UW Connect
UW Connect is a tool for helping departments and units serve their customers and manage their work. It is available in a standard version and a basic ticketing version. Comparison tables on this page help you understand what the versions offer, along with pricing.
- On This Page
- Which UW Connect option is right for your team?
- At a glance comparison: Key aspects
- Applicable to both UW Connect Service Management and UW Connect Lite
- UW Connect solutions comparison
UW Connect is the UW’s branded version of the ServiceNow platform, a powerful, enterprise-class tool that leverages industry standard Service Management best practices. UW Connect provides information intake and customer support workflow capabilities, and is available to both IT and non-IT departments and units.
UW Connect Overview video (link)
Single system of record
Move away from shared email accounts and spreadsheets, and instead use one system for tracking service requests and ensuing activities. Easily organize and prioritize your team’s work as you deliver consistent and regular customer communication.
UW Connect Service Management and UW Connect Lite
Two versions are available, but because UW Connect is one platform, you’ll be able to transfer and re-route support records among other subscribers at the University.
Which UW Connect option is right for your team?
UW Connect Lite demo
UW-IT uses dozens of UW Connect capabilities to support IT Service Management, and makes a standard version available to UW support units to manage their IT and non-IT support: UW Connect Service Management. For units only needing a basic ticketing service with fewer capabilities, UW Connect Lite is also available.
Each is offered as a billable subscription service through UW-IT so that you don’t have to procure and manage your own similar but separate tool for customer support.
- UW Connect Service Management is a good fit for IT departments and other units that need standard service management capabilities, reports and dashboards.
- UW Connect Lite is a good fit for units that are more resource constrained and need basic ticketing capabilities to manage their customer support.
- UW Connect HRP Case Management is a service offered only to the UW Integrated Service Center (ISC) and their related business units to support Human Resources and Payroll business functions. This service was designed to support UW’s initial launch of Workday. It includes HR and Payroll related forms, fields, workflows, analytics, security capabilities, integrations, knowledge management and more.
- UW Connect Finance – July 2023. This service is being designed for Finance support units as part of the UW Finance Transformation (UWFT) Program. This subscription service will include forms, workflows, integrations, knowledge management, self-service capabilities, and more, and is in alignment with the UWFT Workday Guardrails for Service Management.
- Available January 2022: UWFT UW Connect Shared Environment Prep Pilot program. To help the UW prepare for Workday Finance support, teams providing Finance support can request to onboard to the existing UW Connect Service Management service and use standardized finance-related intake forms. The onboarding fee is waived to participate in this pilot; monthly per licensed user fees apply.
At a glance comparison for available subscription services: Key aspects
| UW Connect Service Management | UW Connect Lite | Details | |
| Monthly subscription pricing | $45 per month per staff member
$14 per month per student worker |
$17 per month per staff member or student worker | Includes license and support.
Each user requires an individual subscription. Licenses are named vs. concurrent licenses (i.e., no shared UW NetIDs). |
| Onboarding and training: Pricing and scheduling | $3,100 one-time setup fee, per unit/department | $1,500 one-time setup fee, per unit/department | Service Management customers are onboarded as discrete units. This is scheduled based on the unit’s availability.
Lite customers are onboarded during pre-scheduled sessions that UW-IT offers monthly. Refer to calendar to schedule. |
| Record types | Four types: Request, Incident, Problem, Change | One type: Ticket | Different record types allow different service levels and workflows. |
| Record merge | ✔ | ✔ | Used when the same record is received multiple times. |
| Web-based intake forms | Two custom forms with workflow | One predefined basic form | Options: Watch a training video and read documentation to learn how to build your own custom intake forms for customers to fill out. For Finance, additional standard forms are available. |
| “Parent-child” record relationships/sub-tasks | ✔ | Divide your work into tasks for different teams. | |
| “Related-to” record relationships | ✔ | Data field allowing you to enter another record number for reference. | |
| Custom reports | ✔ | How-to documentation to build custom reports, with support if needed. | |
| Performance analytics | ✔ | Dashboards to display trending data. | |
| Enterprise Service Desk (ESD) | ✔ | Option for you to have UW-IT provide Tier 1 support to your customers. Refer to the ESD Service Catalog entry. |
|
| Feature enhancements | ✔ |
Applicable to both UW Connect Service Management & UW Connect Lite
| Component | Explanation |
| ServiceNow contract | An Internet2 contract ensuring competitive and UW-appropriate terms and conditions. |
| Critical system status | Services run on UW-IT’s infrastructure, deemed “critical” for business continuity. Support for UW Connect Service Management is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. High-priority service interruptions are escalated for support 24×7. |
| My Request portal | Customer view of all UW Connect support records, regardless of organization. |
| FERPA compatible | Contract language supports FERPA. |
| HIPAA compatible | Business Associate Agreement (BAA) included in contract. |
| Knowledge Base (KB) | Dedicated Knowledge Base for your organization, used to associate KB articles to your support records for common support responses. |
| Templates | Used for repeatable actions, such as incorporating standard responses to common inquiries. |
| Record transferability/re-routing | Because it’s one platform, support records can be routed to different organizations. |
| UW Groups integration | Department/unit self-service subscription maintenance through membership management of service-specific UW Groups. |
| UW-IT billing | Automated billing to UW budget numbers. |
| Preconfigured reports | Basic reports are provided, based on the most commonly requested report requests (e.g., average time to resolve). |
| Feature enhancements | Ongoing enhancements will be incorporated into the standard UW Connect Service Management version. UW Connect Lite will remain a basic option, but sometimes incorporate enhancements. |
UW Connect solutions comparison
| Features | UW Connect Service Management | UW Connect Lite |
Core Capabilities |
||
| Request Management Request Management is focused on customer requests for service — whether that’s access to a service, a new item such as a phone, or information. It is distinguished from Incident Management, which is focused on “break/fix” type issues. |
✔ | |
| Basic Ticket Management Streamlined form for managing all types of work, including customer inquiries, operational activities, etc. |
✔ | |
| Incident Management Incident Management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, while minimizing impact to business operations and ensuring quality is maintained. Incident records are used for tracking “break/fix” type issues. |
✔ | |
| Problem Management Problem Management represents work done to address the root cause of one or more Incidents/potential Incidents, even after the service has been restored in the short term. |
✔ | |
| Change Management A systematic approach to control the life cycle of all changes, facilitating beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT service. Change Management in UW Connect is focused on authorizing changes, and necessitates that there be a Change Advisory Board in place. |
✔ | |
| Knowledge Management Enables the sharing of information in knowledge bases. These knowledge bases contain articles that provide users 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. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Calls Available for use by high-volume service/help desks who want to capture core information about a customer phone call/walk up, without having to determine up front if it represents an Incident or a Request. |
✔ | |
| Visual Task Board | ✔ | |
| My Request Page Tasks/tickets displayed to customers on “My Requests” page. |
✔ | ✔ |
Intake Methods |
||
| Email Task/ticket generated via inbound email. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Walk up Ad hoc creation of task/ticket records. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Integration Ability to generate records from monitoring/alert systems. |
✔ | |
| Default Intake Form Intake form whose link can be posted on an organization’s website, team site, email signature, etc. Allows users with a UW NetID to fill out a web form, and generate a Request/Ticket. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Custom Intake Forms Up to two custom intake forms developed by UW-IT and/or training on how to create intake forms. Some standardized Finance-related forms are available in the standard service. |
✔ | |
Ticket/Record Management |
||
| Parent-Child relationships/sub-tasks Allows sub-tasks to be generated from a record, which is useful when multiple groups are responsible for activities that will resolve the customer issue. For incident management, the service desk would typically own the Incident record and generate Incident tasks (“ITasks”) for the groups. Additionally, if an Incident were reported by more than one person, one Incident would be retained as the “parent,” and house the communication that would be propagated to the other Incident records (the “children”). |
✔ | |
| Merging The ability to merge two records into one. This is useful, for example, when the customer has created two requests for the same issue. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Re-Routing Re-route tickets to the UW-IT Service Center if the record should be owned by UW-IT, another UW Connect Service Management subscription customer, or another UW Connect Lite customer. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Jira integration Create a Jira issue from within a UW Connect task. |
✔ | |
Metrics and Reporting |
||
| Custom reporting | ✔ | |
| Default reports | ✔ | ✔ |
| Customer surveys | Future | |
Onboarding Support / Training |
||
| Coordinated Unit/departments specify the timing to coordinate onboarding and training. |
✔ | |
| Pre-arranged monthly schedule Training arranged via a set monthly onboarding and training schedule. |
✔ | |
Price |
||
| Onboarding coordination and support (one-time, initial set-up fee) | $3,100 | $1,500 |
| UW Connect User Licensing (ongoing, monthly charge per user) | $45 (FTE) $14 (Student) |
$17 |
Add-on Services |
||
| Enterprise Service Desk Available to UW Connect Service Management customers as a for-fee service. |
✔ | |
Administration |
||
| Records retention policy: Design is underway to support records retention policies. The default setting will purge records 6 years after the fiscal year that a record was closed with agreed upon exceptions based on business requirements (e.g. the HRP Case Management service will have a custom records retention approach). | Future | Future |
| Business Associate Agreement (BAA) Included in the UW contract with ServiceNow to support departments with their HIPAA compliance processes. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Managed by UW-IT UW-IT manages the contract in concert with Internet2. Includes negotiated rates, terms and conditions. |
✔ | ✔ |
| Accessibility The web-based customer intake forms and the My Requests page are accessible. However, the agent-facing user interface does NOT yet meet accessibility standards. UW-IT continues to work with ServiceNow on their accessibility improvement roadmap. |
✔ | ✔ |
Last reviewed March 1, 2022
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