Now Platform Vancouver release early availability!
When Vancouver 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.
New Features and Major Enhancements
Generative AI Controller
The ServiceNow Generative AI Controller allows organizations to easily connect ServiceNow instances to both Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and OpenAI API large language models. Take advantage of the latest Generative AI and LLM capabilities to supercharge your ServiceNow workflows. Note: As of this writing, please note that the Generative AI feature is currently in the early access stage. Additional information about the Generative AI Limited Availability Program can be found here.
Task Intelligence
Task Intelligence for ITSM is a new application in the Vancouver release. Task Intelligence for ITSM application uses machine learning to set up, deploy, and track solution-based models to achieve important business outcomes.
Data Discovery
Data Discovery application enables you to discover Personally Identifiable Information (PII) within the ServiceNow instance and classify, report, or act on the PII. The Data Discovery is a new application in the Vancouver release.
Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and Vancouver sees many new capabilities including:
- Now Assist recommendations
- Dynamic input support
- Subflow support in diagramming view
- Do the following until support in diagramming view.
IntegrationHub too has added capabilities/enhancements with the addition of:
- Integration Hub - Import Enhancements
- Stream Connect for Apache Kafka Enhancements
- Set up a flow
- Set up external trigger endpoints
- OpenAPI step
- Retrieve connection information in a Data Stream action
- Create a JSON payload with the JSON Builder step
- Format time and currency values for data exports with Excel
ServiceNow Mobile
Too many to name them all, Enable a dark theme or mode in Next Experience. This option is commonly used to reduce eye strain and improve readability, Scan barcodes and capture e-signatures in input form screens, Increase the efficiency of agents with a significant calendar screen upgrade, Enable guided workflows on mobile devices with Mobile App Bridge for playbooks support, Increase the number of languages available on mobile devices with right-to-left language support. 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.
Workspace
Added support for AI/ML field recommendations, Persist user preference selections across records of the same type, Expand text shown in fields before scrolling, Create filter sets in the Activity stream, Enable role-based access control for creating personalized filter sets, Change heading levels and hide first section title on a form and Exclude declarative actions for selected tables and views and Custom declarative actions for Attachments.
Virtual Agent
Added support for Multiple active conversations for Virtual Agent, Accommodate multiple points of contact with different phone numbers from an AWS instance for IVR, Support message extension in Conversational Integration with Microsoft Teams, Support Dialog Acts for more natural conversations within ServiceNow® Virtual Agent Designer, Install Contact Flows in Conversational IVR using the Contact CloudFormation templates and Enjoy a new admin console experience for Issue Auto Resolution (IAR) covering configuration and simulation.
Service Catalog
New in the Vancouver release for Service Catalog includes easily navigate to Now Platform from Catalog Builder, Drag or copy attachments, Create topics or taxonomy in Catalog Builder to enable discovery of catalog items on Employee Center, Discard draft catalog items in Catalog Builder and Improved auto-populate and Archive the variable data on requested items.
Authentication
With respect to authentication, Audit the users across multiple instances based on user name and email and provide a unique id (federated ID) to the user across instances, Access Analyzer self-service tool designed for admins, developers, and support agents to examine who has access to what on the Now Platform, The Zero Trust access - Session Access policy enables administrators to use the Adaptive Authentication policy to reduce the roles or privileges of the particular session, Configure the authentication policies to restrict access, reduce roles, or enforce MFA based on Geo-location access and Configure the authentication policies to restrict access, reduce roles, or enforce MFA based on Identity Provider attributes that are received from the SAML response has been added in the Vancouver release.
Scripting and App Dev Enhancements
New Scoped APIs - DuplicateTemplate - Scoped, GlideSPScriptable - Scoped are a few of the new scoped APIs and methods included in the platform.
UI Builder - Some of the highlights for the Vancouver release includes, Use popovers on a UI Builder page to overlay contextual information or functionality, Quickly and easily organize your components with the new column layouts.
Platform Security- Security Center is a new application in the Vancouver release. Security Center is composed of four distinct tools designed to help you improve your security posture, strengthen your compliance levels, and do so with a seamless experience. Also, Encryption Key Management and Identity and Authentication were enhanced and updated in the Vancouver release.
Spoke Generator- Automate integration tasks by creating a sequence of reusable actions to develop custom integrations called spokes.
Core Now Platform- Secure your instance by enforcing a maximum session time for sessions regardless of user or integration activity, Calculate the distance between two locations using distance_sphere() in a function field and Prevent records from being orphaned with table cleaner and Store longitude and latitude coordinates by adding a geo point field to a table.
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 Vancouver release notes. I've listed those here by product:
- Strategic Portfolio Management release notes
- Customer Service Management release notes
- HR Service Delivery release notes
- IT Operations Management release notes
- IT Service Management release notes
- Software Asset Management release notes
- Industry Products 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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