Application Services: Students tackle real-world problems facing the University during ServiceNow Boot Camp and Hackathon

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In early June, the ServiceNow Development team, in collaboration with the School of Computer Science, ServiceNow, and ServiceNow partners TESM, proudly hosted the third annual ServiceNow Boot Camp and Hackathon event in the Computer Science Building on campus.

Those who attended the event had three days of intensive training on the ServiceNow platform, followed by a two day Hackathon — giving students an opportunity to develop new and innovative applications, which could potentially solve real-world problems.

During the Hackathon, students were asked to select a brief, outlining a particular problem faced by the University, or an external business. After reviewing the brief, they created a detailed plan as to how they would approach the problem. Using ServiceNow’s Project Portfolio Management and Software Development Lifecycle tools, they were able to plan out resourcing, ‘costing’ and their stories, before breaking up to develop their applications.

“The ServiceNow Hackathon was a fantastic experience for Computer Science students to skill up on ServiceNow’s leading enterprise solution and gain exposure to IT practice in the wider world. We are very grateful to ServiceNow and TESM for the opportunity.” Mark Lee, Deputy Head of Computer Science and Head of Student Development

There were two winning teams this year, both focused on the idea of social media integration using Facebook, Twitter and SMS, with impressive, and very different results — see winning submissions below:

  • SMS messages from ServiceNow Application 
    ServiceNow Notify Application used to send SMS messages, updating the ‘BizCo’ Facebook page when a priority one (P1) call was raised with another team.
  • ServiceNow crawl social media messages
    ServiceNow used to crawl through Twitter for messages containing specific handles or hashtags. The messages are then logged as interactions in ServiceNow, and possibly flagged as Incidents.

Both solutions are innovative and have real-world application. The ServiceNow team will now look at introducing this new functionality into the IT Services Development Pipeline.

All those who attended the Boot Camp and Hackathon received training materials, and a ServiceNow System Administration Exam voucher worth approximately £2358.00 per person. We’re very grateful for all the help and support ServiceNow has provided over the past few years, and their continued investment in this excellent event.

For more information about the Boot Camp and Hackathon please contact Richard James Thomas, ServiceNow Developer and Workflow Analyst (Applications Services).

 

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