What’s new in Madrid?

James Morrisey - 10th May 2019

The recent release for ServiceNow (Madrid) introduces a vast number of new features to improve efficiencies throughout an organization. In this blog I’m going to talk about my top 5 new features in this release and how they can bring value to you as customers through specific focus on user experience.

 

Virtual Agent

In the latest release, ServiceNow have released 6 new out of the box topics for ITSM. These are:

  • Resolved Incident – Allows users with the itil role to resolve an incident through chat.
  • Update Change Request – Allows users with the itil role to update the actual start and end time for a change and change the state to work in progress or closed.
  • Identify Scheduled Changes – Allows users with the itil role to see a list of upcoming change requests based on the configuration item inputted into the chat.
  • Identify Available Change Windows – Can be used to find out when the next available change window is for a configuration item.
  • Create Problem – Allows the creation of problem records through chat.
  • Escalate IT Ticket – Users can raise the urgency of IT tickets for a faster resolution. 

It’s great to see more out of the box conversations and I’d like to see this trend continue in future releases. These conversations are a great way to reduce low complexity repetitive tasks within an organization. I was recently at a ServiceNow event where they were asking for ideas for new conversations to be added in future releases. Hopefully mine will make it into New York!

 

Mobile Studio

One of the most sought after features in Madrid is the new mobile studio. This lets fulfillers, managers and approvers quickly respond to tasks on the go. It provides a familiar user experience and the studio itself lets you build your own mobile apps. The ServiceNow agent app is available on the Google Play Store and the App Store. Out of the box ServiceNow have created three applications for Field Service, ITSM and Approvals.

The Mobile Studio lets you create additional applications with no-code packaged components and templates. In addition, ServiceNow have released an offline read and write capability that will update tickets when a user is back online.

I think there is a lot of potential for the new mobile app. It’s a significant improvement over the classic application and I would expect to see more applications built in releases to come.

 

Agent Workspace

The innovative agent workspace is a new experience for agents working on tickets and provides a modern user interface. The tabbing functionality makes switching between tickets seamless and all information required for an agent to work on the ticket is available in one consolidated view. 

Furthermore, the Agent Assist feature will pull out relevant content related to the ticket such as knowledge articles and catalogue items. If you are using Agent Intelligence, it will also alert you if the ticket you are working on is part of a recent influx of tickets that could suggest a major incident should be raised.

The user interface is configurable and comes with a guided setup. One of the things that struck me with the workspace is how quickly you can switch between tabs, update tickets and pull out relevant content.  

Agent Workspace is available for ITSM and CSM customers currently, it will be interesting to see what happens in future releases.

 

Document Viewer

Another improvement in Madrid is the release of the Document Viewer. This essentially lets users view PDF documents in ServiceNow rather than open these in separate applications. A nice addition that will save users from switching between ServiceNow and other third-party applications.

Instance Security Centre

New in Madrid the Instance Security Centre (‘ISC’) is a new portal available out of the box that monitors the compliance effectiveness within an instance. This will help customers to detect, protect and respond to any security events within the instance.

Once upgraded to Madrid the ISC is available out of the box and it comes with a guided tour setup to walk you through the features in detail.

The instance security centre has been introduced as a replacement for the instance security dashboard.

 

Final Thoughts

It’s great to see another huge release for ServiceNow, arguably one of the biggest to date with the introduction of the new mobile app and agent workspace. The focus on improving the user experience and efficiencies of the platform will help to further drive platform adoption and efficiency throughout organizations using the platform and I look forward to seeing what is to come in the next release.

If you would like to find out more information on any of these features, please contact us here.