Background
We all know the good old UI16 which has been around for quite some years. But world of technology is changing daily, and new, modern concepts are being introduced with a lightning fast pace.
To keep up with the trend, but also to allow for more freedom, ServiceNow has introduced the Next Experience (previously referred to as Now Experience or Polaris UI).
Next Experience is the name of the new UI framework from ServiceNow, which replaces UI16. It is designed to bridge the gap between the Configurable Workspaces and the rest of the Platform. There are some really cool features like Theme Builder (Store app, free of charge), Dark theme, Favorites grouping, Admin configurable menus, etc.
UI Builder is the tool to build new pages for the next experience. There is a library of over 200 prebuilt components, custom components can be built with the ServiceNow CLI. New features are constantly added with each new release.
It has been launched in few releases ago as an optional, but with Vancouver coming up this fall, all new instances will be running the Next Experience by default. Further, if you are upgrading from a previous version to Vancouver, the Next Experience will be enabled by default, even if it was not enabled prior to the upgrade.
The outbound product team maintains a whole forum on the ServiceNow Community, called Next Experience COE. This is the go-to place for all things Next Experience.
How to ensure smooth transition from UI16 to Next Experience
ServiceNow recommends the following 5 steps to ensure that customers have smooth transition to the Next Experience:
- Install the Next Experience Readiness Checker (Store app, free of charge), scan for unsupported features and review migration guidance provided.
- In a sub-production instance, enable the Next Experience UI. Perform upgrade testing either manually or with Automated Test Framework
- Remediate unsupported customizations, such as DOM manipulation. Use the migration guidance for unsupported features at this time.
- Prepare communications, training, and other organizational change management materials prior to Production launch.
- Enable Next Experience UI in Production as part of your release cycle, or per your organization’s procedure for new features.
Here’s what customers need to know if they are upgrading and have not yet enabled Next Experience:
- If customers have known issues with Next Experience and turning it on will negatively affect their instance, then prior to installing the Vancouver upgrade, they can:
- Create new system property “glide.ui.next_experience.opt_out” and set it to true.
- If customers have upgraded and the Next Experience has been turned on, they can turn it off by setting system property “glide.ui.polaris.experience” to false
- If customers want to have a phased rollout by groups, they can follow this article on the Next Experience COE.
Since I have mentioned unsupported features, here is the list of Next Experience unsupported features presented by ServiceNow:
- Live Feed
- Connect Chat (replaced by Sidebar)
- Connect Support (replaced by Agent Chat)
- Guided tours on Workspaces
- Automated Test Framework (ATF) on Workspaces
- JavaScript Console Log
- Custom Header Menus, i.e., DOM Manipulation on Unified Navigation
- Editing or creating Homepages (viewing is supported)
As mentioned above all unsupported features will be determined by the Next Experience Readiness Checker tool.
Dashboards and Homepages
It is recommended for customers to begin migrating Homepages to Responsive Dashboards. Migration is not hard requirement for Next Experience UI activation but recommended to easily uptake future enhancements.
Where to learn more about Next Experience
As mentioned above, the outbound product team is maintaining a Community forum, where you can find multiple topics like Quick start guides, FAQ, Release updates, etc. Further, there is a Next Experience Academy, happening every 3rd Wednesday of the month. Recordings of previous episodes can be found there as well.
This article summarizes a Next Experience Academy episode. It was published with the explicit agreement of the Academy host.
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