Combined Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) release notes for upgrades from Yokohama to Zurich

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated August 11, 2026
  • 9 minutes to read
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    Summary of Combined Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Release Notes from Yokohama to Zurich

    This consolidated release note covers the key updates, new features, changes, and activation details for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) spanning the upgrade from Yokohama to Zurich releases. It is designed to help ServiceNow customers prepare for, understand, and leverage the latest enhancements in Now Assist for SPM, focusing on AI-powered capabilities that improve strategic planning, project insights, and demand management within the Strategic Portfolio Management suite.

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    Key Features

    • AI-Driven Record Similarity Detection: The identify similar records skill detects duplicate or similar demand records by analyzing the Name, Description, and Business Case fields, improving data quality and reducing redundancy.
    • Target Generation Skill: Automatically generates measurable targets from goals and context, populating key fields in target creation forms to accelerate goal achievement planning.
    • Project Insights Email Scheduling: Enables scheduling and instant sending of project insights emails to project managers and users, tracking critical updates like delayed end dates, status changes, and project state updates. Email frequency options include weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
    • Project Task Monitor AI Agent: Provides proactive, AI-based notifications on milestones or critical tasks that might cause delays. This agent can be enabled via the planning page and configured with designated recipients for insights emails.
    • Acceptance Criteria Generation: Generates clear and consistent acceptance criteria for user stories using story context and templates, ensuring alignment with requirements.
    • Enhanced Agile Story Generation: Converts epics into actionable user stories efficiently with an agentic workflow that recommends story count, allows adjustments, and refines content.
    • Refine Records Skill: Simplifies record creation and updates across numerous SPM forms by enabling AI-assisted text refinement, enhancing record quality and user productivity.
    • Docs Integration: Allows direct interaction with Now Assist within Docs to generate, summarize, elaborate, and refine content, improving documentation productivity.
    • Expanded AI Model Providers: Support for additional AI models including Google Gemini 2.0 Flash, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, and AWS Claude 3.7 Sonnet, alongside Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI GPT-4.1 options, providing flexibility in AI capabilities.

    Important Changes

    • Usage Measurement Update: Now Assist usage measurement transitioned from a 365-day look-back to a 365-day burn-down model resetting at the contract anniversary, impacting license and consumption tracking.
    • Default Skill Activation: Certain Now Assist skills are activated by default for new installations and for previously unconfigured skills during upgrades, streamlining initial setup.
    • Security Role Update: Agentic workflows and scheduled jobs now run under the new ppm.aiprojectmanageragent user role instead of administrator, enhancing security practices.

    Activation and Requirements

    • Now Assist features require activation of the Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) plugin.
    • The application requires a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Pro Plus license to enable AI-powered capabilities.
    • No additional browser, localization, accessibility, or other requirements or changes were introduced between Yokohama and Zurich releases.

    Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers

    Upgrading to Zurich enhances your strategic portfolio management with AI-powered automation and insights designed to improve productivity, data accuracy, and project tracking. Expect streamlined demand management, accelerated target and story creation, and proactive project monitoring with customizable notifications. The expanded AI model support offers flexibility to choose the AI service that best fits your organizational needs. Ensure you review the updated usage measurement and configure roles appropriately post-upgrade to maintain compliance and security.

    Consolidated page of all release notes for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) from Yokohama to Zurich.

    How to use this page

    To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) release notes onto one page. Read this summary of the new features, changes, and updated information for your product from Yokohama to Zurich.

    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 Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) to Zurich

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

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    New features

    Between your current release family and Zurich, new features were introduced for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM).

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama
    Yokohama Patch 11
    Identify similar records using Now Assist
    Detect similar existing demand records when creating or editing a demand using the identify similar records skill. The skill compares the Name, Description, and Business Case fields for contextual similarity.
    Accelerate target creation with the target generation skill
    Generate measurable targets from goals information and optional context with the target generation skill. The skill automatically populates key fields in the target creation form, helping teams define clear, measurable outcomes and create targets quickly.
    Schedule project insights email
    • Schedule project insights email in the Configure project insights modal. The project email is emailed to the project managers and users and continues on the selected schedule that you select until the project is inactive or paused.
    • Schedule and instantly send the project insights email to your project managers by selecting the Send preview button.
    • Track important updates such as the delayed end dates, the status turning red, or the state updates of your projects and receive project insights email on the schedule that you select.
    • Select the email frequency that works for you: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
    • Monitor critical elements such as milestones, resources, projects, and project tasks.
    • Receive proactive, AI-based notifications when project milestones or critical tasks could lead to delays using Monitor project task agent. Use the Enable critical task alerts option from planning page to enable the project task monitor AI agent.
    • Choose the recipients to whom you want to send the project insights email.
    Yokohama Patch 6
    New third-party AI model provider options available for Now Assist
    Google Gemini 2.0 Flash, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, and AWS Claude 3.7 Sonnet are available for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini.
    Write planning item skill
    • Use this skill to improve record quality and user satisfaction by enabling AI assistance in the Description field across all Strategic Planning Workspace forms, including product idea, demand, epic, project, capability, feature, and story.
    • Enable text refinement with the Elaborate and Shorten options on planning items to support product managers and agile team members in creating and editing content more effectively.

    Zurich
    Zurich Patch 4
    Schedule project insights email
    • Schedule project insights email in the Configure project insights modal. The project email is emailed to the project managers and users and continues on the selected schedule that you select until the project is inactive or paused.
    • Schedule and instantly send the project insights email to your project managers by selecting the Send preview button.
    • Track important updates such as the delayed end dates, the status turning red, or the state updates of your projects and receive project insights email on the schedule that you select.
    • Select the email frequency that works for you: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
    • Monitor critical elements such as milestones, resources, projects, and project tasks.
    • Receive proactive, AI-based notifications when project milestones or critical tasks could lead to delays using Monitor project task agent. Use the Enable critical task alerts option from planning page to enable the project task monitor AI agent.
    • Choose the recipients to whom you want to send the project insights email.
    Identify similar records using Now Assist
    Detect similar existing demand records when creating or editing a demand using the identify similar records skill. The skill compares the Name, Description, and Business Case fields for contextual similarity.
    Accelerate target creation with the target generation skill
    Generate measurable targets from goals information and optional context with the target generation skill. The skill automatically populates key fields in the target creation form, helping teams define clear, measurable outcomes and create targets quickly.
    Generate acceptance criteria for stories
    Generate clear, consistent acceptance criteria for user stories with the acceptance criteria generation skill. By leveraging story context and predefined templates, the skill helps you align with requirements.
    Enhancements to Story generation
    Use the upgraded agile story generation skill to convert epics into actionable user stories quickly. Powered by an agentic workflow, the skill analyzes epic details to recommend the optimal number of stories, enables adjustments, refines story content, and creates story records.
    Zurich Patch 2
    Improve efficiency with refine records skill and Now Assist Context MenuSkill name is changed to Refine records
    Simplify record creation and updates by using the refine records skill with Now Assist context menu. Improve record quality by enabling AI-assisted text refinement in the text fields of Product idea, Demand, Epic, Projects, Capability, Feature, Stories, Project tasks, Risks, Strategic priorities, Goals, Targets, Initiatives, Feedback, Milestones, and Story forms.
    Zurich Patch 1
    Configure ACLs for custom roles
    Update the ACLs for custom roles that require access to Now Assist skills.
    Generate and improve Docs content

    Help improve your content and productivity with the ability to enter custom prompts directly in the Docs, alongside the Summarize, Elaborate, and Shorten options.

    Generate content with Now Assist for SPM directly in your Docs. In addition, summarize existing sections, elaborate where needed, and refine drafts to help improve your productivity.

    You can interact with Now Assist directly in your Doc to create content, add context, or improve existing sections.

    New third-party AI model provider options available for Now Assist
    Google Gemini 2.0 Flash, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, and AWS Claude 3.7 Sonnet are available for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini.

    Changes

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some changes were made to existing Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) features.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama
    Yokohama Patch 11
    Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
    Starting with Yokohama Patch 5, Now Assist usage measurement is transitioning from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model, with usage resetting at the contract anniversary date. For more information, refer to KB KB2704710: Now Assist Usage - Overview & New Measurement Logic.
    Some Now Assist skills are turned on by default
    The new default behavior works as follows:
    • New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills are turned on automatically.
    • Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Yokohama Patch 11): Any previously unconfigured skill is turned on automatically (the skill was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.

    Zurich
    Zurich Patch 5
    Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
    Zurich Patch 4
    Zurich Patch 1
    ppm.ai_project_manager_agent user role

    The agentic workflow, agents, and scheduled jobs are configured to run under the new ppm.ai_project_manager_agent user role instead of the administrator account.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) features or functionality were removed.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) features or functionality were deprecated.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM).

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    Now Assist features are available with activation of the Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) plugin. The Now Assist for SPM application requires a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Pro plus license. For more information, see Install Now Assist plugins.

    Zurich

    Now Assist features are available with activation of the Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) plugin. For more information, see Install Now Assist plugins.

    Additional requirements

    If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Browser requirements

    If any specific browser requirements were introduced or changed for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Accessibility information

    Review details on accessibility information for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), such as specific requirements or compliance levels.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Localization information

    If there are specific localization considerations for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    		 No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

    If there are specific highlight considerations for Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama
    Yokohama Patch 11
    • Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement.
    • Some Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows are on by default.
    • Additional role configuration is required for agentic workflows and AI agents included with Now Assist applications.
    • Generate measurable targets from goals information and optional context with the target generation skill.
    • Use the identify similar records skill to find similar demands based on contextual similarity.
    • Enable the project task monitor AI agent to autonomously monitor project tasks on the critical path of a project.
    • Use the Send preview button to share a project insights email instantly.
    Yokohama Patch 6
    • Use Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude on AWS as AI model providers for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
    • Use a decorative loader to elevate visual interest during content loading in Strategic Planning.
    • Refine the planning item text descriptions by enabling AI assistance.
    • Use Now Assist for SPM AI agents to help optimize workflows, improve productivity, and automate your tasks.

    See Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) for more information.

    Zurich
    Zurich Patch 5
    • Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement.
    Zurich Patch 4
    • All Now Assist for SPM skills are activated by default.
    • Use the identify similar records skill to find similar demands based on contextual similarity.
    • Enable the project task monitor AI agent to autonomously monitor project tasks on the critical path of a project.
    • Use the Send preview button to share a project insights email instantly.
    • Generate measurable targets from goals information and optional context with the target generation skill.
    Zurich Patch 1
    • Use Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude on AWS as AI model providers for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.

    See Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) for more information.