During an outage, staff get a clear update every hour until it is fixed
When IT declares a major incident in ServiceNow, the AI drafts a plain update from the engineers' notes every hour. The incident manager approves it, and it reaches every affected employee on Teams and email.
- Used day to day by
- IT team
- IT service desk
How it runs with AI
The AI picks up each major incident in ServiceNow and turns the engineers' notes into a plain update: what is down, what to do meanwhile and when the next update comes. The incident manager approves it in Teams, and the AI sends it to the affected staff and answers every new ticket about the outage with it. The cycle repeats every hour until the all-clear.
How it is done today
When SAP or email goes down, the incident manager runs the fix and writes the staff updates at the same time. Updates go out late or full of technical terms, and the service desk spends the outage answering hundreds of tickets that all ask the same question.
Step by step
Where the work happens, what the AI does, and where it hands over to a person.
-
Step 1, AI
Picks up each major incident as soon as it is declared in ServiceNow
Needs to know: What counts as major
In
ServiceNow -
Step 2, AI
Writes a plain update from the work notes and the service's outage plan
Needs to know: Outage plan per service, Update template
In
ServiceNow -
Step 3, Person
Approves the draft in Teams, or edits a line first
In
Microsoft Teams -
Step 4, AI
Sends the update to everyone who uses the affected service, on Teams and email
Needs to know: Users of each service
In
Microsoft Teams , 
Outlook -
Step 5, AI
Links each new ticket about the outage to it and replies with the latest update
Needs to know: Signs of the same outage
In
ServiceNow Exception to step 5
Sends a ticket to the service desk when it describes a different problem
-
Step 6, AI
Asks the resolver lead for news before each update, until the all-clear
Needs to know: Resolver lead per service, Update schedule
In
Microsoft Teams Exception to step 6
Alerts the incident manager when the resolver lead is silent at the hour, with a holding update ready
What stays with a person
- Approves the draft in Teams, or edits a line first
Apps in this example
- ServiceNow
- Microsoft Teams
- Outlook
The same flow works with the apps you use.
This fits you if
- An outage of SAP, email or the network hits staff at several plants, branches or offices at once
- You run major incidents in ServiceNow
- Staff raise tickets or call the service desk to ask what is happening
- Updates go out when the incident manager finds time to write them
What to watch for
- Every update goes out after the incident manager approves it. The AI drafts, and a person decides what staff are told
- When the cause may be a cyber attack, your security lead approves every update before it goes out
- The AI writes from the work notes, the resolver lead's replies and each service's outage plan, which its owner writes in advance. Fix times are the engineers' estimates, and the update says whose they are
- Each service needs a list of its users, such as an Entra ID group for SAP, so updates reach the people affected. IT keeps these lists current
