dromero.dev

About

As a Mission Critical Facilities Engineer and as a Data Center Operations Engineer. Regular well planned and scheduled tasks need to take place but require an RFC (Request for Change) to be submitted, evaluated and approved in ServiceNow. Also, it is required of the Engineer running the RFC to send communications over email to large groups of teams and people after the approval.

Here are just a few examples of regular work requiring an RFC:

• Data Center Cleaning
• Air filter replacements in cooling devices supporting data center and server room infrastructure.
• Monthly Generator Runs.
• RPDU Replacements.
• UPS Battery Maintenance.
• Working under raised flooring where 2 or more panels will be removed at a time.

Globally, both teams are responsible for and support just over 1030 critical spaces (MDF, IDF, Server Rooms, Data Centers, Co-Locations, Labs) and on average there are roughly a few hundred RFCs created manually monthly that are considered regular work. All of this has been carefully planned and coordinated using an Excel file. The Mission Critical Facilities Team (MCFT) reached out to the Data Center Tools & Automation team to see if anything could be done to improve work effectiveness and efficiency as each RFC takes about 10-15 minutes to complete and submit; not including email communications that need to be sent later.

Problem Solving:

Since all the data needed to submit an RFC as well as the details that would be send in email communications were already in the Excel file. I developed a python script with a database that regularly read the file, submitted the RFC using the ServiceNow API, sent the email communications out using email templates and tracked everything in its database.

Although this was nothing fancy, here are a couple snippets and screenshots.