When Washington DC 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
Now Assist for ITOM AIOps translates complex, machine-generated alerts into natural language to help operations teams resolve issues faster, Updates to Now Assist in Virtual Agent enable it to automatically detect text inputs and respond in the same language, thanks to dynamic translation. Virtual Agent Designer can identify and recommend topics to create a meaningful, genuine customer conversation experience.
Workflow Studio
The Washington DC release of ServiceNow introduces a game-changer: Workflow Studio. This brand new application acts as your central hub for all process automation needs. Workflow Studio integrates Flow Designer, Action Designer, Process Automation Designer, Decision Builder, and Integration Hub into one environment to streamline the process of creating and managing workflows, playbooks, and integrations.
Security Posture Control is a new application in the Washington DC release. Security Posture Control application provides cybersecurity teams with visibility into security tool coverage gaps and deviations from security tool configuration for their enterprise assets
Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and Washington DC sees many new capabilities including:
- Save flows automatically as you edit
- Undo and redo support
- Annotations support in diagramming view
- Content filtering for flow execution details
- Create an action input from a step input
- Exit Loop flow logic
- FDIH Dashboard
- Flow generation
- Go back to flow logic
- Skip Iteration flow logic
- Try support in diagramming view
- Proactive Analytics trigger
- User preference for default Flow Designer view
IntegrationHub too has added capabilities/enhancements with the addition of:
- Stream Connect for Apache Kafka Enhancements
- OAuth 2.0 credentials
Mobile Platform
Too many to name them all, Generate work order task closure notes using Mobile Resolution Notes Generation, Display configurable pop-ups based on real-time conditions, Benefit from the enhanced data visualization user experience, Send users notifications defined as critical, irrespective of their notification settings, Mobile App Builder is now integrated with Mobile Publishing so that admins can manage custom branded app requests and configure mobile apps in one tool. 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 Manage file sizing for documents and attachments, Organize access to attachments by role with module encryption, Streamline workspace navigation with consolidated actions in the navigator, collapsed Activity stream entries with tiles, and updated navigation messages and Get more versatility while working in your workspace with more supported field types, unified actions, and auto-save functionality for emails.
Virtual Agent
Added support for Implement Now Assist in Virtual Agent conversations in Microsoft Teams and mobile channels, Create and test Virtual Agent topics that use large language models (LLMs) instead of Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Test LLM-enabled topics using the additional Prompt discovery and Edit variables tabs, For LLM topics - use the Input Collector input control in Virtual Agent Designer to gather data using generative AI prompts and Secure Text input control in Virtual Agent Designer to gather and encrypt sensitive text, email, and other types of input from users.
Service Catalog
New in the Washington DC release for Service Catalog includes save catalog item forms as drafts, Set values in Catalog UI Policy Actions for questions in a catalog item without the need to script, Set field messages for the questions in a catalog item without the need to script in the Now Platform and Catalog Builder and Experience the support for single check box in Virtual Agent for catalog conversations.
Authentication
With respect to authentication, Configure the session access policy to reduce the roles or privileges of the particular session based on the risk related with the session using filter criteria like on the IP, Location, Identity attribute with the zero trust access policy in mobile, Access Analyzer V2 tool to compare the access of users and determine the right level of access controls is provided for the users. Identity and Access Audit to understand the changes made for a user, group, role, and Access Control list (ACL), Configure Session Validation Context into the adaptive authentication policy framework to evaluate authentication requests and provide an additional layer of protection against session or cookie hijacking, Support API key and HMAC token for inbound REST APIs to securely authenticate the inbound webhook URLs, Support OAuth 2.0 client authentication with private key JWT for OIDC based Single-sign-on and OAuth based Outbound Integrations and Support OAuth Client Credentials grant type for Inbound Integrations to the ServiceNow® platform has been added in the Washington DC release.
Scripting and App Dev Enhancements
New Scoped APIs - Use inbound REST APIs to interact with various ServiceNow functionalities within your application. ProcessMiningForExternalData - Scoped, Global, ProductInstance API - Scoped, Global are a few of the new scoped APIs and methods included in the platform.
UI Builder - Some of the highlights for the Washington DC release include, Upload custom images in the Icon and Image components, Overlay information on a page so you can interact with both the main content and the window content through a UI Builder Modeless Dialog and Access Form Builder directly from within the form component on the UI Builder stage.
Application Manager- Washington DC release highlights include, Learn about the dependency needs of your applications with Application indicators, Filter options based on progress state in the Activity Log, Learn about an application before installation with the pre-installation modal pop-up, Discover if an Installation is blocked if the dependency is in a Must Be Licensed state and Locate an application that may meet the criteria you're searching for with partial search.
Core Now Platform- Create a flow and set the triggers and actions for a remote table to retrieve data from external sources. If the retrieved data is large, use the Extended Capacity feature in the remote tables, Test GraphQL APIs with the GraphQL Explorer, Reduce the chances of missing audits being recorded when a transaction is canceled by creating the audits immediately after the record is modified and Manage cascading when archiving multiple levels of related records
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 Washington DC release notes. I've listed those here by product:
