When Rome 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 month we opened up Early Access for Technology Partners to get their hands on Rome, running it through its paces and preparing to submit their apps for certification.
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.
New Features and Major Enhancements
Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and Rome sees many new capabilities including:
- Action error evaluation
- Flow error handler
- Transform functions
- Deactivated generation of reporting data
- Limited retention of Flow Designer variables
IntegrationHub too has added capabilities with the addition of:
- IntegrationHub Imports
- IntegrationHub usage and subscription notifications
- FIPS support in National Security Cloud (NSC) Impact Level 5 (IL-5) environment
- Integration steps support for connection timeout values
- REST step support for duplicate query parameters
ServiceNow Mobile
Too many to name them all, but Mobile App Builder, Universal linking for mobile, Mobile re-authentication are a few of the new features in addition to enhancements like Parameter screen enhancements, Extended capabilities for mobile UI rules, Action capability with navigation UI section 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.
Automated Testing Framework
Added support for Select2 functionalities in ATF and Headless browser for ATF in addition to enhancements like Improved workspace screenshots, Click Modal Button test step supports scoped application modals, UI16 navigator, Assert Text on Page test step supports Workspace and ATF component finder.
Workspace
The Agent Workspace received a lot of attention in the Rome release with enhancements like Enable inline editing for Workspace lists across your instance, Encrypt text on a form, Add field hints to form fields, and Convert and display currencies on a form using a price field, other features.
Virtual Agent
Added support for Conversational Interfaces module/Guided Setup, Multi-language topic authoring, Custom control framework, Link unfurling, Portal URL navigation, Virtual Agent notifications, Custom AI Search results, Auto Resolution simulation, Deflection tracking, Asynchronous chat in the web channel and Context refresh on device switch.
Natural Language Understanding
Added support for enabling or disabling a secondary intent for modeling, importing primary model content to a secondary model, translating multilingual models, multilingual model management and assigning an NLU editor to a model..
Service Portal
Service Portal highlights for the Rome release includes, Build a portal where users inside or outside of your organization can find information, submit requests, and complete business tasks, simplify the portal creation process by leveraging no-code, drag-and-drop development tools, create even richer web applications by editing and extending portals, pages, and widgets.
Service Catalog
New in the Rome release for Service Catalog includes, Service fulfillment steps in Catalog Builder, Preview of a catalog item in a Virtual Agent conversation from Catalog Builder, Provision for a pre-publish flow while submitting a catalog item in Catalog Builder, Annotations for a catalog item variable in Workspace and enhancements like Business duration for a catalog task, Access control rules for UI security issues, Document Object Model changes for Service Catalog widgets in Service Portal and much more.
Authentication
With respect to authentication, Support for Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card or Common Access Card (CAC) based authenticationlogins, OAuth JWT API endpoint for external clients, Support for hardware security keys and biometric authentication in multifactor authentication (MFA), Adaptive authentication, Inbound authentication profile, Adaptive authentication and Support FIPS (FedRamp) has been added in the Rome release.
Scripting and App Dev Enhancements
New Scoped APIs - DocumentService, PlaybookExperience,SystemDocumentVersion 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 Create, view, and customize Now Experiences within ServiceNow Studio using UI Builder, Migrate history from Update sets when Linking an application to Source Control, Link an application or application-customization to source control, New commit modes to allow committing only tracked changes and OpenSSH for SSH connections and URL redirects are now supported for Source Control connections.
UI Builder - Some of highlights for the Rome release includes, Empower your page builders to use themes in UI Builder, including previewing themes, and referencing theme variables in CSS, Author conditions right in UI Builder when working with data resources and Work with viewports directly on a page to create variants, specify audiences, or customize content.
Delegated Development - Few of the new features included in the Delegated Dev are enable delegated developers within a scoped app to delete an app that is created with ServiceNow Studio, Specify full access or individual source control features using delegated developer permissions and enable collaborator permission management for platform application development.
Application Management - You can now schedule the installation of multiple plugins, applications, or products as per your requirement and continue performing your tasks in the ServiceNow instance while the installation continues in the background. The admin need not monitor the installation progress, view the calendar of the scheduled installations and summary of the installations.
Import and Export - You can now see all the import sets and concurrent import sets for a scheduled data import chain in a single location called the Execution Contexts. The display shows an execution record for scheduled data imports and you can access import logs from a related list in import sets and concurrent import sets.
Advanced Work Assignment - AWA now supports Async mode for chat channels and Interaction wrap up i.e Configure chat channels to be used asynchronously so that customers can engage in long-running conversations with live agents or virtual agents and Use the new Wrap Up state to give agents time to complete their work on an interaction.
Reporting - Generate a report by entering a query instead of going through the full Report Designer menu, Use business calendars, Build context-sensitive and easily readable reports with more formatting options in the Report Designer and Use function fields in reports to perform database functions, such as arithmetic functions, coalesce, concatenation, and length.
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 Rome 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!
