Now Platform San Diego release early availability!
When San Diego 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 Release for Technology Partners to get their hands on San Diego, 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
Next Experience UI
Next Experience delivers a next-generation, intuitive, personalized experience to drive productivity, improve engagement, and surface insights across the Now Platform. ServiceNow Next Experience unifies your instance apps and reduces clicks to access the items you need to get working.
Lightstep Team Bridge
Lightstep Team Bridge is a new application in the San Diego release. Lightstep Team Bridge application enables you to integrate and sync ServiceNow Lightstep Incident Response with a primary enterprise ServiceNow instance.
Conversational Interfaces Home
Conversational Interfaces Home is a new application in the San Diego release. Conversational Interfaces Home application enables you to install, manage, and monitor your virtual and live agents to support your users through chat.
Procurement Service Management
Procurement Service Management is a new application in the San Diego release. Procurement Service Management application provides your employees with a simple automated tool that they can use to shop for goods and services that they need at work.
Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and San Diego sees many new capabilities including:
- Flow diagramming view
- Flow templates
- Try flow logic
- Feature access to Flow error handler
- Flow error handler flow logic support
- Flow run start date available in local time
IntegrationHub too has added capabilities with the addition of:
- Import data with new features in IntegrationHub - Import
- Set system properties on the Remote Process Sync Properties page
- Run Data Stream actions with the quick() method in the ScriptableFlowRunner class
- Retry-After header support in Retry Policies
ServiceNow Mobile
Too many to name them all, but Support for multiple SSO providers, Control specific app usage, Automatic app refresh are a few of the new features in addition to enhancements like Mobile card enhancements Record and Icon section enhancements, Advanced offline capabilities, 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 pausing a test to troubleshoot failures or unexpected behavior by adding a breakpoint for a particular test step and hierarchical page context around an element while inspecting a component on a page by using the Label path field in the Page Inspector in addition to enhancements like Run Server Side Script output indicates the failure line, Run Server Side Script supports parameters, Updated way of setting the value of Select2 and Use Retrieve Components for specific steps in a test.
Workspace
The Agent Workspace received a lot of attention in the San Diego release with enhancements like Playbook admins can pre-select optional activities that agents can add to a running Playbook, UI Builder to customize the user experience for activity within Playbook Experience, and Agent Chat supports Async Mode for Chat Channels., other features.
Virtual Agent
Added support for Scriptable API for voice conversation transcripts, Virtual Agent Designer topic development with Natural Language Understanding, Virtual Agent notifications, Conversational Interfaces Home, Support for secure inputs in custom controls, New ServiceNow NLU system entities, Detecting user languages in conversations, Loading only the latest open conversation in the web client, Push notifications for unread messages in the Now Mobile app, Managing sensitive data in conversations
Natural Language Understanding
Added support for Resolving intent issues, Exporting NLU models, Adding a model to an update set, est panel feedback, Ignoring utterance punctuation, Model creation options, and Model management.
Service Catalog
New in the San Diego release for Service Catalog includes Add conditions to service fulfillment steps in Catalog Builder, Define the sequence of the fulfillment of catalog items in an order guide and Configure the ability for requesters to modify the quantity of an individual catalog item in an order guide.
Authentication
With respect to authentication, Enforce MFA for SSO-based login such as SAML, OpenID Connect and Digest, Use a defined schema for representing users and groups, and RESTful APIs to run the CRUD operations on the user, Use a defined schema to group resources based on System for Cross Domain Identity Management (SCIM) 2.0 Standards, Use OAuth tokens that are generated based on the device and the user, Support logging in to ServiceNow instances through Facebook Single Sign-On has been added in the San Diego release.
Scripting and App Dev Enhancements
New Scoped APIs - PDAutomationProvider, PolarisUI, VoiceTranscriptObjectare 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 and view a workspace experience using UI Builder with ServiceNow Studio, Link an application or application-customization to a source control and manage changes from a Git repository, Publish your company’s customizations to scoped applications purchased from the ServiceNow® Store or provided with the base system to the ServiceNow Application Repository and Create customizations to ServiceNow Store applications that belong to other organizations.
UI Builder - Some of highlights for the San Diego release includes, Use a wide array of functions and logical operands to configure components, Repeat a component or multiple components using repeaters, Use the low code JSON editor to configure component properties, Opt in to a new, better performing layout system to configure CSS Flexbox or Grid layouts without editing code and Customize component styling without modifying CSS code.
Platform Security - Security compliance reporting is expanded in the San Diego release to include payment card industry (PCI) compliance. Security administrators can see how their security system property configuration matches ServiceNow suggestions to comply with PCI regulation. Admins can view a daily PCI compliance score for an instance on the main Instance Security Center page.
Core Now Platform - Admins do not have access to the [sys_language] table. A language field appears in the sys_user field by default. ServiceNow personnel must edit the [sys_language] table to support languages other than the 22 for which ServiceNow offers language plugins. When ServiceNow personnel configure a new language, that language appears in the language menu when you create or change a user record. The two-character language code supports the BCP 47 standard.
Reporting - Create and distribute reports that show the current state of instance data, such as the number of open incidents of each priority. You can create and distribute reports from within the Report Designer and Use the data visualization component in the UI Builder to create report visualizations for Now® Experiences.
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 San Diego release notes. I've listed those here by product:
- Strategic Portfolio Management release notes(Note: formerly IT Business Management)
- Customer Service Management release notes
- HR Service Delivery release notes
- IT Operations Management release notes
- IT Service Management release notes
- Performance Analytics and Reporting release notes
- Software Asset Management release notes
- Industry Products(New)
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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