December 2025 | Core Business Suite
If you've been waiting for a reason to get excited about your employee service experience, the CBS December 2025 release has you covered. December's update is all about making life easier — for employees who need help, and for the teams who support them. Let's break down what's new and why it matters.
A Fresher, Smarter Employee Experience
The biggest theme of this release? Simplicity. The Employee Center and CBS apps have gotten a meaningful facelift, designed to scale whether you're running a single department or a complex multi-department operation.
The redesigned homepage puts self-service front and center. Instead of hunting through menus to find what you need, employees are greeted with a clean, intuitive layout that gets them to the right help, fast. Navigation has been simplified and taxonomy has been unified across departments — which means HR, IT, Finance, Legal, and beyond all feel like they're part of the same product, not a patchwork of different tools.
Why does this matter? Because friction kills adoption. When employees can't quickly find what they need, they default to emailing a colleague, calling a helpdesk, or just giving up. A cleaner experience means more self-service, less manual handling, and happier people all around.
The Portal Got a Glow-Up
Building on the broader experience refresh, the portal itself has been redesigned with self-service as the north star. A few highlights:
- Help Topics now organize content around key service areas, so employees can zero in on HR questions, IT issues, Workplace Services, Finance, Legal, or Procurement without getting lost in a sea of catalog items.
- Simplified Left Navigation trims the clutter and keeps the most important actions within reach.
- Flexible View Options let organizations configure the portal to match their footprint — whether you support two departments or ten, the layout adapts without feeling bloated or sparse.
This is a win for admins and employees alike. Admins spend less time customizing and maintaining a complicated structure, and employees get an experience that actually reflects how their company is organized.
Request Forms: Finally Consistent
Here's one that might sound small but is actually a big deal: request form standardization. Previously, the look and feel of request forms could vary quite a bit depending on which department you were submitting to. That inconsistency creates confusion — employees aren't sure if they're filling something out correctly, and it adds unnecessary cognitive load to what should be a simple task.
With this release, form options have been standardized across departments right out of the box. Whether you're submitting a payroll request or a health and safety inquiry, the experience follows the same familiar patterns. Required fields are clearly marked, categories are easy to select, and the overall flow just makes sense.
For customers, this means shorter time-to-value on new department rollouts and a noticeably smoother employee experience from day one.
Notifications: One Voice, Everywhere
Last but definitely not least: notification standardization.If you've ever rolled out a new department in CBS and had to spend hours configuring notification templates, you know the pain. Starting now, notifications across all CBS applications have been standardized to deliver a consistent experience for everyone in the workflow — requesters, fulfillers, and approvers.
That means:
- Requesters get a clear confirmation that their request was received, with a link to track it.
- Fulfillers get a clean assignment notification with all the context they need to take action.
- Approvers see a consistent, easy-to-read format that makes it simple to act quickly.
Portal notifications are also included, so the in-app experience matches the email experience. The result is a cohesive communication flow that builds trust with employees — they always know what to expect and where things stand.
For admins, this is a serious time-saver during implementation. Less setup, less maintenance, more consistency.
The Bottom Line
The CBS December 2025 release is a cohesive set of improvements that add up to something significant: an employee service experience that's easier to use, faster to deploy, and more consistent across every touchpoint. Whether you're an employee trying to get a quick answer or an admin standing up a new department, this release makes your job simpler.
We're excited about where CBS is headed — and this release is a strong signal of that direction. Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, reach out if you want to see these features in action!
Have questions about the December release? Connect with your ServiceNow team to learn more.
