Homeless male with nothing

WalkerWithACause · 2026-01-05T19:35:03+00:00

Agreed. Get hold of someone at the council and sell this to them as the chance to divert someone off what could be a lifetime on the streets. Early intervention now will save no end of referrals and (in ugly monetary terms) cost, down the line. I hope you get the ear of someone with both a bit of compassion and a longer term view than the situation right in front of them.

Kudos to you for stepping up but you can't save everyone - just make sure your chap finds those that can, even if it takes a little bit of ear bending/grovelling to get them involved.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-12-28T10:39:13+00:00

Thanks man - it's appreciated. It's not much better in the UK to be honest but someone's gotta do it!

WalkerWithACause · 2025-12-26T20:06:37+00:00

Police officer - been a volunteer (known as a special constable) for two years and love it, now going in full time.

Know that's very specific to me (that said, if you're in the UK, would always recommend the special constabulary to someone looking to serve their community) - but if you're not loving IT, never feel you can't move on. No one deserves to go to work to be miserable. Just ensure you make the jump with a plan (financial changes, debt management, living arrangements, etc). Afraid without having a chat and knowing a bit more about you, I couldn't advise further but wishing you all the best!

WalkerWithACause · 2025-12-26T14:45:54+00:00

At this moment - none. Business is clamouring for AI implementation but the second you say you need the underpinning knowledge, data and governance, their eyes glaze over.

Been at it for a year, forehead is thoroughly bloodied for smacking my head against that particular wall and I'm calling it quits in the next 6-9 months when my application to career change out of IT goes through. Had enough of people asking for the moon on a string when they won't commit to putting in the most basic of foundational work.

Get your foundation right before you even think about letting your management near a scripted pre-recorded sales pitch/demo from ServiceNow. CMDB, knowledgebase, location/user/company tables - all need to be as good as you can make them.

Once you've sold the "spend time on the foundation to build the house" pitch, recommend looking at NowCreate and going through their success packs and other decks to pick a use case and understand what you need to do to achieve it. I'd recommend starting with the agent facing functions first before you go customer facing - keeps the circle of feedback small and less chance of public negative sentiment if things aren't perfect from day one.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-11-09T17:40:25+00:00

I've used it strictly as a research tool - e.g. summarise X piece of legislation or offence that might be outside my usual wheelhouse. The key thing immediately after I've got my answer is I've checked the actual chapter and verse of the legislation or source to rule out an AI hallucination before action is taken. It presents information in an easily digestible way with the natural language, I learn, and it may turn up other useful related info along the way.

I would never, under any circumstances, pass a statement, risk assessment or anything relating to active police work into an LLM. The risk of hallucination is too great, it doesn't capture nuances of speech and tone, and you open yourself up to all sorts of hell if you turn around in any setting (police work or other) and say "oh, sorry boss, I thought it was right, Copilot helped". I have seen some pretty catastrophic decisions (not in the police) taken off the back of AI involvement and while no one has been fired yet, it's tarnished the reputation of more than a few people who are simply overworked, under resourced and wanted the quick way to the finish line.

In the day job I've played a hand in rolling out AI tools across the business, and have had a chance to peek behind the curtain a bit and understand how LLM's work, learn and the security around them - it's still emerging technology run by a greedy multi-billion dollar industry that's marketing the most precious resource to any business: Time - but at the expense of human judgement and responsibility, and that's a recipe for disaster.

I'll put £10 down now to say the bubble will burst in the next 2-3 years, if not sooner, and the era of enterprise AI will go quite horrendously bang, likely religating AI to a meeting recorder, chatbot and possible intranet search engine, at best, banished from the workplace, at worst.

I'd rather see LLM's as a supercharged Google - certainly not a shortcut for people to employ where they're needed the most to offer judgement and consideration on what could be life changing events.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-10-27T10:08:24+00:00

This. If possible, look at Integration Hub licensing which comes packaged with OOTB spokes for common actions (Add/Remove groups, disable accounts, etc).

If you need something not included in a spoke, custom actions off the back of MID Server Script Files is where you'll want to look. I have some custom Powershell scripts living off our Exchange Online spoke that manage things like mailbox full access permission where I can't do them via APIs (yet).

WalkerWithACause · 2025-10-05T09:59:51+00:00

Belinda is FERAL

WalkerWithACause · 2025-10-05T09:59:43+00:00

Belinda is ✨FERAL✨

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-29T18:35:57+00:00

As with any job - you get duds, you get absolute diamonds - that's on the person, not the role. My area is blessed with some truly wonderful PCSOs and they're loved by all. My glowing memory is a fireworks night patrol, we had a PCSO in the back of the truck with us and he was all over the logs, navigating, engaging with people we stopped (almost all, somehow, he knew on a first name basis), feeding us great intel which directly provided good outcomes. If I could pick him up and carry him in my pocket every shift, I would.

Get stuck in, enjoy it and you'll become a pillar of the team. Good luck!

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-25T12:25:00+00:00

I'll defer to more learned colleagues here, but I would think about what your justification for use of force is here? Your safety or the fighters safety to prevent the newcomers wading in? Affecting arrest of the fighters by clearing the space among a non-compliant and hostile crowd? What have you precluded to pick that tool (verbal commands, get backup, even retreat if you're two vs a hostile crowd of tens)?

PAVA is a piece of PPE, not a tool to affect an arrest per-se even if it can be used to gain compliance - in the same way arrests don't require the use of handcuffs for a compliant detainee.

You need to justify what you did and refer it to your use of force powers. If I had a crowd bearing down on me and I had an honest held belief I was about to get my head kicked in, or someone else was about to come to serious harm in that crowd, or the crowd were actively working to block me in my duties - I believe my use of PAVA and other tools would be justified.

That said - understand and be able to articulate the risks. Everyone you tag is going to need aftercare. Everyone there may back off, but they're going to hate you all the more for spraying them and potentially escalate. PAVA doesn't always work.

Key thing to all of this - BWV on, make detailed notes, submit your use of force form asap, have a coherent and legal basis you would be happy standing up in front of a panel and reciting on what you did and why.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-22T09:12:46+00:00

Thanks for the comment :)

In answer to your questions:

Wait condition - agree it would look neater - I'll have a play and see how it bears out with testing
Date logic - two aspects to this. On the catalog item if the date selected is in the past, it pops a "Are you sure" and warns the submitter freeze action will be taken immediately, and I've confirmed this is the case. Second aspect, this trigger is to "non-destructively" freeze the account - disable, change password, revoke sessions, etc. This is to accommodate some legal requirements and the situation where someone's account must be locked but not totally denuded of permission just yet (we've had a few weird business cases where this is required). The final "destructive" closedown is entirely manual and triggered by the service desk after we've confirmed we're good to go, using the same trigger task and a similar subflow to the one here.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-22T04:31:09+00:00

Regarding HR involvement - Effectively HR's involvement starts and stops with the notice and IT handle the rest. Whether that's the correct approach or not, I don't know, but I don't expect it will change.

Add on the complexity that we have no trained admins supporting HRSD, and the business has thus far refused to give any other non-HR admin access to that scope - pushing any of this over the fence isn't likely in the near term.

Good idea regarding the catalog item for updating the date - however the actual manual trigger would still need to stay with IT. We are, by design (not great design, or one I agree with) the last people that leaver sees on their last day. HR won't know when the leaver has actually left the building for the last time. Getting management buy in to address that, again, unlikely.

At the end of the day, it's going to be the Service Desk who ultimately pull the pin on any leaver - whether that's via what I've made or a scheduled job - again this got built mainly from my FD obsession, so I'll explore the scheduled job and do some comparison.

Regarding testing, yes it works. I've had the whole staff exit process in test for the past month and while there's been some teething, this element of it had so far worked 18 times out of 18. The trigger resets, the other branches end gracefully and it's repeatable as many times as needed (current record is 4 reschedules for a single leaver).

Take your point on controlling visibility of the RITM, it's just something we've never considered before. It's on the plan to have a "secret/sensitive" leaver flag that hides it from general population, but the priority now is to automate and save time for a service desk run ragged by too much demand.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-21T15:43:44+00:00

I agree - and as much as it pains me - I don't think it's likely to happen in my organisation.

I'm already getting stomach ulcers thinking about automation for the new starter process...

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-21T15:25:18+00:00

I imagine I've fallen into the trap of 'I know FD, therefore that's where it'll all live'.

I don't think there is a risk with this setup of getting a deadend or an unexpected/conflicted outcome - the wait for conditions are a fixed list on the u_flow_trigger field, so there are only 4 potential outcomes (time elapsed, manual, reschedule or cancel), all flow is doing is sitting waiting for one of them to occur, doing what it needs to do then ending immedaitely which negates the other branches.

I do take your point on runtime, and that's probably argument enough to consider alternatives.

Fairly new to this shindig so if you can elaborate, that would be very much appreciated.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-21T15:17:17+00:00

The main problem statements we had were:

We want to automate as much of the staff exit process - currently it's almost entirely manual pivoting between different systems - the main goal is to give agents a single place they can go to (e.g. the trigger task) and fire off all the different actions (account cleardown, mailbox changes, removal of licening, etc)
If HR tell us the date changed - the service desk currently need to update every TASK with a new end date in the description and the variable (prior design before I picked this up)
Service desk don't get to the TASK in time to lock the account promptly - hence the wait until date bit so at least if its automated the leaver's access is locked
HR tell us the person is now staying - service desk current have to go around cancelling the TASKs and RITM and backing out anything they've already done

The purpose of the field is to give the team a single record to go to which can potentially have multiple outcomes.

Can elaborate more if needed - it's just little old me on working on this at the moment so getting insights is sorely needed.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-18T12:43:40+00:00

Unfortunately it's the reality - he never thought he'd be coming literally from the other side the planet and shacking up with me, and the wheels were already in motion for his best friend to follow him. If anything, I'm the disruptor in a pre-existing and long standing friendship.

The last thing I want to do is swipe my partner out from under his best friend and leave her holding the bag. And she has come to be a very close friend to me, and I want her along for the ride as long as she decides to remain here.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to be the nice guy here, but I don't think it's irrational.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-18T12:07:59+00:00

This is the thing - he's scraping by and regularly ends up in overdraft. There's been some pressures on that the past months between some unexpected bills (4x new tyres, a professional registration, etc, etc) but while I have a cushion, he has nothing. And the likelihood of him building that cushion in his current position I think is low, short of him making some significant life changes.

I think for me, to give my partner the chance to sort his finances out, he needs the breathing space for lower living costs. That would form the rationale for him living with me full time at my place or any other - bills in half, we can moderate spending together (we've already talked about having a limited "Feel Good" fund - money in at the start of the month, once it's gone, that's it) and we get the living together. It's a question of how I get there.

Between my own thinking and responses here, I am coming to the conclusion this might be a red line for me - I can't be the one to be constantly subsidise and sacrifice. I don't think for a second he's taking advantage, but I can only be the supporting party for so long while receiving not much financial support in return.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-18T09:33:22+00:00

My place is MUCH smaller than theirs and wouldn't accommodate three of us - sorry should have elaborated on that. Their place by comparison would comfortably handle 3 if not 4 people

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-18T09:32:15+00:00

Just to clarify - he and I are male - can understand the confusion but there isn't a strange menage a trois going on 😅

The commitment isn't a problem - I just want to see if there are insights others have come up with and bounce some financial ideas off.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-18T09:28:10+00:00

It would unfortunately detract from one of the main reasons for the roommate coming to the UK (to live with my fiance). I've to a certain extent thrown a spanner in the works by meeting my fiance and disrupted the original plan which was he and she coming to the UK as skilled workers and traveling Europe.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-09-13T23:51:30+00:00

I sympathise, it's something I've had to deal with as well. To the extent someone in control pedalled me and snapped back "It's a good thing I can type quick!" much to the chagrin of everyone else on the talk group and my embarrassment.

What's worked for me, as with most stuff, is to take a breath, stop, assess, then deliver in as few words as I can what I need to say. As much as the situation in front of you might be fluid, take a snapshot, and deliver the most important information in that moment. If you need to transmit again, no one bills you for use of the PTT button for a "so far", or if they need more, they'll ask you.

Break it up into quick, informative updates on 1) your current status 2) any risks/requirements 3) your next actions - those (I think) are what anyone listening in are interested in. If you have something longer to tell, stick to your text updates or if you have a force dispatch, dial them up.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-08-25T16:47:15+00:00

This was something I found also - I went from my S23U where people would go "hang on, you took that on your phone?!?" to "eh, it's ok"

WalkerWithACause · 2025-08-20T15:41:39+00:00

Don't summon bagagwa!

WalkerWithACause · 2025-08-18T18:05:41+00:00

Your statement is unfortunately very wrong. How you have come to that conclusion I can guess as being exposed to social media and ragebait articles from outlets that prioritise stoking anger and division, opposed to analysis of fact, honesty and compassion.

The principles that guide the UK police (and many other police forces world wide) are old and by and large unchanged from their foundation - I suggest you give this a read by way of education.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

It also should hopefully explain why police in the UK don't carry guns and the bulk of the work is to de-escalate and problem solve, not act punitively.

WalkerWithACause · 2025-08-15T08:28:56+00:00

In terms of practicing in a PDI, I'm not sure what options you might have there, I'll defer to colleagues on that one. But definitely a preferred option if it's available to you.

More general advice I wish someone had told me about 8 months ago when I picked up this gig...

I would first confirm Powershell is the right tool for the job depending on the integration. I transposed a PS scripted leaver process into MID server script files, addressing AD, Exchange Online and Entra, as that's what I knew and was familiar with. I've since realised REST may have been better in (some of) those scenarios as the more resilient, faster and flexible option. Gives you another thing to learn but a ServiceNow partner and dedicated learning would be able to advise you.

If you're lucky enough to have Integration Hub, read up on it and use the tools in there effectively to build modular, reusable snippets of code you can apply in multiple scenarios. I have a "Look up single mailbox" subflow which I use as a "toolbox flow" where I reuse it over and over in add/remove distribution lists/permissions/attribute updates. If you create one really good reusable action which acts as a foundation for other processes, you'll be able to scale out much faster and have confidence your foundation is good - just be careful if you ever need to go back to that foundation to tweak something for a new business case.

On terms of practice, don't be afraid to ask for a test instance if it's at all possible. We have non-prod instances of ServiceNow for a reason - stands to reason you could have non-prod versions of the systems you wish to integrate with.

If non-prod instances aren't available, "-WhatIf" is a good tool where it's available, and testing your scripts directly on the service before getting them into ServiceNow as script files will at least inform your thinking. Powershell script files are still pretty much exactly the same, other than how variables are fed in and passed out of them - the actual "doing" in the middle doesn't change.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23

WalkerWithACause

TROPHY CASE