When Paris release is around the corner, it’s that time of year again for us to learn about the new features, enhancements, and APIs that may be applicable to someone developing an application to list on the store or OEM. I'm very excited and want to share with you about the followings.
Last week we opened up Early Access for Technology Partners to get their hands on Paris, running it through its paces and preparing to submit their apps for certification.
The Paris release has lots of great new features including some that we are very excited about and many other improvements across the platform that will enable technology partners to build apps on the platform that make work, work better.
In this post, we'll provide an overview of all the significant features and improvements that Technology Partners will want to be aware of, whether you are building apps for the ServiceNow Store or OEM. The TPP technical team is also working on doing deep dives into many of these areas, so stay tuned.
New Features and Major Enhancements
Safe workplace applications
Safe Workplace is a new suite of applications in the Paris release. Safe Workplace applications help your organization prepare its workforce and workplaces to resume operations after emergencies and pandemics like COVID-19.
Emergency Response Operations
Emergency Response Operations is a new application in the Paris release. Emergency Response Operations was originally developed to monitor and aid in stopping the community spread of COVID-19 among employees. It is part of the suite of ServiceNow Emergency Response Management applications built on the Now Platform to assist companies in their emergency response efforts. Use it with these other Emergency Response Management applications(Emergency Exposure Management, Emergency Outreach and Emergency Self Report).
Process Automation Designer
Process Automation Designer enables process owners to author cross-enterprise workflows and create a single, unified process. You can also use Process Automation Designer to provide end users with a simplified, task-oriented view of your process. With Process Automation Designer you can connect multiple flows and actions into an end-to-end business workflow,Reuse existing Flow Designer flows, subflows, or actions to automate process activities, Organize process activities in a digitized Kanban-style board and Guide end users to complete a process in a task-oriented interface, such as a playbook.
Hardware Asset Management
Hardware Asset Management is a new application in the Paris release. It is a licensable application with advanced workflow, automation, and mobile capabilities that you can use to maintain your assets.
Workforce Optimization for ITSM
Workforce Optimization for ITSM is a new application in the Paris release. Use Workforce Optimization for ITSM to improve the quality and efficiency of service teams and enhance team satisfaction. Assess the skills your organization needs and use Predictive Intelligence to identify skill gaps and recommend coaching and training needs for your teams—all from one central location.
Natural Language Query
Natural Language Query is a new application in the Paris release. NLQ enables you to quickly get answers from data in your instance by entering plain-language questions into the user interface.
Predictive Intelligence Workbench
This is a new application in the Paris release. Predictive Intelligence Workbench provides pre-built use case templates and guides you through your machine-learning implementation to create intelligent business processes. Business process architects use Predictive Intelligence Workbench functionality to get started with machine learning-based use cases. You can determine your business value, monitor your models, and view related statistics using the Predictive Intelligence .
ServiceNow Mobile
Too many to name them all, but Campaigns for promotional display, Domain separation support for mobile platform, Edge Encryption support for mobile platform and Actionable push notifications are a few of the new features in addition to enhancements like Studio UI improvement, Pull-to-refresh capability for charts and much more. If you have an existing mobile capability or think your app will benefit from one then you should look at how ServiceNow Mobile could accelerate your rollout.
Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and Paris sees many new capabilities including:
- Create a flow with roles
- Content filtering for Flow Designer
- Delete Multiple Records step
- Duplicate an action or subflow within a flow
- Get Catalog Variables action
- Key-Value Map transform function
- Send SMS action in Flow Designer
- Submit Catalog Item Request action
- Update Multiple Records step
- Update Multiple Records action
- Use a script to check if a flow has an Ask for Approval action
- Use Flow Data actions to create reusable Process Automation Designer activities
- Create complex object templates
- Test a flow, subflow, or action in the background
IntegrationHub too has added capabilities with the addition of:
- JSONStreamingBuilder and XMLStreamingBuilder APIs
- JSON parser step
- Access controls for outbound transactions
- Connections dashboard
- Support multiple connections
- IntegrationHub spokes on the ServiceNow Store
Automated Testing Framework
Added support for test the functionality of attaching a file to a Service Portal form widget and Viewing additional information about a component by selecting it from the step custom component list.
Workspace
Workspace was previously called Agent Workspace. The Agent Workspace received a lot of attention in the Paris release with enhancements like Configure a playbook user experience, Domain Separation for Workspace, Messaging Actions module, and Asynchronous messaging, other features.
Virtual Agent
Added support for Customizable chat menu, Virtual Agent notifications for web and mobile chat client, Custom input and response controls in Virtual Agent Designer, Virtual Agent Lite, Seamless integration with NLU Model Builder in Virtual Agent Designer, Debugging conversation flow variables during topic testing, Multi-language NLU model support in Virtual Agent Designer, Conversational custom chat integrations and chatbot interoperability (APIs) and Topic authoring support for custom chat channels in Virtual Agent Designer.
Service Portal
Get a summary of all widgets that appear on Service Portal pages to better understand widget customizations and page usage through Portal Analyzer, Enable external users to register to a ServiceNow app through Service Portal, and a Standard ticket page which gives service Portal users a consistent way to view their submitted requests. has been added in the Paris release.
Service Catalog
Service Catalog received a lot of attention in the Paris release with enhancements like Request a catalog item on behalf of another user if the item is configured to support delegated requests, Upload an attachment as a variable for a catalog item, Show formatted text on a catalog item form, Associate a catalog item with categories of a different scope for accelerated and delegated application development, Enhancements for a multi-row variable set and Write automated end-to-end tests for requester flows to validate the Requested For variable flows for cart checkout, order guides, and catalog item access.
Guided Tour Designer
Support has been added to sort tours in alphabetical order by setting the (com.snc.guided_tours.sort) property to true. Each guided tour is allotted with a unique tour ID when it is created.
Authentication
With respect to authentication, Support OpenID Connect (OIDC) as a Single Sign-On (SSO) Identity Provider, Support executing an OAuth script from a MID Server and Enable self-registration to allow the external user access to ServiceNow custom applications has been added in the Paris release.
Scripting and App Dev Enhancements
New Scoped APIs - JSONStreamingAPI, JSONStreamingBuilder, ScriptableFlowRunner are a few of the new scoped APIs and methods included in the platform.
Studio - Few of the new features included in the Studio are Source Control integration support for custom global-scoped applications, Source Control supports linking to a Git repository through the SSH protocol without a MID Server, Delta or incremental loading is supported for custom applications in Source Control which replaces uninstalling and reinstalling the application when you apply changes from a remote Git repository.
Advanced Work Assignment - AWA now supports monitoring Advanced Work Assignment activity by reviewing information on the Advanced Work Assignment Stats page. This page includes performance statistics, channel summaries, and channel breakdowns.
Reporting - Configure new data visualization components in Workspace, Access KPI Details from the Reporting and PA Widget configuration, Auto-refresh single score widgets and reports, Foreign exchange (FX) currency support in Reporting, Embed report visualizations in scheduled emails of reports, Configure List report titles.
cloning - A few of the changes in this release are no clone request available in debug mode, The preserve users and related tables option when requesting a system clone is no longer enabled by default, The operator to match regular expressions [matches regex] is no longer supported when you create a data preserver. The ServiceNow framework has changed and can no longer support converting a regular expression into proper SQL for clone data preservation.
Other
Release Notes by Product
I've covered Platform and Application Development release notes in this article, but if your app has a dependency or adjacency to a ServiceNow product, you should read through that product's Paris release notes. I've listed those here by product:
- IT Business Management release notes
- Customer Service Management release notes
- Governance, Risk, and Compliance release notes
- HR Service Delivery release notes
- IT Operations Management release notes
- IT Service Management release notes
- Performance Analytics and Reporting release notes
- Security Operations release notes
- Software Asset Management release notes
Feel free to bookmark this post or mark it helpful, and if you think I've missed something, please let me know so I can get it added.
Good luck and happy developing!
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