UW Connect

• Most recent update
• Workday Finance Customer Support Model
• UW Medicine, Workday Finance and ServiceNow
• Features of UW Connect
• FAQs

UW Connect helps departments/units provide consistent service to customers using standardized workflows for managing associated day-to-day work. It is the UW-branded version of ServiceNow’s “Now” Platform. And UW Connect will be offered through a new enterprise site license, starting in July 2023.

When you use UW Connect, it’s easier to:

• Use one system for tracking service requests, issues and ensuing tasks rather than use shared email and tracking spreadsheets
• Transfer records/re-route them among different UW units
• Capture customer requests more easily, whether they come from phone, email or an intake form
• Deliver consistent and regular customer communication
• Better organize and prioritize work through repeatable processes and templates
• Access actionable data and reports

Learn about UW Connect

Most recent update

A critical piece of Workday’s Support Model includes use of UW Connect across the academy side of the University as our standard service management tool. So UW Connect will become available as an enterprise-wide licensed system beginning in July, instead of the current per-user licensing. (UW Medicine will have its own separate site license.)

The enterprise expansion will align with our ServiceNow contract renewal in June 2023 and UW Finance Transformation (UWFT) go live.

Rolling out UW Connect with UWFT will mean a big change, but overall, an improved system for everyone. This change will reduce administrative overhead, as UW-IT will no longer recharge units that already use UW Connect. And by standardizing processes, the University hopes to realize efficiency and productivity gains and also ensure compliance with federal, state and University-wide policies and procedures.

Initially, the expansion of UW Connect across the enterprise will be focused on onboarding those who will be part of the UWFT customer support model. After UWFT stabilization, UW-IT will develop and communicate a roadmap to onboard additional support units to UW Connect as needed. Check out more details about UW Connect and the timeline on the UW Connect Finance Onboarding on the Change Network.

Workday Finance Customer Support Model

Customers across the University (Academy side) who have questions related to financial business processes in Workday can go to a single landing page within UW Connect to get training and help documentation on Workday Finance. They’ll also have easy access to financial experts in their own Shared Environments for help and customer support.

When those financial experts in the Shared Environments need to escalate and communicate issues from their customers to central administration and UW Finance organizations, they’ll use and work in UW Connect. Central administration also includes UW-IT and the Integrated Service Center or ISC.

• Staff in the Shared Environments and in some of the central administration and UW Finance units who will be supporting finance business processes will begin to use UW Connect for case management. Find out more details on the UW Connect Finance Onboarding web page under Operating Model on the Change Network.
• UW-IT (including the ISC) will continue to use UW Connect for case management.
• Some additional units already use UW Connect, and starting in July, they’ll no longer be recharged for UW Connect from UW-IT.

UW Medicine, Workday Finance and ServiceNow

UW Medicine IT Services will have their own, separate ServiceNow platform rather than UW Connect for Workday Finance questions.

Additional work is ongoing to understand how this system will work for the UW Medicine clinical enterprise.

When UW Finance Transformation goes live: UW Medicine Supply Chain will use UW Connect as a stop-gap measure until UW Medicine IT Services is ready to onboard this team to their new ServiceNow instance.

Features of UW Connect

Improved experienced for customers

Using a single case management system will provide high-quality, consistent customer service across the University.

• Dedicated Knowledge Base: A repository of articles that provide customers with information, such as self-help, troubleshooting and task resolution.  Separate workflows can be used for publishing and retiring articles, and separate access controls can be used to control reading and contributing, such as if it’s for customers or for a service team, specifically.
• Intake form(s): Custom-designed web-based forms guide customers through what they need for support, and when submitted, the form creates a record in the system.
• Multiple intake options: Submitted intake forms automatically create a record in UW Connect as does a configured email address like help@uw.edu. Agents can also create a record manually when contacted by a customer.
• Request Management: Customer requests for a service: access to a service, a new item such as a phone, or for information about a service. Request Management is distinguished from Incident Management, which is focused on “break/fix” type issues.
• My Requests: Customers access their new, in-progress, and closed records on My Requests page, which lists the records created, along with each record’s Reference Number, unit providing help, issue description, last modified date and status.
• Incident Management: Tracks “break/fix” issues in order to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, while minimizing operations impacts.

Improved efficiency, workflow and customer support and service teams

• Routing: A streamlined workflow provides routing and re-routing, as needed, of customer records to a business function or queue owner.
• UW Connect support: Consulting with UW Connect’s service team can help you determine which services and assignment groups you’ll need. Training is provided, including help with UW Groups integration. UW Connect user group meetings offer community support, service updates and continual improvement.
• Record merge: When the same need for support is received multiple times, the records can be merged together.
• Metrics/performance analytics: Request and Incident dashboards provide metrics about your services and response activity. UW Connect’s service team can provide support with creating reports.
• “Parent-child” record relationships/sub-tasks: A single record can be divided up into smaller tasks and assigned to different individuals and teams.
• Problem Management: Work done to address the root cause of one or more Incidents/potential Incidents, even after a workaround has been employed and the service has been restored in the short term.
• Change Management: A systematic approach to control the life cycle of changes minimize the disruption to the service.

Enterprise Service Desk

• UW-IT offers an additional for-fee Enterprise Service Desk option. This is a contact center for a single contact point for email, telephone calls, email routing, tier 1 resolution, 24x7x365 support, equipment/service monitoring, and metrics/analysis. If interested, please review the information about the Enterprise Service Desk in the UW-IT Service Catalog.

FAQs