Automation month update

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Thank you to everyone that submitted ideas or spent time working on automations during IT Automation Month. 

Progress update 

The Automation Month team made excellent progress mapping out requirements for the following Enhancements, which you can view in ServiceNow. 

• ENH0011230: Workflow for staff email requests 
• ENH0011231: Workflow for setting up Mailing lists, Distribution lists and Contacts Addresses
• A couple of quick wins have been identified:
  • Automatic provision of email archives
  • Automatic creation of mailboxes
  • Several automations have been process mapped ready to be picked up once the D1IM upgrade is completed
• ENH0014400: We started looking at, and gained some knowledge on, Leapworks. We intend to work on automating PURE testing over the coming months – this could produce a time saving of 5 person days per month.
• ENH0014354: Scripts have been moved to using password-less authentication. The 25 UNIX Scripts are now being modernised and standardised ready for automation in February. This automation prevents mistakes being made as well as providing a time saving.
• ENH0014384: A ServiceNow workflow has been developed to add/remove a user from multiple AD groups; or add/remove multiple users from a single AD group. Testing needs to take place before it can be released. This automation will provide the largest time-saving within IT Services of those worked on in IT Automation Month.
• ENH0014365: Coaching is in place to ensure automation scripts are completed and can be supported within the CTL. This improves the student experience and provides an IT Services time saving. 

Moving into 2020 

We reviewed what we might need in place to continue with progress on automation within IT Services this year. Some suggestions that came up in the review meeting were: 

• Some infrastructure time devoted to automation – can we agree an allocation of time per month to help move some automation ambitions forward? 
• Explore how we can increase our ServiceNow development capacity. Is there potential to roll out workflow training to some of the current superusers to help with the backlog of requests? 
• Clean, mapped out and agreed processes – the Strategic Change will be able to support us with developing these.
• New projects/services – we need to consider automation requirements within scope of project/service design not as an afterthought once service support becomes painful. 
• Do we need an Automation working group to help identify internal priorities and maintain momentum on automation within IT? 
• Team projects will be set up to book in time for some of the automation ideas that were too large to fit into the IT Automation month window 

Special thanks

Thanks in particular to: Matt Warwick; Shawn Smith; Addam Hepburn; Tim Hall; Paul Coles; Adam Cooper; Riyaz Bandali; David MacDivitt; Colleen Romero; Harry Bamber; Tim Packwood; Leigh Tremane; Richard Clayton; Ian Bowman; Nic Doran. 

Find out more

If you want to find out more about IT Automation Month and the next steps then please contact: its-partnering@contacts.bham.ac.uk