not a full land developer as well when it's not code i'm happy to be honest you know don't make so many escape as well so it's going to be really cool all right last question there's a lot of people at the start of their servicenow career that listen to the titans and now podcast i wonder if you could give any advice or insights looking back on your own experience that might help a servicenow beginner oh yeah that's a good question normally i would say that i started out in the community i mean we didn't have no learning and all stuff and i i started out looking at the questions and in the start you couldn't answer them and reading and looking at the answers and i actually went through one of the other videos and i think it was and i i'm sorry drupa i think i pronounce you your name correctly mr maverick the way he went he went to look at the correct answers instead of the unsolved ones that is a really good way to learn and then i have to say now learning now learning and the developer side they have so much courses and stuff to learn the biggest issue i would have and i guess anyone else who's new is trying to like where should i start should i go into high dsm should i go into scope there is so much things you can do in service now it's easy that you don't even get through the starting line because you can't really decide which path should i start going down that's true yeah that's super true at least from my perspective i think people try and compensate by going wide let's just learn a ton of stuff and i just i don't know it's hard it's hard i can't go back and be new so it's hard to see with new eyes but don't go wide for heaven's sake you'll just it's too late to know just a little about everything yeah exactly i tried to know everything about everything but i mean i let that go for a couple of years again so it's now grown so big you can't know everything and like i and i are not the one that came up with this one as well but i always try to be not the smartest gang in the room that's way how you learn stuff just make sure you're not that one there you go folks you're on lundquist himself said even he can't learn everything so for those of you who are struggling on what to do don't let that get you anxious it's okay it's okay to not be able to go that wide totally okay totally all right goran thanks so much for being on the channel it was so good to have you here we are going to have links in the description for your book the witch doctor's guide to servicenow we'll have links to your youtube channel and uh any final words no i think that wraps it up pretty good thank you a lot for having me yeah i really appreciate the time goran thank you if you'd like to sponsor this channel's content email me at the address pictured here if you need a conversation on where your servicenow implementation is or where it's going you can reach me on super peers and book a short consult if you want to contribute to high quality high frequency output consider a donation if not i still appreciate your viewership consider hitting the like button and sharing within your network thanks for watching you