Combined Portfolio Planning release notes for upgrades from Yokohama to Australia

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated June 16, 2026
  • 12 minutes to read
  • Consolidated page of all release notes for Portfolio Planning from Yokohama to Australia.

    How to use this page

    To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Portfolio Planning release notes onto one page. Read this summary of the new features, changes, and updated information for your product from Yokohama to Australia.

    Tip:
    If there were no updates for a release notes section in a certain family release, we included a short note for your reference. For example, if a product did not have any updates in Tokyo, the row says "No updates for this release."

    Important information for upgrading Portfolio Planning to Australia

    Before you upgrade to Australia, review these pre- and post-upgrade tasks and complete the tasks as needed.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    After upgrading to Portfolio Planning v8.8.0, the custom view settings previously saved under user preferences will be cleared. You must reapply these changes and create views as needed. For instructions, see Create a portfolio plan view in Portfolio Planning and Create a free-form roadmap view in Portfolio Planning.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    New features

    Between your current release family and Australia, new features were introduced for Portfolio Planning.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    View financial data of your planning items at the portfolio level
    • View the rolled-up financial costs and benefits data of your planning items Epics, Demands, and Projects at the portfolio level for different time scales and ranges.
    • View the financial values such as the Budget, Planned cost, Variance, Actuals, and Remaining Estimates of your planning items by expense type or cost type.
    • View the Forecasts, Actuals, and Variance of your planning items for monetary benefits.
    • View the financial data of the planning items while creating multiple prioritization scenarios to promote efficient use of budget and to help increase ROI.
    Create and manage financial scenarios of planning items
    • Optimize your portfolio by creating financial scenarios to validate and arrive at a profitable outcome.
    • Plan and manage the budget of the planning items in a simulation mode for efficient financial planning and to help prevent overspending.
    • Manage prioritization and budget allocation of the planning items to meet business priorities.
    • Compare financial scenarios and automatically allocate the planned budget from approved scenarios to planning items.
    • Enable a budget allocation property to analyze finances in scenario planning and take effective decisions using data-driven insights.
    Dashboards for data analysis and decision-making
    Consolidate key data and metrics from multiple sources onto dashboards, enabling you to monitor performance, track progress, and make informed decisions related to planning and execution.

    You can create, edit, and copy a dashboard, customizing as needed. Add widgets to a dashboard to display key data, metrics, and visualizations. You can also share dashboards to collaborate with the business stakeholders who have access to the portfolio plan.

    Create and share views for portfolio plans and free-form roadmaps
    Create, edit, and switch views in portfolio plans and free-form roadmaps using display preferences. You can create personal views that are private to you or public views that can be shared with stakeholders who have access.
    Portfolio plan display preferences include column selection, grouping and filtering. Free-form roadmap preferences include grouping, milestones selection, dependencies selection, and tracking mode. The portfolio plan view saves your display preferences across the Prioritization, Roadmap, Capacity, and Financials tabs.
    Note:
    Portfolio plan views are available only for the Planning module and are supported in live mode, but not in scenario mode.
    Real-time collaboration for Planning item Docs

    Edit a doc page concurrently with multiple other editors. Colored cursors denote the current location of editors on the page. You can choose to show or hide these indicators.

    Note:
    To use the full functionality of Docs v6.6.0 within Portfolio Planning Workspace, upgrade to Portfolio Planning Workspace v8.5.0. For more information, see the Incompatibility After Upgrading Docs to Version 6.0.0 [KB2017926] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Zurich

    Roadmap enhancements
    • Create custom themes for your roadmap bar colors to align with your organization’s standards.
    • Experience consistent roadmap bar colors for choice list attribute values across all portfolio plans.
    • View the roadmap-level milestone row while scrolling down the Roadmap page.
    • Use different icons to distinguish item-level milestones.
    Dynamic data linking in Docs

    Keep record information in your documentation always current and reduce manual effort with the Dynamic data linking feature in Docs. You can now reference any ServiceNow application record and Docs will automatically reflect the latest updates from those records. For example, if you add a reference to a Project record, the reference will show the latest field information of the project in Docs without requiring manual edits. Clicking the project reference opens up the project form so that you can view the full details of the project record and make any necessary changes. Dynamic linking also enables adding references to a particular field of a record, such as Assigned to of an Incident record.

    You can add references from any ServiceNow table you have access to, with no setup or configuration needed, thereby eliminate the hassle of switching between applications to copy and paste data from various records into Docs.

    Scenario planning enhancements
    With the sn_align_core.apw_admin role, you can enable or disable the scenario planning feature. The sn_align_ws.is_scenario_planning_disabled system property allows you to enable or disable the scenario planning feature.
    Quick filters enhancements
    Apply filters using string-type and Boolean field values across the Planning page to view the required dataset. These filters are saved as part of your user preferences, enabling you to access the same filtered data when you log back in and continue your planning seamlessly.
    Financial enhancements
    • View only the planned costs of your planning items to track the total cost of projects or demands.
    • Use Display mode to switch between focused views to better plan and track the financials of your planning items.
    • Manage the planned and actual monetary benefit plans for your projects to identify the financial performance of your project using the Cost and benefits screen.
    • Use multicurrency to view and manage financial records of the project in Investment currency, which can be different from your functional currency. Manage multiple financial records such as planned and actual expenses, planned and actual benefits, and so on.
    • Generate and track labor cost for sub-projects, based on the resource assignments of your sub-projects and planning items such as features and capabilities.

    Australia

    AI-generated insights for portfolio plans
    Gain AI-generated insights into planning items within a portfolio plan using the Portfolio insights skill. Identify planning items that are delayed beyond their planned end date, have delayed starts, or have misalignments between planned and approved dates. Monitor active projects that show early risk indicators but have not yet experienced delays. View AI-generated top root causes and recommended actions for each insight category to help address delays and misalignments effectively.

    Users with the sn_align_core.apw_admin role assigned can configure severity thresholds and scoring factors for planning items to control how the Portfolio insights skill classifies insight severity as Critical, Medium, or Low.

    Next Experience for Demand Management
    Manage strategic and operational demands in a unified experience in Portfolio Planning. This Next Experience interface consolidates demand creation, assessment, collaboration, and conversion in one place, eliminating context switching and reducing reliance on the classic Demand Workbench.
    Create and manage demands in Next Experience for Demand Management
    • Create and manage a demand in Next Experience for Demand Management using guided tabs. These tabs help you define alignment, estimate costs, and confirm readiness as you build out the demand.
    • Collaborate on demands through Docs, which syncs execution and planning.
    • View, add, and edit cost plans and budgeting details using related lists.
    Use Playbook in Next Experience for Demand Management
    Help teams manage demands with greater structure and consistency using Playbook in Next Experience for Demand Management.

    Playbooks enable you to define multiple governance processes across the organization using a low‑code/no‑code configuration experience. Create clear stages and guided activities from demand intake to completion by using a default playbook or creating a custom playbook to support your organization’s multiple demand management processes.

    Associate AI systems with demands in Next Experience for Demand Management
    Use a playbook activity in Next Experience for Demand Management to associate AI systems with a demand. You can link impacted systems and add new ones directly within the demand workflow.
    Portfolio plan enhancements
    • Access the Hierarchy tab directly from the Planning page, located next to the Prioritization tab. This new placement replaces the previous access point within the Prioritization tab, providing a more efficient way to view and manage planning items.
    • Save filter views specific to the Hierarchy tab without affecting views in the Prioritization tab.
    • View planning items in the new Hierarchy tab on the Planning page, now sorted using global rank when available. Drag and drop is supported for lowest‑level items, enabling you to rerank them within their groups.
    • Share a portfolio plan using the Copy link option. This provides access to existing users who have access to the portfolio plan.
    • Make a portfolio plan public and share the copied link with Strategic Planning Workspace users, without inviting them individually or as a group. Note that users accessing a public portfolio plan with the shared link cannot view scenarios within the plan.
    • Expand or collapse portfolio plan header to maximize screen space while planning.
    • Edit the default view within a portfolio plan and save changes using the Save view option.
    • View additional status attributes — cost, resource, schedule, and scope — for planning items in Portfolio Planning Workspace. For project planning items, these attributes are synced automatically from the latest published project status report. For other planning items, these attributes can be set manually. Note that project status report attributes synced from the Project status (project_status) table are read-only in Portfolio Planning Workspace and can't be edited directly.
    • Set planning item status to No status when a status has not been determined, in addition to the existing Green, Yellow, and Red values, giving planners the flexibility to update the status as needed. By default, the status is set No status when a planning item is created.
    • Display rollup bars at parent levels in the hierarchy view and choose the date type to display — approved, planned, or actual. Use the comparison option to compare date types, such as approved versus planned dates, to identify schedule misalignments.
    Plan efficiently with additional pre-defined lenses
    Use the Planning item lens to plan, prioritize, and roadmap work in Strategic Planning Workspace directly with planning items, without configuring organization structure, programs, portfolios, or products. The lens supports all enabled work item types, such as projects and demands, and can be used as a standalone lens or alongside other lenses.
    Financials for planning items

    View the financial baselines in investment currency and project currency after migrating them from Classic to Next Experience. Migrated financial baselines include actuals, costs, benefits, and budget values from the project currency to the investment currency.

    Using multicurrency, new and existing customers see only investment currency fields in demand and project records. Planned costs, actual costs, planned benefits, actual benefits, and budget fields are included in the financial baselines.

    • .

    Changes

    Between your current release family and Australia, some changes were made to existing Portfolio Planning features.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Australia, some Portfolio Planning features or functionality were removed.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

    Between your current release family and Australia, some Portfolio Planning features or functionality were deprecated.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Portfolio Planning.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    Install Portfolio Planning by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Zurich

    Install Portfolio Planning by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store.

    Australia

    Install Portfolio Planning by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Additional requirements

    If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Portfolio Planning we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Browser requirements

    If any specific browser requirements were introduced or changed for Portfolio Planning we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Accessibility information

    Review details on accessibility information for Portfolio Planning, such as specific requirements or compliance levels.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Localization information

    If there are specific localization considerations for Portfolio Planning we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Australia

    No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

    If there are specific highlight considerations for Portfolio Planning we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    • View the rolled-up financial costs and benefits data of your planning items in the new Financials tab in the Planning page.
    • View the financial data of planning items while creating multiple prioritization scenarios to promote efficient use of budget and help increase the return on investment (ROI).
    • Monitor performance, track progress, and make informed decisions related to planning and execution using dashboards.
    • Create, edit, and switch views in portfolio plans and free-form roadmaps with display preferences.

    See Portfolio Planning for more information.

    Zurich

    • View the planned costs of your planning items for the past fiscal periods.
    • Use Display mode to switch between different views of the financials record page.
    • Experience consistent roadmap bar colors for choice list attribute values across all portfolio plans. View the roadmap-level milestone row while scrolling down the Roadmap page. Use different icons to distinguish item-level milestones.
    • Apply filters using string-type and Boolean field values to view the desired data.
    • Customize and apply a theme to your roadmap to match your organization’s standards.
    • Create and manage monetary benefit plans to capture and track projected and actual benefits.
    • Manage and run projects in various global currencies besides the functional currency using multicurrency.
    • Generate labor cost on sub-projects based on the resource assignments.

    See Portfolio Planning for more information.

    Australia

    • Create and manage demands from the Next Experience for Demand Management in Portfolio Planning.
    • Guide demand managers and users through predefined stages and actions for each demand process using Playbook in Next Experience for Demand Management.
    • Link AI systems to a demand using a Playbook activity in Next Experience for Demand Management.
    • Review the financial records of your planning items in both project currency and investment currency when you migrate them from Classic to Next Experience.
    • Create financial baselines with multicurrency to capture, view, and track the financial health of your planning item using project baselines and investment baselines.

    See Portfolio Planning for more information.