Aspediens is one of the few selected partners participating in the ServiceNow Pre-Early Access Testing Program and, as such, we get the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of upcoming releases in advance.
As the Fuji Release is now publicly available, we are excited to share with you some of the key benefits brought to customers with this new version of ServiceNow.
#1. Service Catalog — enhanced access and security for your catalog
Administrators can now create flexible and reusable user criteria records that restrict access to service catalog items. This new security model is replacing the related visibility lists and entitlement scripts. This increases performance around the catalog and eases significantly the access activities, as security is no longer managed per item or per category, but with global and reusable security rules. Another nice enhancement is the ability to configure the layout and behaviour of the catalog cart and order status screens without the need of scripting.
#2. Knowledge Management — manage multiple Knowledge Bases
As ServiceNow is extending from IT to the Enterprise, it is key to be in a position to create and publish dedicated knowledge bases per business, department or any other required criteria. Fuji introduces the creation of multiple knowledge bases with dedicated lifecycle workflows, category structures, and assignments. This enhanced application also comes with a new contextual search and user criteria access model to manage the create, write, read, or retire rights on knowledge articles.
#3. Test Management — say goodbye to your test case spreadsheets
There are two types of organisations: those using spreadsheets to handle their test scenarios and execution, and those using heavy test application software suites. ServiceNow proposes a new alternative: an integrated application for creating test plans and test cases, guiding testers through test execution, monitoring testing processes, evaluating test results, and completing testing sign-off, all included in your Service Management platform, hence communicating with the other processes. This application can also be tied to the Project Portfolio Suite and as a result, test campaigns can be handled in the Project Workbench (see benefit below).
#4. Project Workbench — your project status at a glance
The Project Workbench is a nice addition to the Project and Portfolio Suite application. The workbench makes it easy to manage projects by presenting project information in two panes by combining data from PPS and SDLC (and as mentioned above, Test Management). The top pane displays a timeline with the project phases and milestones; the bottom pane displays details for the phase selected in the timeline, providing real-time interaction between the timeline, the list view, and the visual task board.
#5. Planned Maintenance — plan and schedule your asset maintenance tasks
This great new application — that we already had the opportunity to create as custom app for some of our customers — will help organisations manage regular and preventive maintenance of their assets. This allows field and facilities teams to attach maintenance plans to product models, generating maintenance tasks either on schedule or by usage metric, for example, after a specified number of pages are printed or a specified number of kilometers are driven. These work orders and facilities requests define how to perform maintenance on devices and vehicles, or just about any type of asset that requires maintenance.
#6. IT Finance Management — understand the cost, quality and value of your IT Services
This new application provides with an overview of IT-related finances, operations, and projects. With the IT Finance application, you can allocate, track, and report on expenses in your organisation. The application provides a workbench, which is a visual tool that you can use to extract expenses from your general ledger, process the expenses, and map them to the functions used by IT. A variety of reports and dashboards help you to know exactly how much of your expenditures are related to IT.
#7. UI15 — enhanced usability & better social collaboration
A new user interface is introduced in Fuji, with redesigned icons and notable usability enhancements. While the user interface might not look very different from UI14 introduced with Eureka, it is in reality a total revamp with Bootstrap as front-end framework, that will enhance the user experience with elements like responsive layout (the width of the page adapts to the size of the device screen), but also offer new features, such as the ability for users to personalise their form views without involving the administrator. More flexibility and freedom also with a chat interface optimised to facilitate collaborative work on tasks. Chat channels include individual conversations between users or Groups and conversations are linked to records. Comments and work notes also appear in real time and users can update the record directly from the conversation.
#8. Application Model — develop and protect your applications
Fuji introduces a completely new approach to Application development in ServiceNow, with a model that will allow developers to build dedicated Applications and protect their work to be reused or copied. This also means a better control on system performance as the number of triggered events can be defined, and a better segregation and control of Applications in ServiceNow. This is also the foundation for the upcoming ServiceNow App Store. More to come soon about this topic!
#9. IT GRC — get the latest authority documents imported in ServiceNow
The authority documents, citations and controls from the Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) can now be downloaded and imported into your IT GRC application. Quarterly updates are also proposed to the Administrators to make sure the Authority library is kept up to date. A new certification survey and IT GRC reports are also part of the release.
#10. Event Management — smoother integration with your monitoring tools
This freshly introduced application gets improved with new enhancements and integrations. Event processing performance is doubled and the API is enriched with new integrations, such as Amazon Web Services monitoring, but also with tools such as NetCool, SolarWinds, SCOM, Splunk and HP Operations Manager (using the recently acquired ServiceWatch technology).
If you are looking for assistance in either upgrading to Fuji or implementing some of the applications introduced, contact Aspediens, we will be happy to support you gain a maximum value out of your ServiceNow platform.
Original Post published by Michel Regueiro on aspediens.com
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