We’re excited to share the latest enhancements to Employee Center! Our August 2022 store release for Employee Center and Employee Center Pro is now available for customers to install. This article summaries the key new features and enhancements included with this release.
For further details, please refer to Employee Center release notes, Employee Center Pro release notes, and Content Publishing release notes for additional features and version numbers.
Distributed Ownership of Topics
- Feature works with Employee Center application.
Business units often want to maintain autonomy over their Topic content. They can now do so with distributed ownership of Topics. With the August 2022 release, Taxonomy admins can assign topic-level managers and contributors. They can define managers at the root level, such as IT, HR, etc., or at the individual Topic level such as benefits.
With this enhancement, organizations can choose how centralized or decentralized they want their taxonomy management to be.
Topic Managers will have rights to manage their Topics sub-tree. They can 1) add/delete/move/clone topics to manage the Topic hierarchy, 2) update Topic details and template to manage the Topic experience, and 3) associate or disassociate content (knowledge articles, catalog items, etc.). Topic contributors will be able to associate/disassociate content (Catalog, Knowledge, etc.) to Topics . Only the Topic Contributors and managers assigned to the topic can contribute to the given topic tree. Existing Taxonomy level personas will continue to have access to all Topics.
Note that this enhancement is only available with the Tokyo upgrade. For additional details, refer to Topic managers and contributors product documentation page.
Configurable Approvals Experience
- Feature available with Employee Center application.
Admins can now configure the required level of information or actions they want to include for each approval type. The User Interface for the to-dos or approvals page is divided into multiple sections – common information, primary information, and tab configurations. Admins can configure each section to include information according to the individual task type. They can also embed custom widgets at a section level.
Admins can pull data or information from multiple sources; they can dot-walk to the referred table (including non-tasks tables). This data model is an extension to the existing to-dos configuration and is available as a related list.
For more information, refer to Configurable Approvals Experience product documentation.
Personalized Answers (available via Innovation Lab only)
- Feature works with Employee Center Pro application.
Employees will be more productive if they get personalized, intent-driven answers as part of their search results. A proof-of-concept for this capability is now available for all organizations using Employee Center Pro, via the Personalized Answers – Time Off app on the Innovation Lab. This includes a pre-built integration with Kronos to show personalized answers to the “time-off inquiries” as a genius result in AI Search. Admins can configure what actions they want to include in the genius result.
This includes a published NLU model with intents, utterances, and flows for connecting to Kronos and to process data from Kronos. Admins would need to set up the credentials as well as metadata to connect and fetch leave details from Kronos. Additionally, this is developed as a framework that can be extended to include additional personalized answers use cases & integrations.
Enhanced Org Chart with Employee Profile
- Feature works with Employee Center Pro application.
Employees can now find and connect with their peers easily via Employee Center Pro. We have enhanced the organizational chart page to improve its user experience and actionability. This includes a typeahead search (based on Employee Profile) that makes searching for peers easy. The selected card is displayed in focus along with additional information, manager hierarchy, and actions for the employee.
Admins can configure which users are included in the org chart view, using a condition builder on the Employee Profile table. For example, admins can choose to include or exclude contingent workers. They can also configure what information is displayed and which actions are available for the employees.
Note that this capability requires organizations to opt-in to the Employee Profile capability, released in San Diego. It also requires Employee Center Pro license. Refer to the EC Pro Organizational Chart product documentation to learn more.
Translation support for Content Publishing/Content Experiences
- Feature works with Employee Center Pro application.
Content authors can now easily translate and publish communication content on Employee Center Pro pages. We have integrated with ServiceNow’s localization framework to provide a translation action within the Content Library module. Admins can choose what languages they want their styled content (banners, etc.) to be translated, preview the translated content, and edit it before publishing.
Only languages configured in the localization framework are available for the language toggle. Translations could be machine or manually fulfilled via the localization framework.
This enhancement is available for all organizations using Employee Center Pro. Those who are still on the Rome release would need to manually change the content field types to translatable text/Html within the sys_translated_text table for this to work.
Refer to Content Library product documentation to learn more.
Employee Communications Workflow (Content Governance)
- Feature works with Employee Center Pro application.
We have a built pre-defined content request item for business stakeholders to request communications they want published to on the employee portal. The request will be received by content authors, who now have a pre-built workflow for authoring the requested content, sending it for review, and publishing it once reviewed. The requester will be able to track their communication request throughout the process of content creating and publishing.
The new communications request item is installed within the “Services” catalog. Admins can set up and link to this request item as desired. This functionality is delivered via Content Governance, a new ServiceNow store app, which is included as part of the Content Experiences bundle and is auto-downloaded with the August 2022 Employee Center Pro upgrade.
Refer to the Content Governance product documentation to learn more.
Download the latest Employee Center (version 26.0.2), Employee Center Pro (version 26.0.2), and Employee Profile (version 5.0.1) apps from ServiceNow Store to get access to the above-listed features and enhancements.
Note on Manager Hub
The August 2022 store release also includes a new experience for managers, called Manager Hub. It is available via a separate store app called Manager Hub, which requires Employee Center Pro license.
It provides a centralized location for Managers to 1) access their team information – work location, status, requests, etc., 2) access communications and content personalized for them, and 3) view knowledge content available to their employees.
Refer to Manager Hub product documentation for more details.
