What's New in Digital Product Release

[gregholevas]

Digital Product Release – What’s New in May 2025?

With the May release, we’ve expanded the scope of DPR to include service releases and made updates to the data model and release creation process.

Highlights include:

1. Support for service releases
2. Revamped data model
3. Streamlined release creation
4. Time-based scheduling improvements

1) Effectively plan, manage, and execute service releases

Previously, releases were limited to software only. With the May release, we’ve expanded the scope of DPR to include service releases. Release managers and product managers can now plan, manage, and execute releases for their services. Additionally, they can manage multi-product releases, which include a combination of services and digital products.

 2) Revamped data model

Replaced the 'Software Model' table with more intuitive and structured 'Software Version' tables (Software Component Models table and Service Offering Models table). Avoid confusion and limit possible conflicts with existing Software Asset Manage (SAM) dashboards, which also use the Software Model table. See #3 Streamlined release creation video for demo

3) Streamlined release creation

Enjoy a simplified, step-by-step flow to create releases faster and with fewer errors. Create releases and plan product features directly from release planning page without first creating a version. DPR will create versions automatically once the release is started.

4) Time-based scheduling improvements

Releases now account for weekends and holidays using schedules, ensuring deployments align with operational calendars.

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Digital Product Release – What’s New in February 2025?

With the February release and launch of DPR 2.0, we’ve introduced a new multi-product release experience and added additional integration and planning support.

Highlights include:

1. Multi-product release experience
2. Ability to link any task record to a release
3. SPM and DPR better together experience
4. Integration support for Agile 2.0

1) Create, manage, and report on complex, multi-product releases

Introducing a new multi-product release experience. Guided release creation experience to help customers create a release with the relevant products, versions, templates, and target dates. Manage release execution (e.g., task and policy compliance) both at the aggregate (multi-product) level and at the individual component product level. Gain visibility into release readiness status across all products in the release.

 

2) Associate any task record to a release as a work item

Linkage of tasks to a release. Associate incidents, problems, and catalogue requests to releases OOTB. Gain visibility into which issues are being addressed as part of which release, closing the gap between build and run.

 

3) Seamless release planning to execution experience in ServiceNow

Introducing a new integrated experience between release planning in Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and release execution in DPR. Use the new ‘Digital Product’ lens in SPW to plan and visualize in a way that directly translates to release execution in DPR. Feel confident that the scope prioritized for releases are in line with your organization’s strategic goals.

 

4) Integrate DPR with Agile 2.0 and auto import epics and stories

Easily setup tool connection with Agile Development by leveraging DevOps tool integrations. Automatically import epics and stories into DPR and associate them to releases. View imported stories as work items in your release scope and track release execution.

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Digital Product Release – What’s New in November 2024?

With the November release, we’ve introduced a new experience for creating releases and added enhancements to help with planning and conflict detection.

Highlights include:

1. A new improved experience for creating releases
2. Introduced Key dates to define release key dates like milestones and deadlines
3. Capability to breakdown product features into product enhancements
4. Improved experience for creating release calendars
5. Auto-create product versions from GitLab Milestones

1) Easily and smoothly create releases for single and multi-product releases

Introduced enhanced release creation experience. New guided experience that will help users create releases easily and supports plans for complex, multi-product releases. Preview release templates and release readiness targets in the context of the relevant release calendar

2) Visualize and track toward all key dates in a release

Enables users to define significant dates (e.g., milestones, deadlines, key events, important dates) and visualize those dates on the release timeline. Additionally release readiness targets can now be defined to the hour of a day.

3) Capability to breakdown product features into product improvements

New product enhancement tab allows users to break down product features into multiple enhancements. These enhancements can then be planned into versions instead of the product features themselves.

 4) Mitigate operational disruptions and delays with release calendar enhancements

The release calendar is now able to identify and surface potential conflicts when defining release readiness targets. This enables users to action overlaps (e.g., accept, select next available) on a date-by-date basis

5) Auto-create product versions from GitLab Milestones

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Digital Product Release – What’s New in August 2024?

With the August release, we’ve made several enhancements to improve the product manager experience and support RMv2 migration.

Highlights include:

1. Migration utilities from Release Management v2
2. Release calendar improvements
3. Jira Fix Version integration
4. Ability to manage product bundles
5. Enhanced work item visibility
6. Redesigned release execution page

1) Simplify migration effort to DPR for existing Release Management v2 customers

With RMv2 beginning deprecation in Xanadu, customers need tools to help them migrate data to DPR. We’ve added Scripts and UI actions to help with this migration. Customers can now:

• Create DPR release template from RMv2 Release record
• Generate digital product from RMv2 Product record

2) Support for additional schedules in the release calendar

A new release calendar entity has been created to group readiness targets together. Additional schedules (maintenance windows, blackout schedules, holiday schedules, etc.) can be added to a Release Calendar and will be shown on the Release calendar page.

3) Enhanced release planning support with Jira Fix Version automation

Product managers are now enabled to plan in Jira and execute releases in DPR without friction. When connecting Jira projects to a digital product in DPR, product managers can choose to have Fix Versions in Jira create corresponding release versions in Digital Product Release. When Fix Versions are used to generate release versions, any Jira task that is associated with the Fix Version will be visible within a Release on the Release Scope page.

4) Create and manage product bundles

Product managers can now add and remove additional "child" products within a product to create a hierarchy of bundled products. Ability to clearly see, expand, and collapse hierarchical structure of products once defined.

5) Enhanced work item visibility & linkage to release plans

We’ve added visibility into all planning items across releases. You can now link additional work items to release plans in DPR and filter imported work items from planning tool to quickly select and link relevant work items to a version.

6) Redesigned release execution page

We’ve created a more usable and visually appealing release execution dashboard. This includes a streamlined experience to manage execution of a release from release execution dashboard, improved information density and clarity on release execution task cards, and enhanced filtering experience to more clearly show what filters are applied.

[tstocking]

Thank you for posting. This is starting to check most of our boxes. Is there a plan to be able to view user stories associated with an Epic within this workspace? How can we leverage this to plan out releases based on projects within SPM or do we need to just associate a project work with a new epic and manage it with DPR? What is the recommended intake path for feeding into DPR if you are a current SPM customer? We utilize SPM and move all of our demands into either project, enhancement, or defect but find its very disconnected and difficult to keep track off all the work across the board. We've been using Release Management to coordinate releases of user stories but it's very disconnected from the parent record that the story is associated with.

[gregholevas]

@tstocking Please see the most recent update above. I just posted a demo for our new integrated experience between SPM and DPR

[billgoodall]

Can you release a video showing the Jira integration demo, instead of the built in Agile Tools demo?

[Kevin Tran]

Thanks for this post. What if I have business services and application services today? How does that translate to a digital product? How does the cmdb_application_product table stay in sync with updates made to business service and application services?

[Jim41]

With the February release and launch of DPR 2.0, we’ve introduced a new multi-product release experience and added additional integration and planning support.

Question on your February release.  Typically we upgrade two times a year to ServiceNow's major releases. We are going to Xanadu in April 2025, then Yokohama Q4 2025, Zurich Q2 2026, etc...    Your February release and launch for DPR 2.0 - can we download that today and implement the new features after checking compatibly with our current SN release level? or do we need to wait for the next SN Major release Zurich?  This release model is slightly different than what we are use to doing -and that is 2 times a year with a major upgrade.  But I like the idea of being very agile with more releases during the year with new releases for the products.  Thank you

Never Mind -  I found the release notes that I was looking for earlier that answered my own question.  Important: For details on system requirements and family compatibility, view the application listing on the ServiceNow Store website.

[onedapaone]

@gregholevas By when we can expect the detailed Release notes (with video demos) of May 2nd Release upgrade?

Awaiting to understand the changes in detail.

• New:
  • Service releases: Create and manage releases at the service level for better control and traceability
  • Revamped data model: Replaced the 'Software Model' table with a more intuitive and structured 'Software Version' table
  • Streamlined release creation: Enjoy a simplified, step-by-step flow to create releases faster and with fewer errors
  • Time-based scheduling enhancements: Releases now account for weekends and holidays using schedules, ensuring deployments align with operational calendars

[Joe Offenberg]

Hi, The release notes are posted here:
https://store.servicenow.com/store/frame/app?pp=efdfd52a090121109dff6a0bbe3042fe

[onedapaone]

@Joe Offenberg Found the same release notes as the ones I posted in my previous comment.

Looking to understand more about Service Releases.  Can a Product be created within DPR from Business Application and also from Technical / Application / Business Service? - What does this mean?

Revamped data model: Replaced the 'Software Model' table with a more intuitive and structured 'Software Version' table - What is the difference between these two?

Time-based scheduling enhancements: Releases now account for weekends and holidays using schedules, ensuring deployments align with operational calendars - Can Maintenance Windows from cmn_schedule_maintenance_list be listed in Release Calendar and while creating Templates to associate a template to particular schedule?

[Manu15]

With regard to the revamped data model, the difference is as follows:

• Previously, the Software Model [cmdb_software_product_model] class was referenced as the version.
• Now the System Component Model [cmdb_sw_component_model] class is referenced as the version.

I think that this change was made because software models are used in the context of Software Asset Management Professional for the assignment of entitlements. Many entitlements are version agnostic and therefore the model is broken. With the newly referenced class, these conflicts should no longer exist. The disadvantage, however, is that the versions in the System Component Model [cmdb_sw_component_model] table have to be recreated because this is empty in the standard system.

[onedapaone]

Thank you @Manu15 for the clarity.

Now that Software Model table is replaced with new table, what field from Change Record can help to trace back to Release record (as earlier it was communicated that Software Model field displays the release version.)

Also, the question about Services - For one Business Application, there can be multiple App Services each dedicated to Dev, QA, PROD like environments. But release is spanned across all environments, so it has to be for Business Applications. So, looking for clarity on why Products can be created for Services also in addition to Business Applications?