This blog aims to be a deep dive blog on the features coming in the February 2024 store and Washington DC releases. Some of the features may have dependency on a family release. This will be called out in the feature section.
Content
-
Case & Knowledge Management or Agent Workspace for HR Case Management
-
Employee Journey Management
-
Now Assist for HR Service Delivery
-
ServiceNow Voice for HR
-
Admin Workspace for Service Providers
-
Document Template
Case and Knowledge Management or Agent Workspace for HR Case Management
- Additional security on documents in HR case
- Persona: HR admin, HR agent
- Dependency: Document management
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0 or Washington DC family release
Enhances additional security on the documents from beyond what the case provides. The HR agent or HR admin can manually add reader, writer or owner permissions at a user/group/ role or user criteria level on a document record.
On the HR case you will see a document tab, under that tab click on the document record.
Once you are in the document record, enable “Sharing permissions” option. This will bring up the 4 tabs – role permission, user permission, group permission and User criteria permission
You can then choose to add the permissions at these levels.
- New HR Task of type “Schedule a meeting”
- Persona: HR Agent
- Dependency: MS Outlook spoke
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0 or Washington DC family release
The new HR Task of type “Schedule a meeting” helps HR agents to schedule an in-person meeting or a virtual meeting with an employee. Having the MS outlook spoke configured also allows an agent to view the employee's availability and then send them a meeting invite.
Once the HR task of Schedule a meeting is assigned to the HR agent, the agent can then mark the task as ready or work in progress. This enables the UI button “schedule calendar invite” which brings up a UI which can be used to view the employees' calendar and based on availability as slot can be scheduled. This meeting invite can also include external attendees who will be sent the meeting invitation.
- Dashboard in Analytics Center on Sidebar
- Persona: HR Agent, HR manager
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0
This is a minor enhancement with continuation of moving dashboards that were available in platform analytics center. We have moved 4 dashboards into the analytics center so now they are accessible through the same experience, and the agent doesn't have to swivel between HR agent workspace and analytics workspace. We brought the below 5 dashboards inside the analytics center:
- HR Employee Documents
- Employee Relations
- Employee Relations Executive Overview
- HR Agent
- HR Manager
- Configurations Settings Page
- Persona: HR Admin
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0
We have introduced a configuration settings page which covers the basic configurations we have seen commonly done across customer implementation. This aims to provide easy access to these configurations and removes the complexity of identifying the right place to configure which is quite scattered today. The configuration on these have been separated out into the landing page, record page, case creation page and list page.
- Checklist and ER list enhancements
- Persona: HR Agent
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0
With an upgrade to the agent workspace for HR case management 3.0, an HR agent will be able to create, edit and reorder checklist from the agent workspace itself. We also have categorized the Employee relation cases into its own section in the list view.
- Personal Notes – Scratchpad like experience
- Persona: HR Agent
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0
A new item has been added to the contextual side panel called the personal notes. This allows the agent to make notes which shouldn't be viewed by other agents or are not finalized to be part of the case history. This is only viewable by the agent and gets deleted ones the case is closed. In situations where the case is transferred the previous agent will have the note read only.
- New Case Creation Page in UI Builder
- Persona: HR Admin
- Availability: Agent workspace for HR case management 3.0
The new Case Creation page brings in more modular approach to case creation flow. This helps to solve for the rigidity that the previous case creation page brought in when being customized. Once you have this new page, all customizations will be done through UI controller and presets. On upgrade the new page will have a higher order and hence will be present as a default. If you would like for your variant to be the one visible, modify the order of that variant to be higher than the value of the case creation page 2.0.
- Bulk task completion
- Persona: Manager and Admin
- Dependencies: Washington DC family release and Journey Designer v4.0 (February 2024 store release)
Help managers be more productive by enabling them to complete the same action across multiple employee journeys in bulk. For example, if a manager has 5 new hires joining the organization at the same time, instead of going into each journey separately to complete their software provisioning, she can now approve them across all the journeys simultaneously. This frees up her time to focus on making sure the onboarding experience is great for her new hires and not the on the minutia of workflow processes and tasks.
In the initial release, only journey-related Approvals, Mark as Complete, and IT Order Guides/Catalog Items task types will be able to be completed in bulk. Admins will have control of which of these task types can be completed in bulk at their organization based on a new system property (sn_jny.bulk_management_task_types). Also, tasks can only be completed in bulk across the same journey type (e.g. completing approvals across onboarding journeys).
- Journey designer usability enhancements
- Persona: Employee and Manager
- Dependencies: Journey Designer v4.0 (compatible with Washington, Vancouver, and Utah family releases)
- ServiceNow is continuously trying to improve our products and we have 4 new usability enhancements coming to Journey designer in the February 2024 store release:
- Clear indication of “At Risk” badge reasons
- Back button on journey tasks
- “Required” field on mandatory tasks
- Skipped tasks show up with in completed tasks section of task page
Now Assist in HR Service Delivery
February 2024 Release (Washington Early Availability)
With the Now Assist for HR Service Delivery (HRSD) application, your agents can summarize the customer chat conversations and case details to get the context of the case, generate the case resolution notes, and wrap up cases faster. Using the power of generative AI in search, employees can get direct responses on customer-specific content, ensuring that access rights to that content are respected, reducing the risk of hallucination and inappropriate responses. HR customers can transform employee experience & further enhance self-service using the new LLM powered virtual agent with an extremely simplified set-up experience where topics can be administered in less than 15mins! Refer to this link to learn about our first Generally Available release for Now Assist in HRSD (September 2023).
With Now Assist, we are providing our customers with broad and secure large language model (LLM) support through either general-purpose LLMs or ServiceNow’s domain-specific models, which are purpose-built for our workflows, processes, and users.
Built into the Now platform, domain‑specific LLMs are designed specifically for ServiceNow’s workflows, use cases, and processes, and are tailored to agents, employees, and administrators who use ServiceNow. This allows for an excellent end‑user experience, unprecedented time‑to‑market, and high levels of transparency and governance.
Key enhancements in the February 2024 store release for Washington have been for the new LLM powered Virtual Agent that customers can access via Now Assist in HR Service Delivery. Let’s learn more about it.
Place an HR request using the conversational and streamlined experience offered by Generative AI powered Virtual Agent.
Customers get access to LLM powered Virtual Agent with Now Assist in HRSD. Using these employees can order catalog items within a conversation without opening a separate catalog window. This enables employees to get the items they need faster whether they're on Portal or an integrated messaging app like Microsoft Teams. With Now Assist in Virtual Agent, the ordering process is enhanced so that users can mention their answers and choices in their initial query and have the ability to change answers on the fly!
Now Assist in Virtual Agent, released in November 2023, provides a new low-code setup page that guides you through creating an LLM-powered Virtual Agent. You can access it from the Now Assist admin page > Now Assist Features > Virtual Agent.
Now Assist in Virtual Agent provides generated search results to user queries from the Knowledge Base. This is done via Now Assist in AI Search embedded in the Virtual Agent. It can also order catalog items conversationally without needing a separate pop-up or order form to complete. Powered by a large language model, Now Assist in VA can detect what the user wants, populate fields based on info within the user's question, and allow users to change their answers conversationally. To learn more about how catalog ordering is supported, see the article:How to request catalog items in Now Assist in Virtual Agent
If users do not find what they're looking for, they are provided with a fallback to either a live agent or a request ticket.
Now Assist in VA also comes with its own analytics dashboard.
🤖 What's New
Using the February 2024 store release for Washington admins can do a lot more in the setup page than creating your greetings, branding, Virtual Agent placement, and selecting which Now Assist skills to enable.
Admins can now enable Now Assist LLM powered topic discovery, configure more channels, configure fallback selection & navigate into virtual agent designer for LLM topic creation
Customers can now increase deflection Now Assist in Virtual Agent with its compatibility to MS Team & Mobile
- Now Assist in VA now meets users where they work, whether it's web, mobile, or their favorite messaging application
- Use the Now Assist in Virtual Agent setup page to configure the channels to support
- Leverage LLM-powered Search and catalog ordering in your Teams integration or the Now Mobile app.
HR Customers can easily create LLM powered VA topics with Now Assist in VA Designer in less than 15 mins! Using Now LLM customers no longer need to manage utterances in NLU. Here are the key features in the February 2024 store release (Washington)
- Build natural language conversations without NLU
- Ask for inputs of different data types using Gen AI controls and fill in relevant information from user utterances throughout conversation flow
- Improved visibility of discovery results during topic testing
The February release also marks the release of Dynamic translation capabilities for LLM based topics.
🔎 What's Different
There are several differences between the existing Virtual Agent and Now Assist in Virtual Agent. For starters, Now Assist in VA does not use keywords or NLU to determine intent, so it does not use the NLU Workbench. Instead, it uses a Large Language Model for intent recognition and search which improves its accuracy. There are some features like Bot-to-Bot integration not supported in Now Assist in Virtual Agent for February 2024 (yet!), keep this in mind when deciding when to uptake Now Assist in Virtual Agent. For more guidance, see this article: When to consider using Now Assist in Virtual Agent
Other Enhancements in February 2024 (Washington Early Availability)
Customer will also see enhancements to the following generative AI capabilities that were made available for an agent in the Vancouver release link :
- A case summary provides agents with a concise summary of a case. It enables agents to get the context by gathering information about an issue and taking actions more quickly. It also enables agents to refresh and post the summary to the work notes.
- The case resolution notes can help agents to wrap up cases faster and provide the context about the case resolution to other agents who might encounter similar cases.
- An interaction chat history provides the context about the chat conversation between the agents and requesters at different points of the handoff, such as when the Virtual Agent conversation chat history is handed off to a live agent.
🤖 What's New
The enhancements in this release include:
- Chat Summarization to Case Creation: Pre-populate Short Description & Description while creating a case from an interaction!
In Workflow Case Summary Reassignment: Provide the case summary to agent when the case is transferred to them!
Admin Experience Enhancements on Now Assist Admin: Control skill rollout by defining record level and role level
🌟 What's Coming*
In May 2024 (Washington Availability), further enhancements to Now Assist in Virtual Agent like multi-step Q&A with Knowledge, migration tool from NLU topics to LLM topics. There will also be feature additions bringing Virtual Agent & AI Search in an integrated unified experience.
Continue to check out our Community Forum as more information becomes available!
*Safe harbor applies for forward-looking statements.
ServiceNow Voice for HR Service Delivery
|
Technical Detail:
- Persona: HR Call Center Manager, HR Agents
- The Voice for HRSD plugin has a prerequisite that ServiceNow Voice must already be activated, configured and integrated to supported telephony solution
- Requires HR Agent Workspace
- Compatible with the Washington Release
- Plugin name: [sn_cti_hr_cnt]
Although there are many new and efficient channels for submitting cases and requests with ServiceNow, voice remains a popular choice. Voice for HR allows customers with ServiceNow Voice Integration to increase their speed to support and resolve HR Case work.
This feature was added to extend the capabilities of ServiceNow Voice to HRSD. This provides similar capabilities to those available in Voice for ITSM and Voice for CSM. This enhances the speed to support and resolve by automatically generating and attaching transcripts to HR cases from inbound and outbound calls from the HR Agent Workspace.
General Use Case Flow:
- When the agent marks themselves available in the Agent Workspace they will be notified of incoming user call requests.
- Once an agent initiates or accepts a call, ServiceNow Voice for HRSD integration will generate an interaction record in the background attaching the recording and or transcript from the call.
- The agent will then have the ability, with Voice for HRSD installed, to generate an HR case from that interaction.
Admin Workspace for Service Providers
|
Technical Details:
- Persona: HR Service Provider Manager
- Plugin available on Store
- Available in the Washington Release
- Requires HR Agent Workspace
- Access SP Workspace from the Workspace menu
Admin Workspace for Service Providers provides the Service Provider Admins a consolidated view into the demand and consumption of the services offered by them to their customers to enable data driven decision making.
This feature was created to support Service Providers that must maintain complex organizations and domains, while monitoring provided services and users.
Feature Overview:
- Landing Page : Contains Data and links for Aggregated KPIs and Portfolio level useful links
- Client Details Page: Contains Data and links for Client ( Domain ) specific KPIs, contact details and useful links
- Quick Links: Shortcuts to relevant configuration pages
Service Provider Admins can enable this plugin to enable the Service Provider Admin Workspace. Access the Workspace from the Workspace main menu, listed as SP Workspace.
This provides a view to all the separate Domains in one consolidated workspace. Customers, services, cases and users can quickly be assessed as well as trended information to identify any outliers that should be evaluated.
As an added benefit, the workspace also includes quick links to create new domains, customers and users to simplify navigation.
For PDF Document Templates - Support for CAC/ PIV Signing with Adobe Acrobat Reader
Persona: Document Admin, HR Agent, Employee
Technical Details:
Version number: v5.0
Availability: General Availability
Family release dependency: No dependency on family plugin. This is available on store and compatible from Washington.
Plugin name(s): Document Template
Licensing: Free on SN Store
-
Ability for Federal customers to create document templates with Digital Signature capabilities.
-
Ability for Federal customers to digitally sign a PDF document using CAC/PIV cards.
- External signing is supported via integration with Adobe Acrobat Reader desktop tool for Windows and Mac.
- Two Storage options for signed documents supported - EDM and DMS.
For more information, refer to ServiceNow product documentation.
7 Comments
