What’s new in San Diego – key upcoming enhancements

Mark Edwards - 25th February 2022

Has it really been six months already since the ServiceNow Rome release?  Seemingly so, as the San Diego release is just a few weeks away. So, what’s new and worth getting excited about in San Diego?

The Next Experience on the Now Platform

As I’m sure many of you are aware, the headline feature is the new User Interface (UI). 

Officially dubbed the Next Experience, this completely overhauls the ServiceNow UI and brings it firmly into the modern era.  I’d go as far as to say this is one of the most significant updates of the user interface since ServiceNow first launched.

It will take a little getting used to for those of us who have been hacking away since the beginning.  It comes switched on by default for new instances or can be enabled by a single system property for upgraded instances.

Moving forwards this will be key functionality, so I’d encourage all users to take a close look as soon as possible.  Having given it a test run it seems robust and complete although I have no doubt there will be some specific cases where functionality is either missing or broken. For a v1 product though, it seems to hit the mark very well.

 

Refreshed, a more consumer-like mobile experience

Not to be outdone, the mobile experience has also received a huge overhaul, with mobile studio now officially a legacy product and both mobile app builder and mobile card builder receiving major enhancements allowing even citizen developers to produce most mobile configurations. 

With this, the entire mobile user interface has also received a refresh to bring a more consumer-like experience to mobile applications. 

Mobile now also sports native iPad OS support along with multiple SSO provider capabilities to streamline the login process. New usability enhancements in the mobile applications include the addition of dynamic maps and navigation capabilities and automatic screen refresh ensuring that mobile users always have access to the most up-to-date information.

 

More connected and productive smart experiences

Now Intelligence has also received great attention in this release with enhancements to AI Search and natural language understanding including guided workflows for tuning your NLU models. 

Also under the same banner are enhancements to virtual agent, including a new admin console, analytics, and a topic recommendations feature. Agent chat additions include the ability for agent workload capacity to now be managed across all service channels, automated masking of sensitive data, and automated profanity filtering and monitoring in chats.

Security capabilities on the platform have also been beefed up with support for the system for cross-domain identity management standard for exchanging and centralizing identity information amongst multiple systems. A PCI Configuration control is added for those instances which need to process payment card information, providing both a scorecard showing how compliant an instance is to the PCI-DSS standard and identifying where non-compliant parts of the instance should be addressed.

 

Bonus: the free Application Insights app to visualize and monitor your system’s health

Finally, there is a new application insights app that will be freely available on the ServiceNow store, allowing administrators to monitor and visualize their instance performance, see correlated events and provide rapid access to resources to take any necessary corrective actions.

 

Summary - getting ready for the most significant release of ServiceNow

All these features and enhancements are part of the base ServiceNow platform so will be available to all users regardless of their subscription.  Moreover, there will undoubtedly be refreshes and updates to the key applications – I’ve seen some of the new workspaces using the new UI and have to say, they look gorgeous.

Hopefully, this quick tour of the headline features has whetted your appetite for more.  The team here will be taking a more detailed look at specific new features over the coming weeks, and ServiceNow will undoubtedly be ramping up their marketing efforts to showcase these features as we draw nearer to general availability for the new release. 

Could this be the most significant release of ServiceNow since its original launch?  I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that it is.

To find out more about our offerings, including San Diego upgrade support, contact us today.