BookStack vs. ServiceNow IT Service Management

BookStack is fantastic for having business users and not-so-technically-savvy IT users. It enables them to create a documentation they like in a visual way while still forcing them to adhere to logical structure of a document. It works fine even for more technical matters such as integration guidelines, especially when these concern some of the more obscure technologies. The exported docs are presentable but lack any interactivity. Where it lacks is generating heavily technical documentations. Heavier REST or GraphQL integrations should for example be documented through other means. As for developer documentations, there are definitely more suitable alternatives, also.

Incentivized

We found that ServiceNow's ITSM product is overall a great product to use in all areas of IT. Whether it be Security, Infrastructure, or Networking, nothing is too complicated to bring into ServiceNow for processing. Being able to use flows to automate task creation and auto assign has helped to fill process gaps that existed with our previous product.

Incentivized

• Documentation
• Guides
• Knowledge-base
• Version control

Incentivized

• Integration
• Good search capabilities. Applications are created within CMDB and we can search for the app to see the changes, incidents and problems created
• Reporting. Great store of MIS reports and will let you to create custom reports
• Visual Task Boards - use it as Kanban boards

• Continuity in backward compatibility
• Dark mode
• Absent tree view

Incentivized

• Finding requests that I opened and have since been completed by the assigned group/individual is very difficult to accomplish unless I've written down the request numbers somewhere.
• Requests that I opened and are subsequently closed, often continue to appear in the list of "My Open Requests" giving the appearance that they were not completed when in fact they were.
• It may exist, but if it does I haven't found it yet, which makes it less than intuitive, but I would like to see the ability to recall a request in ServiceNow.
• I believe our firewall rule change request for is a custom form, but it has a serious drawback. If I submit such a request and need to make a correction to it before it is approved, there isn't anyway for me to do so. The request has to first be rejected with the creation of a sub-task in order to edit it before it is resubmitted for approval.

Incentivized

Excellent rating for exceptional service provided for efficiency and efficient output given by it. It helped both client as well business to coordinate better for the requirements they work. It help to generate reports for real time progress on task. It helps to keep active watch on progress made by all parties

The basic actions of creating, updating and tracking requests is easy to udnerstand and use. Only a short onboarding training is needed to train the users of how to use it properly. However, the UI/UX experience can feel bloated with the many options it offers when you start to customize the tool to your company needs. It is also not the best looking user interface compared to more modern web applications.

Incentivized

We have never had any issues with ServiceNow's availability that I am aware of in the two years I have been using it.

Incentivized

For a massive system, page loads are reasonably quick, including searches.

Incentivized

I would give it this rating because we have had no major issues with the support for ServiceNow after we implemented it at our organization. They seem to respond promptly and efficiently if we ever do need to open a support case with them about an issue we are having.

Incentivized

To type in what should be a text box, you have to click an empty cell, a tiny text box pop up opens with a check box and an X. You the. Type in the text box and have to click the check mark. If you have a bunch of fields to fill out, doing this is very annoying. Absolutely know thought went in to this. I'm sure somebody in marketing thought it was a good idea. It wasn't.

While implementation the focus always should be on customizing features which are out of box to minimize the debts following the main features like Incidents, Requests, Change & Problem Statement. It should be strictly ensured to maintain right data quality, eliminating any duplicates or wrong workflows and incorrect reportings. Strong security and goverance to be implemented.

Confluence, having only a slight advantage in terms of features compared to BookStack, really only makes sense to procure as a part of the Jira bundle. It requires much more maintenance from my experience and does not really deliver any extra value aside from the very strict certifications like HIPAA. DokuWiki and MediaWiki both provided way too much in terms of customizability, not really focusing on the business need. Of course, MediaWiki was conceived for a whole different purpose but is very often seen being used for both internal and public documentation delivery. DokuWiki did not provide the authors with the user-friendly environment that BookStack has and integrated most poorly with LDAP. As for OneNote, which was used for support docs prior to BookStack, it provided the authors with too much of a user-friendly environment, rendering the product of their work very inconsistent. Also, the sharing model was either peer-to-peer or within Teams, neither of which made it easy to audit and supervise.

Incentivized

Having used other ticketing/asset tools in the past with other companies. This time, we opted for ServiceNow, primarily because of the company's scale. Once you start hiring a lot of employees, you need a robust tool with some maturity. We wanted to split the IT team into back-office and front-office teams. We needed proper permissions and auto-escalation. Also, approval flows for certain requests (mostly hardware and file access requests). All of this is part of the standard ServiceNow package. Some of the cheaper alternatives we felt were more suited for very small businesses or teams.

Incentivized

ServiceNow works as an enterprise solution.

Incentivized

• Spillover within Business IT staff up, nearly double substitutability. This is through the ability of a support technician servicing a different product to find a guide describing how to solve the more frequent issues the way a product lead would do it.
• Time to draft and publish a documentation down some 20% compared to previous solution.
• OpenSource that integrates fine with enterprise-grade software and somehow even passes security audit. 20 times cheaper to implement compared to Confluence, almost free to maintain.

Incentivized

• Personally as an end-user, I feel like my issues have been resolved more quickly/don't tend to get as lost when using previous tools.
• Having a centralized place where all questions are asked and all issues are resolved means I don't have to spend time searching for the appropriate team. I can just create a ticket and it's channeled to the appropriate team for me.

Incentivized