Practical Advice for switching to the NEXT UI.

[Gmckone]

Hey Vancouver SNUG.

Our instance of ServiceNow (supporting Fraser Health) is being managed for us.  In early 2025 we understand we are upgrading to the "NEXT UI". I'd like to learn more about the work required and the features enabled by a NEXT upgrade.

What work is required?
- We realize we have about 90 quick reference guides for our users that need to be updated with new screenshots.
So we have some work to do there. (and would love it if someone could point us to any kind of online demo instance where we could start capturing/creating screenshots for our documentation. 
Can anyone point us to on online demo instance that is upgraded to NEXT?

We hear that some features (workspaces?) are enabled by an upgrade to NEXT UI, but we don't really know anything about those features or their value.
What features (that NEXT enabled) do you find useful/powerful?

Thanks in advance for your insights and practical advice!
Greg - Fraser Health Service Management Office (SMO).

[Paul Curwen]

Pretty much everything you need to know about moving from UI16 to next Experience is documented here:

Everything you need to know to get started with Ne... - ServiceNow Community

[Gmckone]

Thank you Paul! 🙂

[Gmckone]

I'm noticing there is lots of ServiceNow provided information about features and technical history (which makes sense):

I haven't yet found a "checklist" of work that we will need to undertake to make the move. (it might be there still looking).

I see we will need to configure Landing pages and guided tours.
I understand this can essentially pre-load these pages with "favourite" that a new user would not normally have with ui16.  It could help them be more productive at the start. 

I'm seeing how we could use Guided tours as an alternate tool for training.   This might satisfy a desire our users have expressed for more interactive training.  (while we may not have the energy for training environments, test data, exercises and evaluation... We probably have the time to provide guided tours that FEEL more like they are "in the tool" not "about the tool".)

Workspace Selection
With 50+ workspaces available from ServiceNow (as of Washington) we'll need to understand which workspaces work with our licensing (and the modules we are using) (not using HR etc.)  And we'll need to select/request the configuration of those workspaces to be available in the unified menu.

Theming Choice
I see that there is lots of ServiceNow content about themes and at the same time the ServiceNow recommendation is to use Polaris because it has been well tested and has a dark mode. So we'll most likely follow that advice.