We are excited to announce the November 2024 release for Employee Center and related applications. This release includes enhancements to Employee Center, Employee Center Pro, and Now Mobile.
Below are the key new features and enhancements made in November 2024 store release:
- Enhancements to Guided Self-Service
- Taxonomy topic-based access control for performance improvements
- Employee communication enhancements:
- Support Topic Pages as Microsites
- Additional formatting tools for Rich Content Editor
- Enhancements to Integrated Experience and Service Feedback
- Now Assist Genius Results on Now Mobile
Note: While most of our Nov 2024 store releases are backward compatible with Vancouver & Washington, 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 35.0.2), Employee Center Pro (version 33.0.2), and Employee Center Pro Kiosk (version 2.1.1) from ServiceNow Store to get access to the features and enhancements listed below. See release notes for details around the latest enhancements.
1. Enhancements to Guided Self-Service in Employee Center
In August 2024 we launched a new Guided Self-Service experience powered by Playbooks. Guided Self-Service provides a visual Q&A based experience to help users self-serve on complex, frequently asked requests such as understanding HR benefits. With this release we have enhanced the end user experience and added more flexibility for admins to provide answers or instructions as the result of the Q&A. See details on the enhancements below:
- End user experience improvements: We have made it easy for users to view or edit their previous responses with one-click. They can also restart the Q&A thread easily with new input parameters.
See below for the new run-time experience:
- Added additional playbook configurations for admins: Admins can now add text-based or rich media instructions as responses to guided self-service queries, in addition to knowledge article or catalog item redirects. This configuration is available as part of the playbook designer flow. It is particularly useful for guiding users to external sites or applications, allowing admins to add screenshots and detailed instructions on how to navigate those platforms.
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How to get access?
License & Family release compatibility – Guided Self-Service capability is available for all ServiceNow customers who have activated Employee Center application. Guided Self-Service capability is only compatible with Xanadu patch 3 family release.
Plugins required – Guided Self-Service capability is delivered via a new plugin called Guided Self-Service in Employee Center application (version 2.0.2) and Employee Center application (version 35.0.2). The Guided Self-Service in Employee Center has a dependency on Process Automation Designer plugin, which must be installed in the instance.
Technical Details- Guided Self-Service can be displayed either as a widget on the homepage and/or topic page or as a quick link. The Guided Self-Service experience can be configured by navigating to Guided Self-Service module under Employee Center. In terms of user roles, the user must have Employee Center admin role (sn_hr_sp.esc_admin) and playbook writer role (playbook.write) and playbook experience admin (playbook_experience.admin) role to be able to configure playbook activity definition via the Process Automation Designer and preview the guided experience.
Refer to Guided Self-Service product documentation for additional details. To learn more about the Guided Self-Service capability, review the upcoming Employee Center Academy session for Guided Self-Service.
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2. Taxonomy Topic-based access control for performance improvements
Currently, the visibility of a Topic page on Employee Center is determined based on a user’s access to the connected content for each topic. This architecture ensures that users are only shown Topics that are relevant to them – i.e., there is at least one connected content that they have access to. The side effect of this architecture is that page load times will increase if organizations have complex or scripted user criteria and a lot of connected content.
With our Nov 2024 store release, we are providing an alternative for organizations to enable access control at the topic-level. They can define who the topic page is ‘available for’ and ‘not available for’ at each topic level and avoid evaluating the content level access to determine the visibility of the topic. Organizations can choose to make the sub-topic automatically inherit the same access levels as the parent topic or can have their own criteria defined.
We recommend organizations to only use the topic-level access control option only when they are facing slow load time and are unable to simplify their user criteria at the content level. With topic-level access control option enabled, the system is not checking if users have access to at least one connected content. If users are granted access at the topic level, but don’t have access to any connected content – they will be shown an empty topic page in this case.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Topic-based access control is available for all ServiceNow customers who have activated Employee Center application only compatible with Yokohama family release.
Plugins required – The Topic-based access control enhancement is auto-enabled upon upgrading the Employee Experience Taxonomy plugin (version 28.0.7), which is automatically upgraded along with the Employee Center upgrade with Yokohama family release.
Technical details - The "Enable user criteria check" option on the Topic Form allows for defining user criteria at the topic level. When activated for the first time, the default values for "Available for" and "Not available for" are empty, making the topic inaccessible. To ensure visibility, user criteria must be defined; otherwise, the topic will not appear in the mega menu. Changes to user criteria take effect only after users refresh their session - logout & then login.
Refer to Enable user criteria for Topics product documentation for additional details.
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3. Employee Communication enhancements
3(a). Standalone microsites as Topic Pages (requires Employee Center Pro)
Many organizations build rich microsites using Rich Content on their Employee Center Pro portals. For topics, such as Benefits, that have support resources (i.e. related Catalog items and Knowledge articles) they convert their Taxonomy Topic pages to act as a Dynamic Topic Microsites with the Rich Content embedded in the Topic page. For topics without support resources (or standalone microsites), they currently build custom pages and manually add them to the portal menu.
With our Nov 2024 release, we are excited to announce that Taxonomy Topic pages on the portal can now have Rich Content connected and no connected support content, acting as a standalone microsite. Organizations can now build standalone microsites as Taxonomy Topics, and no longer need to build a custom page. The visibility of these Topic pages will be based on access to the Rich Content or user criteria applied at topic level (as per the enhancement described above). These standalone microsites will function like regular taxonomy topics and appear in sub-topics widget on the parent topic page and popular topics widget on the homepage.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The Standalone microsites as Topic Pages is available for Employee Center Pro customers and requires Yokohama family release.
Plugins required – The Standalone microsites as Topic pages enhancement is auto-enabled upon upgrading the Employee Experience Taxonomy plugin (version 28.0.7) and the Employee Center Pro plugin (version 33.0.2) with the Yokohama Family release.
Technical details – Upon upgrade, authors will have the option to define a standalone topic page with just rich content editor without any connected content. Please note that in the February 2025 release, the support resources widget will only appear when connected content is available.
Refer to Standalone microsites as Topics pages product documentation for additional details.
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3(b). Additional formatting tools for Rich Content Editor (requires Employee Center Pro)
We’re excited to announce enhancements to the Rich Content Editor that make it more engaging Microsites and Employee News articles. With our November release, we have added additional formatting tools to the Rich Content Editor for content authors to better organize long paragraphs of dense text into visually appealing and easily navigable content, ultimately enhancing the employee experience. Below are the three new formatting options we have introduced:
- Accordion Layout: Authors can build accordions that allows users to expand or collapse sections, making it easier to focus on specific information. This is especially helpful when there is a lot of text-based content included.
- Table/Grid Layout: Authors can present complex information in a tabular layout, highlighting key data in rows and columns. This format helps summarize complex and dense information into an easy-to-read table, reducing clutter and enhancing comprehension.
- Bulleted and Numbered Lists: This feature allows content admins to easily incorporate lists as bullets and numbers, enhancing the overall readability of text.
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How to get access?
License & family release compatibility - The rich content editor enhancements are available for Employee Center Pro customers and backward compatible with Vancouver patch 10, Washington patch 8 & Xanadu patch 3 family release.
Plugins required – The additional formatting tools for Rich Content Editor is available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro application (version 33.0.2) and Content Publishing application (version 33.0.3).
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 around how to add list, table & accordion.
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4. Post-feedback loop in Experience & Service Feedback (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 introducing a post-feedback loop to the feedback, designed to drive action based on collected feedback. See the details below:
- Feedback task creation - Admins can configure tasks to be triggered for service or experience owners based on predefined thresholds—such as when feedback scores fall below a set point on a 5-point scale. Owners of the feedback will receive the ‘Feedback task’ as part of the existing 'My Tasks' experience on the employee portal. Feedback owners can skip tasks for feedback that lacks context, ensuring efficient management of actionable items.
- Feedback addressed notifications for the end-user – When feedback is submitted in non-anonymous mode, providers will receive an email notification confirming that their feedback has been addressed. This notification includes comments or any resolution steps that feedback owners provide as part of the feedback task. The Feedback addressed notification is sent when the feedback owners complete or skip the feedback task, along with the comments.
- Feedback task analytics– The feedback analytics dashboard will now feature graphs for analysing feedback tasks, allowing experience and service owners to easily track progress on responses. The newly added analytics graphs will display total feedback tasks by status (Open/Skipped/Completed) and top pages generating feedback tasks.
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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 Vancouver patch 10, Washington patch 8, & Xanadu patch 3 family release.
Plugins required – The Integrated Experience and Service Feedback capability requires Employee Center Pro license. The above enhancements are available by upgrading the Employee Center Pro application (version 33.0.2).
Technical details – The feedback definition form will now display additional configuration options for post feedback loop configuration where the admins could configure the rating threshold, assignment groups and the option to create a feedback task post-feedback submission.
Refer to Integrated Experience & Service Feedback product documentation for additional details.
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5. Now Assist Genius Results on Now Mobile (requires Now Assist License)
Starting in November, Now Assist Genius results will be available on Now Mobile, enhancing user experience with the following features:
- AI-Powered Answers: Users can receive summarized, AI-generated responses to their questions directly within the Now Mobile app. The results include thumbs up/down buttons, allowing users to provide feedback on the usefulness of the answers. Answers will initially be display in a collapsed format, ensuring that the screen remains uncluttered. Users can click "Show More" to expand and view additional details.
- Admin Configuration: Admins will have the ability to configure how Genius results are displayed, including options for source visibility, enabling users to see where the information is sourced from. Each Genius result can be configured to include action buttons, such as "Start a Request" or "Learn More," making it easier for users to take next steps directly from the response.
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How to get access?
Plugins required – The Now Assist genius results on Now mobile enhancement is available with the Now Assist license. Once the Now Mobile application is upgraded, Now Assist in AI Search setup is required to use Now Assist Genius results on Now Mobile. This can be accomplished by navigating to All > AI Search > Now Assist in AI Search Setup and enabling Now Assist Genius results by selecting the checkboxes for the following applications: Now Mobile Admin - Help Center Now Mobile Admin - Home Now Mobile - Help Center Now Mobile - Home These selections should be made under the Now Mobile Default Search Profile.
Refer to Now Assist Genius Results product documentation for additional details.
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We're also excited to introduce a brand new out-of-the-box (OOB) theme with this release! Please note that this update will not impact any existing implementations where organizations have custom themes applied to their portals. Below, you'll find a preview of the new white theme:
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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