Next Experience theme for Now Mobile

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Next Experience theme for Now Mobile

    The Next Experience theme introduces a modern, intuitive, and personalized user interface for Now Mobile on the ServiceNow AI Platform. It enhances productivity, engagement, and accessibility by providing a consistent and unified design across both mobile and web (MESP portal) environments. This theme aims to improve content discovery, accessibility, and overall user experience.

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    Key Features

    • New layout, screens, and card designs optimized for accessibility and intuitive use.
    • Consistent experience across web and mobile through the updated MESP portal theme aligned with Next Experience.
    • Enable Next Experience by setting the system property glide.ui.polaris.experience to true, which activates new color variables for UI rules, card templates, and icons, with fallback colors when disabled.
    • Enhanced search and content discovery capabilities, including upgrades to AI Search as the default engine from the Utah release onward.
    • Improved accessibility with new input form screens replacing UI parameters.
    • Transformation of the Content section into a card-based Record section for improved mobile viewing.
    • Editable MESP portal records with configurable custom themes to maintain unified design across native mobile and MESP portals.

    Upgrade Considerations

    AI Search

    From the Utah release, AI Search is the default on Now Mobile. Existing customers retain their current search engine post-upgrade unless changed by glide fix scripts that synchronize the search engine system property.

    MESP Portal (Webviews)

    • Next Experience becomes the default theme on MESP from Utah.
    • Theme application depends on branding and Next Experience option settings:
      • If not branded and Next Experience is enabled, the new theme applies automatically.
      • If branded or Next Experience is disabled, the new theme does not apply.
    • Manual updates to MESP records may be required when upgrading from earlier releases such as Tokyo or Vancouver, depending on system property settings.

    Now Mobile Native Application

    • Compatibility varies by application and ServiceNow release family (Utah, San Diego, Tokyo).
    • For Utah-compatible apps, Next Experience is installed automatically during upgrade.
    • For apps from earlier releases, glide fixes and manual script runs are needed to revert or uptake Next Experience changes.
    • Specific fix scripts exist to apply or revert the Next Experience theme for apps like Content Publishing, Employee Center (and Core), Employee Profile, Now Mobile, and Search Configurations for mobile.

    Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers

    By enabling the Next Experience theme, customers can offer their users a seamless, accessible, and visually unified experience across mobile and web platforms. The upgrades to AI Search and content presentation improve usability and engagement. Customers should carefully plan upgrade paths, considering compatibility and the need for manual updates or fix scripts to ensure smooth adoption of the Next Experience enhancements.

    Next Experience delivers a next generation, intuitive, personalized experience to drive productivity, improve engagement, and surface insights across the ServiceNow AI Platform.

    You can configure Next Experience on Now Mobile.
    • Provide a better accessible Next Experience on Now Mobile.
    • Offer consistent experiences across web and Now Mobile.
    • Provide a unified design experience across applications.

    Summary of enhancements

    The following list provides a quick summary of the improvements as part of Next Experience.
    • Use the new layout, screens, and card designs for accessibility and intuitive experience.
    • Provide a consistent experience on web and mobile with the updated MESP portal theme that aligns with the next experience theme.
    • Set the value of glide.ui.polaris.experience to true to enable the new color variables. A fallback color hex code is used when the new experience is not enabled.
    • Use the color variables for UI rules, card templates, and icons.
    • Enhance the search and discovery of the content and people.
    • Improve accessibility with the new input form screens for functions instead of UI parameters.
    • Convert the Content section to the Record section (sys_sg_item_section) to enable the display of each item as a card (mobile view)​.
    • Make the MESP portal record editable. Admin can now configure and apply the custom theme for MESP portal to provide a unified experience across native mobile and MESP.

    Enable AI Search upgrade considerations

    From Utah, AI Search is the default search engine on Now Mobile.

    For existing customers, when you upgrade to Utah, you continue to use your existing search engine for Now Mobile as it was before the upgrade.
    • Glide fix runs before the plugin upgrade where the current search engine is stored in a system property sn_me_search.search_engine.
    • After plugin upgrade, another glide fix runs to set the value of search engine to sn_me_search.search_engine property value, provided this value is not empty.

    MESP (Webviews) upgrade considerations

    From Utah, Next Experience is the new theme on the MESP. For the existing customers, when you upgrade to Utah, the theme adoption works in the following manner:
    • When you have not branded the Now Mobile app and enable the Next Experience option, the new theme applies automatically on the MESP portal record.
    • When you have not branded the Now Mobile app and do not turn on the Next Experience option, the new theme is not applicable on the MESP portal record.
    • When you have branded the Now Mobile app; irrespective of the turning on or off the Next Experience option, the new theme is not applicable on the MESP portal record.
      Table 1. MESP (Webviews) upgrade scenario descriptions
      Upgrade scenario Description
      If you are upgrading from Tokyo to Vancouver, when the glide.ui.next_experience.opt_out and the glide.ui.polaris.experience are set to true Update the MESP record manually to use the Next Experience theme.
      If you are upgrading from Tokyo to Vancouver, when the glide.ui.next_experience.opt_out and the glide.ui.polaris.experience are set to false Update the MESP record manually to use the Next Experience theme.

    Now Mobile native upgrade considerations

    Here are the Now Mobile upgrade considerations for various Employee Center Applications. When you make changes at the mapping level, the latest changes are not available out-of-the-box.
    • Apps compatible with Utah: Now Mobile, Webviews for mobile, Search configurations for mobile, and Tasks for mobile.
    • Apps compatible with Utah, San Diego, and Tokyo family releases: Employee Center, Employee Center Core, Employee Profile, and Content Publishing.
    Table 2. Now Mobile native upgrade considerations table
    Upgrade scenario Description
    For apps compatible with Utah When you upgrade to Utah, Next Experience is installed without any additional steps.
    For apps compatible with Utah San Diego and Tokyo, with Next Experience changes installed and upgraded to Utah For pre-Utah, Next Experience changes are not applied.
    • Use the glide fix to automatically revert Next Experience changes.
    • After the instance is upgraded to Utah, you can manually run the uptake scripts for each app to uptake Next Experience changes.
    For apps compatible with Utah San Diego and Tokyo, without Next Experience changes installed and upgraded to Utah When you upgrade to Utah, Next Experience is installed without any additional steps.
    Run the following fix scripts manually by setting the runManually=true to revert Next Experience changes for each application.
    Table 3. Next Experience revert fix script description table
    Fix script Application
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - Cont Pub Content Publishing
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EC Employee Center
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EC Core Employee Center Core
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EP Employee Profile
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - Now Mobile Now Mobile
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - NowMobileSearch Search Configurations for mobile

    Run the following fix scripts manually by setting the runManually=true to uptake Next Experience changes for each application.

    Table 4. Next Experience uptake fix script descriptions table
    Fix script Application
    Mobile Next Exp - Cont Pub Content Publishing
    Mobile Next Exp - EC Employee Center
    Mobile Next Exp - EC Core Employee Center Core
    Mobile Next Exp - EP Employee Profile