We are excited to announce the July 2025 release for Employee Center and related applications. This release includes enhancements to Employee Center and Employee Center Pro.
Below are the key new features and enhancements made in the July 2025 store release:
- Browser Extension for Employee Center
- Enhanced Requests experience
- Connected Content Management on Topic Pages
- Portal performance improvements
Note: Most features in our July 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 38.0.5) and Employee Center Pro (version 36.0.1) from the ServiceNow Store to access the features and enhancements listed below. See the release notes for details about the latest enhancements.
1. Browser Extension for Employee Center
We’re excited to introduce the Browser Extension for Employee Center—a new way to surface helpful content, communications, and tools directly within third-party work applications like Workday, Concur, or Fidelity.
This extension solves a common problem: employees constantly switching between systems to find information and help. Now, they can access exactly what they need in the moment from any browser tab and without leaving their current work application.
This improves productivity for employees by reducing context switching and enables organizations to deliver support and resources more efficiently, right within the flow of work.
The extension opens as a lightweight, draggable pop-up on top of any configured web app, delivering a site-specific experience that adapts to the page employees are on.
With one click, employees can access:
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Targeted communications like banners and announcements, scoped to the exact site or subdomain
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Quick links to featured articles and request types
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Popular topics, news, and events relevant to the current workflow, team, or location
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Related apps that align with the task they’re performing
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Experience feedback widget to capture continuous in-the-moment feedback from employees on their experience on the extension
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Built-in AI-powered search and portal notifications—keeping users informed without breaking focus
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For customers entitled to Now Assist, the experience is elevated to a conversational interface, offering a more interactive and intuitive way to engage with search results, right within the browser extension.
Admins have complete control over the extension experience—what content appears, where it appears, and how it looks—all managed through the Browser Extension for Employee Center portal, a dedicated configuration space separate from the main Employee Center.
From this portal, admins can:
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Define websites and subdomains where the extension is enabled
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Select content types—such as banners, quick links, topics, news, events, and apps—based on each site’s needs
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Customize the look and feel, aligning the extension with your organization’s branding
Note: Content shown in the extension must be explicitly associated with a specific website, ensuring a focused and context-aware experience tailored to each app or workflow. This design keeps the experience purposeful, delivering only what’s relevant, without replicating the full Employee Center interface.
We’ve also added a few exciting touches to improve usability:
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Highlight + Right-click to instantly search selected text in Employee Center
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Omnibox Search lets users search Employee Center directly from the browser address bar
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OS-level notifications (Mac/Windows) ensure updates are never missed—even outside the portal
How to get access?
License & family release compatibility – The Browser Extension for Employee Center functionality is available for all Employee Center customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 7, Yokohama patch 1, and Zurich family release.
Plugins required – This capability is available by downloading the new Browser Extension for Employee Center plugin (version 1.0.0) and the Employee Center plugin (version 38.0.5).
Technical details – The extension is available on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. To enable access, enterprise administrators must configure browser policies based on the supported browser. Once configured, Browser Extension admins (ecbe_admin) or manager (ecbe_manager) must add the desired websites where the extension will be used. Without this configuration, accessing the extension on unsupported sites will show an empty state.
Refer to Browser Extension for Employee Center product documentation for additional details.
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2. Enhanced Requests experience
In the July 2025 release, we've overhauled the My Requests page in Employee Center to make it easier for employees to view, filter, and manage their requests.
The new experience introduces configurable tabs, filters, and a cleaner card layout, making it easier for employees to distinguish between their own requests and those submitted on behalf of others. It can also be configured to help organizations track issues by team, location, or other criteria. Admins can flexibly define how requests are organized and displayed without custom development, enabling tailored views for different regions, teams, or roles. This streamlined setup allows both managers and employees to quickly find and track what matters most to them.
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Tabbed Request views: Requests are now organized into three default tabs: Created for You (requests you've submitted for yourself), Created for Others (requests made on behalf of others), and Others (all remaining requests). Admins can configure additional tabs based on organizational needs—for example, to show all team requests, workplace-specific requests, or specific types like incidents. Draft requests are displayed in a dedicated tab with quick-delete options, and users can also control pagination by choosing how many requests to display per page (e.g., 12 or 15).
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Advanced Filters: Employees can filter requests by fields such as department, location, request type, status, or date. Filters are shown inline on larger screens and adapt to dropdown or modal views on smaller devices. Admins can define custom filters based on organizational needs. Each filter can be configured as single-select or multi-select, using static or reference fields. Filters can also be targeted to specific user groups and set to apply automatically on page load—for example, showing only open requests by default.
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Search across all requests: The keyword search helps employees find specific requests without needing to browse through all requests.
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Configurable Request cards: Each request is displayed in a card format with key information visible at a glance. Admins can configure the title shown on each card and choose up to two detail fields to display, based on what’s most relevant for their users.
To help admins tailor the new My Requests experience to their organization’s needs, configuration is simple and flexible:
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Opt-in to the New Experience: Admins can enable the redesigned My Requests page by navigating to ‘Requests Setup’ under Employee Center menu and opting in to the new experience.
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Source Configuration: Define the request data shown on the page using the Source Configuration table. Admins can:
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Select which request types appear (e.g., Incidents, Catalog Requests)
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Customize the card layout (title and up to two detail fields)
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Set destination pages for request click-throughs
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Filter Definition: Use the Filter Definition table to shape how users interact with the request list:
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Create and label tabs (e.g., “Created for You,” “Drafts”)
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Define filters by department, status, date, etc.
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Control filter visibility based on user roles or personas
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Set filters to automatically apply on page load (e.g., show only open requests)
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The enhanced Requests experience is available for all Employee Center customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 7, Yokohama patch 1 and Zurich family release.
Plugins required – This capability is available by downloading the Employee Center plugin (version 38.0.5).
Technical details – To enable the redesigned Requests page experience, admins need to opt-in to the new experience. Admins can define the relevant tables under Source Configuration. They can also add or adjust filters in the Filter Definition table
Refer to Enhanced Request Experience product documentation for additional details.
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3. Connected Content Management on Topic Pages
Today, admins spend hours manually managing Topic Pages and their related content. When knowledge articles expire or catalog items become inactive, they must locate and remove them individually—a time-consuming process that adds overhead and can affect system performance. Additionally, changes within service or knowledge categories, such as moving or adding content, are not automatically reflected in Topics. Topic managers must manually track and update these changes, making the process even more burdensome.
With this release, we’re introducing powerful updates to help taxonomy admins and topic managers reduce administrative overhead and thereby enhance portal performance:
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Define Outdated Content: We’ve added a new ‘Outdated Connected Content’ tab in the Taxonomy Content Configuration module. This tab allows admins to define what qualifies as outdated, such as retired knowledge articles or inactive catalog items, using configurable filters.
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View Outdated Content: A dedicated “Outdated Connected Content” module has been added under Content Taxonomy. This module allows admins to view a complete list of outdated knowledge and catalog content across all taxonomy topics in one centralized place.
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Clean-up Outdated Content: A new tab under each taxonomy topic’s related links highlights outdated content linked specifically to that topic. Admins can manually review and remove these outdated associations, helping improve portal performance. This action removes only the association of that content from the topic—it does not delete the original catalog item or knowledge article.
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Scheduled cleanup with automation: Admins who prefer to skip manual review and cleanup can enable a new scheduled job—Automated Outdated Connected Content Cleanup—introduced in this release. This job is set to false by default, but once enabled, it automatically disassociates outdated content at regular intervals.
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Enhanced category-linked content management: Admins can already link catalog and knowledge categories to topics and check for updated content in those categories. With the July release, we’re expanding this capability—admins can now see exactly which items have been added or removed from a linked category. This makes it easier to review changes and selectively associate or remove content from the topic. Additionally, connected content is now clearly labelled to indicate whether it was added manually by a user or automatically through the associated category, offering greater transparency and control.
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Auto-sync category updates: To eliminate manual review of category updates, admins can enable a new system property taxonomy_category_content_auto_sync introduced in this release. It’s set to false by default, but when enabled, it automatically syncs all changes from associated categories, ensuring connected content stays up to date without manual intervention.
How to get access?
License & family release compatibility – These updates are available for all Employee Center customers and requires Zurich family release.
Plugins required – These enhancements are available with the Employee Center plugin (version 38.0.5) on Zurich instances and will be automatically accessible upon upgrade.
Technical details – To activate automation and syncing capabilities:
Refer to Taxonomy and Connected Content product documentation for additional details.
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4. Portal performance improvements
As part of the July 2025 release, we're introducing major improvements to ensure the Employee Center portal stays fast, responsive, and reliable—even during high-traffic events like company-wide announcements or live events. These enhancements reduce page load times, give users clear feedback during delays, and provide admins with tools to manage performance. See the details below:
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High-Traffic Mode: During peak system load, instead of unresponsive pages or blank widgets, users now see a simplified version of the portal:
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Key homepage widgets load in a reduced (light) mode, with skeleton placeholders or partial content.
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A customizable banner appears at the top of the page, informing users that the system is experiencing high usage.
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Deferred Widget Loading: To improve first-load performance, we are introducing deferred widget loading. This speeds up initial page rendering by loading only essential content first and delaying non-critical resources until after the main content is displayed.
The Defer widget loading option helps configure the widgets to load in a skeleton view, which displays visual placeholders like grey boxes or lines that resemble the layout of actual content. These placeholders indicate that data is actively loading, improving perceived performance and reassuring employees that the system is working, even before all data has loaded.
Admins can configure each widget to load using:
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Viewport loading: Load only when the widget scrolls into view (ideal for widgets lower on the page).
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Parallel loading: Load all widgets immediately (recommended for top-of-page widgets).
The deferred load is available for the following widgets on the homepage: Content Experience, Quick Links, News Feed, Popular Topics, Relevant for You, App Launcher, and My active Items.
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Mega Menu Optimization: Previously, loading the full mega menu with all security checks caused delays during homepage login. Now, the mega menu loads asynchronously, decoupled from the homepage, allowing users to interact with visible content immediately while a skeleton loader appears as the menu loads in the background.
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Optimize High-Traffic Event Access with Smart Homepage Intercept: To optimize performance during high-traffic events, the Employee Portal homepage now features a smart event modal. When a live company event is in progress, the modal intercepts the homepage before any widgets or navigation load, reducing backend load and improving user experience. Users can choose to go directly to the event or continue to the homepage.
A new property called 'Display the event modal on the homepage when a high-traffic event is in progress' has been added to Advanced Properties in Content Publishing. This property is disabled by default and can be set to Yes to enable the feature. It supports multiple concurrent events, remembers user choice within the session, and only triggers on a full page refresh.
How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The portal performance enhancements are available for both Employee Center and Employee Center Pro customers and backward compatible with Xanadu patch 7, Yokohama patch 1, and Zurich family release.
Plugins required – The portal performance enhancements are available by upgrading the Employee Center (version 38.0.5) and Employee Center Pro (version 36.0.1) applications.
Technical details –
Refer to the product documentation for additional details –
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5. Other updates
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We've introduced a small yet impactful enhancement to the Rich Content Editor: content authors can now add links directly to bulleted and numbered list items. This functionality will be available upon upgrading to Employee Center Pro plugin version 36.0.1
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AI Search now aligns with content targeting rules for content authors: Previously, Content Managers and Admins could see AI Search results for news or rich content even if they weren’t part of the targeted audience. This behavior has been corrected—only published and targeted content will now appear for these roles. System Admins still have full visibility due to their override permissions.
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.
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