We are excited to announce our August 2023 release of Employee Center Pro and related applications. This article summarizes the key new features and enhancements included with this release. These include:
- Employee Communication (i.e., Content Experiences) Enhancements:
- Employee News Experience
- AI Search for Topic Microsites & Employee News
- Drag and drop layouts for Topic Microsites
- Version Management for Portal Content
- Additional Minor Employee Communication Enhancements:
- Approvals Hub: pre-built integration with Workday
- Now Mobile enhancements
Download the latest Employee Center Pro (version 28.2.1) from ServiceNow Store to get access to the features and enhancements. Also refer to Employee Center Pro release notes, Content Publishing release notes, HR Service Delivery Integration with Workday release notes, and Now Mobile release notes for additional release details.
Note:
- The August 2023 release for the Employee Center app only includes some minor fixes and no new enhancements.
- ** For Publishing news content or other content within Content Library, we've improved the date and time format validation process to now support a broader range of formats. As a result, we've replaced the Content Publishing store app August version 29.0.7 with a patch release version 29.0.8. The previous version 29.0.7 has been withdrawn from the store. **
Personalized Employee News Experience (requires Employee Center Pro)
We are thrilled to announce the launch of personalized Employee News capability with our August 2023 Employee Center Pro release. Gone are the days of relying on third-party solutions or custom workarounds using knowledge articles that often led to disjointed experiences.
The new, purpose-built Employee News capability provides a seamless, end-to-end experience with a dedicated News Center page, widgets for various Employee Center pages, effortless news authoring using the Rich Content Editor, and targeted publishing.
With Employee News, an Employee Center Pro functionality, content authors can easily author news using an intuitive drag-and-drop rich content editor and utilize the automated publishing flow for easy publishing of volume-driven news use cases.
Below are the key components of the captivating front-end Employee News experience launched with the August 2023 release:
- News Center – News Center is a dedicated page to highlight news articles available for the user. It includes a carousel-styled featured news section on top, followed by the news feed widget at the bottom, and the video or events widget on the right. Admins can configure the news center page layout as per their organizational needs through the page designer. Articles can be individually targeted for each of these widgets (as described in the new authoring experience section below)
Upon upgrade, the News Center page is automatically included in the Mega Menu on Employee Center Pro. At least one news article must be published on the News Center for it to appear on the Mega Menu.
- News on Employee Center Pro homepage and Topic pages – A new featured news page widget is available for the Employee Center homepage to display news articles right on the landing page. (Note: in the current experience, admins will have to manually place the news widget on the Employee Center Pro homepage).
The taxonomy topic pages include a new Related News widget that displays news items tagged to that topic, offering a targeted news experience.
Portal admins can configure both these widgets, using instance options, to display the desired number of articles, and define whether to display the subtitle or thumbnail image.
- News Article detail view page – Each news item, displayed in any of the news feed widgets, leads directly to the detailed news article page view. This page includes the main body of the article, which can be a combination of text, images, videos, etc. and easily created using the Rich Content Editor (as explained in the new authoring section below). It also includes an 'Other News' widget to engage users with important news articles.
Below are key components of the seamless Employee News authoring and publishing flow, launched in August 2023:
- "News Article” content type in Content Library- Content authors can effortlessly create and publish news articles using the new content type called ‘News Article’ in the existing Content Library. Since news is part of Content Library, all the authoring and publishing capabilities available with Content Library, such as governance, translations, and scheduling, are also applicable to News.
Note: Currently News Articles can only be published on the portal and cannot be published as part of a Campaign. Support for publishing News on Now Mobile and via Campaigns will be part of our upcoming releases.
- News authoring experience using Rich Content Editor – For authoring News Articles, content authors need to define the 1) article heading, 2) sub-heading (optional), 3) thumbnail image (optional), and 4) article body. Similar to Topic Microsites, Rich Content Editor is used to design the body of news articles, providing a familiar and seamless authoring experience for content authors.
- One-click News Publishing experience – Once the News Article is ready, content authors can publish it with one click on their desired, multiple ‘Content Destinations’ with one click using ‘Content Templates’. Content Template is essentially a pre-defined publishing plan that includes Audience, Content Destinations i.e. the page and widget instance where the article must be published, and duration for which the article is published.
Once content authors pick a Content Template for the new article, the publishing plans are automatically generated as defined by the Content Template. The content authors can choose to add to the pre-defined plan or edit it before publishing the article.
The addition of Content Templates has significantly reduced the number of clicks/steps content authors need to go through to publish News articles in multiple locations simultaneously. No more tedious repetition - it's quick, easy, and efficient!
There are two Content Templates - Featured News and News Default - available out-of-the-box with August 2023 release. Content authors should create additional Content Templates as per their requirements. Refer to Content Templates in product documentation to learn more about it.
- News Analytics – Organizations can analyze the success of their news articles by enabling ‘Track Analytics’ for the News Headline widget on the News Article page. The occurrence/Article Views metric for all the news articles is tracked in the User Experience Analytics dashboard under the ‘Content Publishing – News Articles’ event.
How to get access? – Employee News functionality requires Employee Center Pro license and can be activated by upgrading Employee Center Pro (28.2.1), Content Publishing (version 29.0.7* - which has now been replaced with version 29.0.8), and dependent plugins. This capability is backward compatible till San Diego.
AI Search for Topic Microsites & Employee News (requires Employee Center Pro)
With our August 2023 release, both Topic Microsites and Employee News are searchable via AI Search on Employee Center Pro. We have added Rich Content and News Articles as search sources for AI Search out-of-box. On the AI Search page. the News Articles show up as ‘News’ and the Rich Content shows up as ‘Pages’. When clicked, the News Articles directly open in the detail page view, and the Rich Content ‘pages’ open the entire Topic Microsite where the Rich Content is published.
How to get access? – Organizations with Employee Center Pro licenses and are using AI Search can get this by upgrading to Employee Center Pro (28.2.1) and Content Publishing (version 29.0.7* - which has now been replaced with version 29.0.8) plugins to enable search for Topic Microsites and Employee News. This capability is backward compatible till San Diego.
Note that AI Search has a scheduled job to index the existing and new content, so it may take some time for the results to show up upon the first load. Also, the Rich Content search results show the Rich Content Title as part of the search result (as you can see in the screenshot above), so content authors must be mindful of what titles they pick to ensure the search results are deemed relevant by the user.
Drag and Drop layouts for Topic Microsites (requires Employee Center Pro)
In November 2022, we introduced Topic Microsites functionality that came with a new Rich Content Editor to help create rich and engaging pages on Employee Center Pro. The Rich Content Editor provides a drag-and-drop experience for content authors to create their Microsite content using pre-defined components such as texts, images, videos, links, and action buttons.
With the August 2023 release, we’ve enhanced the Rich Content Editor to include three pre-built layouts - vertical card layout, horizontal card layout, or side-by-side layout – for faster and more consistent authoring of Topic Microsites. Instead of starting from scratch, content authors can simply drag and drop these layouts onto the canvas and add their content to it.
How to get access? - This enhancement is only available with Employee Center Pro license by upgrading to Employee Center Pro (28.2.1), Content Publishing (version 29.0.7* - which has now been replaced with version 29.0.8), and dependent plugins. This capability is backward compatible till San Diego. Refer to add predefined content layouts with the Rich Content Editor product documentation for additional details.
Version Management for Portal Content
With this release, content admins and communication managers can track, and audit changes made to Portal Content and Rich Content. We have introduced new ‘states’ for Portal Content - draft, needs approval, approved, published, and retired. To edit published content, the content author would need to “checkout” the content to move it back to draft state and once the edits are complete, the content author would need to re-publish it. Every time an article is edited and re-published a new version of the article is created and a snapshot of ‘Content Change History’ is captured, including details like modified by, time and date of change, impacted fields, and even schedule-level changes.
Version management capability eliminates the risk of inadvertent changes on live content and helps keep track of the changes made over time. Refer to product documentation for additional details on this.
How to get access? – An upgrade to the Content Publishing (version 29.0.7* - which has now been replaced with version 29.0.8) plugin will provide access to the new 'Enable Content Versioning and Change History’ property under Content Publishing system properties. Organizations can choose to opt-in to this functionality, using Content Publishing system properties.
This capability is backward compatible till San Diego.
Additional Minor Employee Communication Enhancements
- Google Analytics integration for Content Analytics removed - Due to Google Analytics sunsetting Universal Analytics, we'll be removing the GA integration within Content Analytics and advise customers to switch to the ServiceNow profile tracker for continued functionality.
- Rich Content Editor accessibility enhancements - We've made accessibility enhancements to the Rich Content Editor, including improved builder and canvas usability, tab indexing for various formatting features, and easy button-click movement of elements rather than drag-and-drop. This allows a more user-friendly and accessible content editing experience.
Approvals Hub: pre-built integration with Workday (requires HRSD Pro or Enterprise license)
In our June 2023 release, we announced the launch of Approval Hub along with an omnichannel, pre-built integration with Concur for completing expense approval requests directly within ServiceNow. With our August 2023 release, we are excited to announce another pre-built integration, this time with Workday!
Now, organizations can consolidate approval requests from Workday, including time off, leave of absence, timesheet approval, compensation change, job requisition approval, time off correction, termination-related approvals and spend authorization, into ServiceNow's Employee Center Pro’s Approval Hub, which is the same as “My tasks” page.
As with the Concur integration, this integration offers a centralized and standardized look and feel, eliminating the hassle of managing multiple systems for approval requests.
Note: Currently the Workday integration for Approval Hub is only available for portal view. We plan to include other channels - Mobile, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams - in future releases.
How to get access? - This integration is built upon the existing HR Service Delivery Integration with Workday Spoke. Thus, organizations would need to download the 'HR Service Delivery Integration with Workday' (version 3.0) plugin along with the new Employee Center Pro (28.2.1) application to activate it. Since the Workday spoke is tied with HRSD license, organizations require HRSD Pro or Enterprise license to access this integration. Refer to product documentation for additional information on this.
Now Mobile Enhancements
With our August 2023 release, we have enhanced the embedded web screens i.e., the Mobile Employee Service Portal (MESP) screens experience on Now Mobile. This includes:
- Support of multi-select option for lists on MESP screens - Users can now select multiple options from the list presented on an MESP page on Now Mobile. This enhancement especially enhances the Workplace Service Delivery reservation experience, allowing users to select multiple options from the list and share reservation details with their teammates seamlessly. Multi-select option for lists is available for all MESP screens.
- AI Search on MESP Topic pages - We've streamlined the Topic page experience on the Now Mobile app with two key enhancements.
- Users can now use AI Search on MESP Topic pages, making it easy to browse through large lists of content items via mobile devices.
- With the introduction of AI search on MESP Topic pages, we have enabled all content associated with a topic and its topic sub-tree to be visible under the given topic on Now Mobile as users no longer need to scroll through pages to search for their desired content item. This enhancement further aligns the browse experience between Employee Center and Now Mobile.
Note: Organizations would need to configure MESP topic pages to showcase content from sub-topics as well. The default setting for MESP topic pages is to only show content directly tagged to them. Refer to product documentation for additional details on this.
- Moving 'Webviews for mobile' plugin from store to family - The Webviews for mobile plugin, previously available on the store, is now being moved back to the family. The Mobile Web View framework is built on the Service Portal UI framework that resides in the family. By moving the plugin to the family, we can now update the store app on a regular cadence, providing quicker updates and enhancements to meet our customers' needs. The Webviews for mobile plugin mainly contains the framework that drives the web screen experiences and does not affect MESP pages. This move ensures a more agile and flexible update process, allowing us to deliver improvements promptly on Now Mobile.
How to get access? – Upgrade to Now Mobile (version 28.1.5) and the dependent plugins for these enhancements. No additional license is required as the Now Mobile application is available to all ServiceNow customers.
In addition to the above enhancements, the August 2023 release also includes enhancements to ServiceNow’s integration with the Microsoft 365 suite of applications. Refer to the August 2023 ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 Store Release blog to learn more about those enhancements.
We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback on our August 2023 release updates!
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