We are excited to announce the May 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 May 2025 store release:
- Conversational Topics: My Tasks & My Approvals
- Now Assist Self-Service: Enhanced chat for Virtual Agent and AI Search
- Company Events enhancements and integration with Workplace Services
- Rich Content Editor enhancements
- Portal Notifications for Employee News
- Experience Feedback Enhancements
- End-user Self Service in Employee Center ( Requires Digital End-User Experience)
- Now Assist enhancements in Now Mobile
Note: While most of our May 2025 store releases are backward compatible with Washington & Xanadu, some features in this update depend on specific family releases. Please review the details of each feature carefully to ensure compatibility.
Download the latest Employee Center (version 37.0.4) and Employee Center Pro (version 35.0.2) from ServiceNow Store to get access to the features and enhancements listed below. See release notes for details around the latest enhancements.
1. Conversational Topics: My Tasks and My Approvals
(requires Now Assist)
We’re making the conversational experience in Now Assist more powerful by introducing two new pre-built conversational LLM topics for tasks and approvals. With this release, employees can now view and complete common tasks and approvals directly through Now Assist. See details below:
- Conversational Task Completion: Employees can now view and complete pending tasks as per their to-do configuration via Now Assist. Supported types include:
- HR tasks (e.g., mark as complete, upload document, checklist, take a survey for a survey that is supported via chat)
- Submit Catalog items, including record producers
- HR case acceptance tasks
- Conversational Approvals: Approve or reject actions for all approval types, such as REQ, RITM, CHG, HR approvals, and more, directly in the chat.
Employees can also filter tasks and approvals using prompts like due date or case ID for quicker access.
Note: Approvals routed through third-party systems like SAP or Workday via Approval Hub are currently not supported in the conversational interface.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility – The Conversational topics for My Tasks and My Approvals are available for all Now Assist customers with Employee Center.
Plugins required – This capability requires Now Assist license and is available by downloading the Now Assist for Employee Experience plugin (version 1.1.0).
Technical details – To ensure a consistent experience, customers should deactivate any existing LLM topics related to My Approvals before using the new pre-configured ones.
Refer to Now Assist for Employee Experience product docs for additional details.
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2. Now Assist Self-Service: Enhanced chat for Virtual Agent and AI Search
(requires Now Assist)
We're excited to unveil a new Now Assist Self-Service experience on Employee Center. It is designed to bring together the strengths of Virtual Agent Topics, AI Search, conversational catalogs, and conversational Q&A into one intuitive, unified interface—intelligently surfacing the most relevant answers and next best actions based on user intent, so users can quickly get help, request services, or find information without friction.
- Enhanced portal search experience: When users search for something via the search bar on home page they are navigated to a new AI Search experience that understands and respects user intent presents the top results and next actions that best match the query across all sources: VA Topics, Catalog Items, and Q&A. It is designed to guide requesters to ask follow-up questions and complete requests in a GenAI-powered conversational experience.
As part of this experience, users also have access to a right-hand panel to open new chats, manage previous conversations, and also connect with live agents seamlessly.
Users can toggle back to the traditional Now Assist for AI Search experience to get a list view of all content, along with genius results.
- Now Assist for Virtual Agent enhancement with a Dynamic Window: We have also enhanced the experience of using Now Assist with Virtual Agent to align with enhancements made on the search experience. When a user opens the virtual agent window (note: the floating chat icon is now replaced with a new sparkle floating action button), a new dynamic window experience opens up that includes a panel on top to access and manage new chats, previous conversations, and also connect with live agents in a seamless manner.
The window can also be expanded to show up as a full-page modal window, for a more immersive conversational experience, or as pinned window that is anchored to the side of the screen, for multi-tasking while navigating the portal alongside.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Now Assist Self-Service is available for all Employee Center customers with Now Assist license, with Yokohama Patch 3 family release.
Technical details – To enable the enhanced chat feature in Now Assist Self-Service, please upgrade the 'Now Assist in Virtual Agent Configurations' plugin.
Refer to Enhanced chat in Employee Center product documentation for additional details. |
3. Company Events enhancements and integration with Workplace Services
(requires Employee Center Pro)
With our January 2025 release, we introduced a powerful way for organizations to spotlight and manage key company events—such as town halls, live webinars, and social gatherings—through an intuitive publishing experience, similar to how news articles are shared across the organization.
Building on that momentum, this release enhances the experience by integrating seamlessly with Workplace Service Delivery (WSD), giving event organizers new tools to manage events more efficiently, and provides additional capabilities that makes it easier to coordinate participation and ensure smooth execution. This update also includes additional experiences on the portal that makes it easier for employees to discover and attend events that matter.
- Access Workplace Service Delivery capabilities within the event authoring experience: Event organizers can now reserve conference rooms, based on their availability and request essential services—like monitors, projectors, catering, and additional furniture—directly through Workplace Service Delivery while authoring the event. The event location details are automatically displayed on the event page for employees to ‘add to calendar.’
- RSVP and waitlist options: With space and capacity details in hand, organizers can set attendee limits, enable RSVP deadlines, and setup waitlist options to better manage attendance and create a smoother event experience. Event managers have visibility into who has RSVP’d or joined the waitlist and can manage attendee status in real time. When a user moves from the waitlist to the confirmed list, they’ll be automatically notified.
- New Events Calendar widget on ‘News and Events’ page: We’re introducing a dynamic new calendar widget that makes it easy for employees to browse and engage with upcoming company events. Whether users prefer a calendar format or a traditional list view, they now have the flexibility to choose how they view events. Also, note that we have renamed the News Center page to ‘News and Events.’ In addition, the newsfeed widget has been upgraded to offer more display options. You can now show both news and events in one place, or separate them using dedicated tabs. Admins can configure how the widget appears—showing a calendar view for events, news, or both, depending on what they want to display.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Company Events feature is available for Employee Center Pro customers and backward compatible with Washington patch 10, Xanadu patch 7 & Yokohama family release. For workplace reservation with Company Events, Workplace Service Delivery License is required.
Plugins required – The Company Events capability requires Employee Center Pro license and is available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro (version 35.0.2). For workplace reservation with Company Events, Workplace Service Delivery License is required.
Plugins required – The Company Events capability requires Employee Center Pro license and is available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro (version 35.0.2). For workplace reservation with Company Events, Workplace Service Delivery License is required.
Technical details – The "Company Events” is available as a new content type under content publishing and can be published like any other content publishing item. In terms of user roles, the user must have a content admin role (sn_cd.content_admin) or content manager role (sn_cd.content_manager).
Refer to Company Events product documentation for additional details.
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4. Rich Content Editor enhancements
(requires Employee Center Pro)
We’re excited to announce enhancements to the Rich Content Editor that further simplifies the content authors’ experience to publish Rich Content, Employee News and other content items. See the details below:
- Add background color to content blocks: Content authors can now add additional aesthetic now offers more control with backgrounds, including color, images, and gradients. You can also adjust opacity for layered effects.
- Redesigned right-hand editor panel: We have completely revamped the editor panel to offer a more streamlined view of the settings for each component bucketed into relevant categories such as styling, dimension, layout, typography, properties and so on, making it easier to apply advanced visual design configurations to the content.
How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The rich content editor enhancements are available for Employee Center Pro customers and backward compatible with Washington patch 10, Xanadu patch 7, & Yokohama family release.
Plugins required – The additional formatting tools for Rich Content Editor is available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro application (version 35.0.2).
Technical details – This functionality is auto-enable upon upgrade of the relevant plugins. The admins would be able to see these formatting options on the rich content editor pane.
Refer to Rich Content Editor product documentation for additional details.
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5. Notifications for Employee News
(requires Employee Center Pro)
With the January '25 release, we introduced centralized notifications in Employee Center to keep employees informed about tasks, comments, approvals, and key updates—including pre-configured alerts for incidents, requests, and HR tasks.
Now with this release, we're building upon that to deliver pre-configured notifications for employee news. News authors will automatically be notified when employees react to or comment on their published articles—making it easier to stay connected with their audience and measure engagement.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Notifications capability is available for all ServiceNow customers who are on Yokohama family release. However, Employee News functionality is only available for Employee Center Pro customers.
Plugins required – The Notifications capability is delivered via a new plugin called Notifications for Employee Center application (version 1.0.3) and Employee Center (version 37.0.4). Notifications for Employee News enhancement would also require upgrade of Employee Center Pro application (version 35.0.2).
Technical details – Admins can configure the Notifications feature by reviewing and updating out-of-the-box settings, such as badging behavior and notification content. They can also define their own set of notification category filters to tailor the experience to their organization’s needs.
Refer to Notifications for Employee Center product documentation for additional details.
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6. Experience Feedback Enhancements
(requires Employee Center Pro)
We launched Integrated Experience and Service Feedback in early 2024 to capture real-time feedback across multiple channels and service touch points, and we’ve been enhancing it since then. With this release, we’re enhancing the out-of-the-box experience feedback by adding support for 5-point rating questions. Admins can also mandate comments with feedback submissions, helping teams gather more actionable insights from employees. See the details below:
- Richer Experience Feedback with New Rating Options: We’ve enhanced the experience feedback functionality by adding two new question types: a 5-point numeric scale and a 5-star rating scale. These build on the existing open-ended experience feedback question (i.e., I like Something, I don’t like something, I have a suggestion), enabling admins to ask more targeted questions and collect clear, quantitative insights alongside qualitative input.
- Smarter Comment Controls for Feedback Submissions: Admins now have more control over how comments are collected with feedback. They can choose to keep comments optional, require them for all responses, or make them mandatory only when a rating falls below a defined threshold— capturing valuable context behind lower ratings.
- Enhanced Feedback Analytics Dashboard: The updated dashboard makes it easier to understand employee sentiment with separate views for Experience and Service feedback, plus a combined overview. We’ve also introduced a new widget for Experience Feedback analytics to visualize responses from the 5-point numeric and 5-point star rating questions.
- More Context in Feedback Tasks: To help experience owners better understand the feedback they’re addressing, we’ve enhanced feedback tasks on the My Tasks page. Each task now includes the assessment number, a direct link to the assessment, and the related portal page—making it easier to take informed action. These updates apply to both out-of-the-box questions and surveys.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The experience and service feedback enhancements are available for Employee Center Pro customers and backward compatible with Washington patch 10, Xanadu patch 7 & Yokohama family release.
Plugins required – The above enhancements are available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro application (version 35.0.2).
Technical details - The feedback definition form now includes new settings, allowing admins to choose from three types of Experience rating questions and configure when comments should be required
Refer to Integrated Experience & Service Feedback product documentation for additional details.
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7. End-user Self Service in Employee Center
(requires Digital End-User Experience)
With Digital End-user Experience collecting end-user data via the agent client collector, end users can leverage that data using our self-service widget in the Employee Center. You can manually check device health from the Quick Links or use Now Assist in Employee Center Portal to gain visibility into device health. If issues are present, end-users are presented remediation actions for resolution of issues without needing to contact the service desk. Watch a demo recording of this feature HERE.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - End-user Self Service is available to ServiceNow customers who are entitled to Digital End-user Experience and are on the Yokohama family release. To leverage LLM topic “Device Health” organizations must be entitled to Now Assist and Virtual Agent.
Plugins required – To use End-user Self Service, organizations must have Digital End-user Experience installed and collecting data using ACC.
Technical details –
Refer to Digital End-User Experience product documentation for further details.
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8. Now Assist enhancements in Now Mobile
(requires Now Assist)
We're extending the power of Now Assist to mobile, bringing the same intelligent, conversational experience employees rely on in the web experience to Now Mobile. Here are three key enhancements to call out for Now Mobile:
- Now Assist Self-Service: Employees can now access Now Assist’s combined chat and search experience directly on mobile, enabling them to complete common tasks on the go with the same ease and intelligence available on desktop.
- Now Assist Next Best Action: After completing a task—like submitting a time-off request—Now Assist can suggest helpful follow-up actions such as checking leave balance, blocking calendar time, or notifying teammates, streamlining productivity in real time.
- Now Assist People Match: Users can search for colleagues directly within the mobile interface, with rich contextual insights pulled from the organizational chart—making it easier to find and connect with the right people when it matters most.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Now Assist enhancements in Now Mobile are available for all Employee Center customers with Now Assist license, with Yokohama Patch 3.
Technical details – Refer to Mobile Now Assist display experience for Virtual Agent product documentation for further details.
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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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