December 2025 enhancements to Employee Center (Pro)

[SmritiGupta]

We are excited to announce the December 2025 release for Employee Center.

Below are the key new features and enhancements made in the December 2025 store release:

1. Side Navigation
2. Navigation Analytics
3. Approval Assistance Agent for REQ/RITM Approvals
4. Tab-specific filters for the Request page

Note: Most features in our December 2025 store release are backward compatible with Yokohama and Xanadu. However, certain enhancements may rely on specific family releases—refer to the implementation details of each feature for more information.

Download the latest Employee Center (version 39.0.8) and Employee Center Pro (version 37.0.3) from the ServiceNow Store to access the features and enhancements listed below. See the release notes for details about the latest enhancements.

 

1.  Side Navigation

We’re excited to introduce Side Navigation to the Employee Center, which is a modern, streamlined navigation layout designed to simplify the mega menu and provide an experience on par with consumer-grade applications. This new layout emphasizes clarity, visual iconography, and quick access to key destinations, helping employees browse topics with less effort and reduced visual complexity. Side Navigation has been added in addition to the existing top navigation layout, giving organizations the flexibility to choose the style that best fits their portal strategy. It is intended for organizations aiming for a lighter, more modern navigation style that avoids overwhelming users with too many choices.

Here are the key Features of the Side Navigation enhancements:

1. Left Navigation with two-level structure - Displays a clean, flat left-side menu layout on the portal. Navigation supports up to two levels: Root item and Subtopic. This structure keeps content focused and reduces deep menu nesting. If a root item has no child topics, it displays as a simple single-level item for clarity.

2. Predefined Icon Set - Admins can choose from a set of over 600 predefined icons available out of the box. Additionally, a default icon can be set to apply to all root menu items.

3. Responsive layout for mobile screens – Provides a consistent experience across all screen sizes. When the screen width drops below 760px, the responsive layout automatically switches to a mobile-friendly bottom navigation bar. In this view, the Employee Center header, which includes the profile and shortcuts such as My Tasks and Requests, collapses into a compact hamburger menu for easier access.

4. Smart overflow handling for menu - When there are more items than available space on either the left or bottom navigation, a ‘More’ menu automatically appears, preventing crowding the primary navigation area. Subtopic view appears through hover or click, making navigation feel light while still offering depth when needed. If a sub-menu includes many items, a scroll bar appears to help users move through the list effortlessly.

Side Navigation vs Top Navigation: Choosing the Right Layout for Your Portal

While the top navigation style continues to support deeper, four-level mega-menu structures and the ability to surface a broad set of topics upfront—including Quick Links—Side Navigation intentionally narrows the structure for clarity and ease of use. This streamlined design helps draw attention to the most important menu items through icons, something that is not currently supported in the top navigation.

Organizations can now choose between Top Navigation and Side Navigation via Advanced Portal Navigation settings.

When choosing between the two navigation layouts, organizations should keep the following differences in each style in mind:

1.     Content Hierarchy Depth:

·      Side navigation is optimized for a simple, two-level hierarchy (Root + Subtopic)

·      Top Navigation supports deeper, four-level mega-menu structures

2.     Quick Links to highlight important shortcuts:

·      Side Navigation does not support Quick Links within topic menus. However, important shortcuts can be added as menu items instead.

·      Top Navigation can display Quick Links to highlight important shortcuts.

3.     Visual Iconography:

·      Side Navigation uses icons to visually emphasize key menu items.

·      Top Navigation does not currently support visual iconography

4.     Menu Item Arrangement:

·      Side Navigation allows admins to define the order of menu items, but alignment (left/right) is not applicable.

·      Top Navigation supports ordering and aligning menu items left or right to place emphasis on specific items.

5.     Responsiveness on Mobile screens:

·      Side Navigation allows mega menu to transform into a mobile-friendly bottom navigation bar for smaller screens.

·      Top Navigation collapses mega menu items into the hamburger menu for smaller screens.

Side Navigation is ideal for organizations prioritizing simplicity, focus, and a modern, app-like experience; top navigation remains the better choice when depth, complexity, or broader topic visibility is needed.

Steps to set up a side-layout mega menu with Advanced Portal Navigation (APN):

1. Create or update an APN record.
2. Select Side Navigation as the navigation style and assign icons.
3. Configure root topics and subtopics.
4. Activate the APN record to apply the new navigation instantly.

How to get access?

License & family release compatibility – The Side Navigation for Employee Center functionality is available for all Employee Center customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 10, Yokohama patch 7, and Zurich patch 1 family release.

Plugins required – This capability is available by upgrading the Employee Center plugin (version 39.0.8).

Technical details – The Side navigation can be enabled by creating a separate record in Advanced Portal Navigation. In this record, the admins must define all menu items and assign corresponding icons for each item. An organization’s current information architecture can also be migrated to side navigation, which will automatically display only the first level of menu items.

Refer to Side Navigation for Employee Center product documentation for additional details.

 

2.  Navigation Analytics

We’re introducing new out-of-the-box analytics ‘Events’ within User Experience Analytics dashboard to enhance visibility into Employee Center usage patterns. As one of the most prominent entry points on the portal, the Mega Menu plays a key role in how employees navigate to important tools and resources. Now organizations can track how employees engage with those menu items and access services or content.

These new ‘Events’ are automatically enabled and capture click activity on Mega Menu items, once Employee Center analytics are turned on. With this added instrumentation, teams gain a deeper understanding of which navigation elements are most frequently used, how employees discover services, and where there may be opportunities to streamline the browse experience. These include:

• Click tracking for all Mega Menu items, including quick links, which could comprise external URLs pointing to applications outside the ServiceNow platform.
• Internal vs. external link classification provides organizations with clearer insight into engagement patterns.
• Each click records Key metadata, including the selected item, link type, destination URL, timestamp, user and session IDs, device type, and location.

How to get access?

License & family release compatibility - The Navigation Analytics event is available for all Employee Center customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 10, Yokohama patch 7, and Zurich patch 1 family release. 

Plugins required – This capability requires User Experience Analytics dashboard to be configured and is available by upgrading the Employee Center plugin (version 39.0.8).

Technical details – Admins should ensure that their User Experience Analytics dashboard is already configured. Once enabled, navigation analytics event automatically starts capturing data with the existing dashboard. This enhancement tracks activity across the Mega Menu for both top navigation and side navigation styles.

3.  Approval Assistance Agent for REQ/RITM Approvals (requires Now Assist)

We’re strengthening the approvals experience in Employee Center with a new AI-powered Approval Assistant Agent designed specifically for REQ and RITM approvals. This enhancement builds on the approval task summarization we introduced in the September 2025 release—now giving approvers a guided, intelligent way to validate requests against organizational policies before taking action.

Approvers will now see a new Review with Now Assist button directly within their approval task. With one click, Now Assist automatically launches the Approval Assistant Agent and performs a complete policy-aware review of the request.

Here’s what the agent does:

• Verifies the request against policy and compliance requirements: It checks the request against all relevant knowledge-base policies and identifies where requirements are met, unmet, or missing information.

• Generates an eligibility checklist and evaluation criteria: Approvers receive a structured, easy-to-read checklist showing exactly how the request aligns with each policy.

• Highlights matches, mismatches, and unknowns: Each criterion clearly displays whether it passed, failed, or could not be evaluated—ensuring full transparency before a decision is made.

• Provides clear actions to approve or reject: After reviewing the checklist, approvers can approve or reject the request directly in the Now Assist panel, with a built-in confirmation step to help prevent accidental actions.

This enhancement boosts productivity for high-impact or policy-sensitive approvals by giving approvers everything they need in one AI-powered conversational and guided review flow.

Note: The Approval Assistant Agent currently supports REQ and RITM approvals only.

How to get access?

License & family release compatibility – These updates are available for all Employee Center customers with Now Assist for ITSM and requires Yokohama patch 6 or above family release.

Plugins required – These enhancements are available with the Employee Center plugin (version 39.0.8) and requires Now Assist for Employee Experience plugin.

Technical details –  Admins must install Now Assist for Employee Experience plugin and activate the desired skills for features to appear.

Refer to Approval Assistance AI Agent product documentation for additional details.

4.  Tab-specific filters for the Request page

Building on the July 2025 release improvements to the Employee Center Requests page experience, we’re introducing a minor but meaningful enhancement to filters. Admins can now control which filters appear in which tabs, giving employees a cleaner, more focused view of their requests.

Previously, all filters were applied across every tab. With this update, admins can either assign filters to specific tabs using the ‘Associated Filters’ related link or assign tabs to specific filter records using the ‘Associated Tabs’ related link, allowing filter records, such as Status or Updated, to be targeted precisely.

This gives admins full control over the My Requests interface, helping employees focus on what matters most while reducing clutter and improving efficiency.

How to get access?

License & family release compatibility - The request page enhancements are available for all Employee Center customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 10, Yokohama patch 7, and Zurich patch 1 family release.

Plugins required – This enhancement is available by upgrading the Employee Center (version 39.0.8) applications.

Technical details – Admins can add new filters directly to a tab using the Associated Filters list, or add new tabs to a filter using the Associated Tabs list.

Check out the Employee Center Academy session on Enhanced Requests Experience here.

Refer to the product documentation for additional details around how to set up the Request Filter definition.

5.  Other updates

• We've introduced a small yet impactful enhancement for widget heading configuration supporting accessibility compliance: Admins can now set flexible heading levels (H1–H6) directly in widget settings to align with company-specific accessibility standards. This feature applies to widgets including Topic Header, Content Experience, Sub-Topic, Rich Content, Quick Links, and Topic Content. This functionality will be available upon upgrading to Employee Center plugin version 39.0.8

What to know what lies ahead? Join us for Employee Center Confidential Roadmap Webinars to stay tuned on the latest advancements and insights on how to make the most of our enhanced features and capabilities.