Combined Incident Management release notes for upgrades from Yokohama to Zurich

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated August 11, 2026
  • 8 minutes to read
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    Summary of Combined Incident Management release notes for upgrades from Yokohama to Zurich

    This consolidated release notes document outlines the key updates, new features, changes, and enhancements made to Incident Management for ServiceNow customers upgrading from the Yokohama release to the Zurich release. It consolidates cross-family information to help customers prepare for their upgrade and understand how the Incident Management experience is improved and secured.

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    New Features

    • snservicedeskagent User Role: Designed for tier 1 service desk agents to streamline information gathering and resolution processes. This role bundles several incident, problem, change, and request write roles and integrates knowledgeuser and nowassistpaneluser roles when the ITSM Gen AI plugin is installed.
    • Enhanced Security Model for Incident Tables: Automatically enforces Deny-Unless ACLs to restrict unauthorized access to incident-related tables, preventing non-authenticated users from performing any actions. This security feature is activated via the ITSM Enhanced Security Features plugin and requires testing before production deployment.

    Changes

    • Email Notification Link Redirection: Incident and major incident record links in email notifications can now open in Service Operations Workspace (SOW) instead of the classic UI16 interface. This behavior is controlled by system properties and requires the ITSM Notifications Redirection plugin along with the snsowuser role.
    • Incident and Problem Workflow Enhancements: Sharing a problem fix adds work notes to the associated incident’s activity stream instead of customer-visible comments. Known Error article links and shared fixes now appear as work notes with direct links in the incident’s activity stream.
    • Reopening Incidents: Agents with incident write access, callers, requesters, and opened-by end users can reopen resolved incidents via the classic UI16 form, SOW, or Portal UIs. Agents can reopen incidents assigned to them or others via classic UI16 but only their own assigned incidents via portals.
    • Configuration Item (CI) Search Performance: The CI field on incident forms now sorts search results alphabetically by CI name to improve performance and user experience, with options to override sorting attributes if needed.
    • Incident Task Closure Behavior (Zurich release): Closed incident tasks become read-only to prevent further edits, enhancing data integrity and audit compliance.

    Removed and Deprecated Features

    No Incident Management features were removed or deprecated between Yokohama and Zurich releases.

    Activation and Requirements

    Incident Management remains a default active feature of the ServiceNow AI Platform in both Yokohama and Zurich releases. No changes to browser requirements, accessibility, or localization were introduced.

    Key Outcomes for ServiceNow Customers

    • Improved Operational Efficiency: The dedicated snservicedeskagent role empowers tier 1 agents to work more efficiently with integrated access and AI capabilities.
    • Enhanced Security: Implementation of deny-unless ACLs protects incident-related data from unauthorized access, increasing confidence in data security.
    • Flexible User Experience: Email notification links now provide flexibility to open incident and major incident records in either the classic UI or modern Service Operations Workspace, improving workflow consistency.
    • Better Incident and Problem Collaboration: Enhanced workflow visibility through activity stream updates ensures relevant fixes and known errors are clearly communicated.
    • Improved Data Integrity: Restrictions on editing closed incident tasks help maintain accurate audit trails.
    • Faster Configuration Item Searches: Alphabetical sorting and performance improvements make incident form interactions smoother and more responsive.

    Consolidated page of all release notes for Incident Management from Yokohama to Zurich.

    How to use this page

    To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Incident Management 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 Incident Management 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 Incident Management.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    User role for service desk agents
    With the sn_service_desk_agent user role, increase the operational efficiency by streamlining the process of asking about, gathering, and verifying information, as well as delivering quick resolutions. This role is designed for tier 1 service desk agents and is accessible when the ITSM Roles plugin (com.snc.itsm.roles) installed.
    The sn_service_desk_agent role includes the following user roles:
    • sn_incident_write
    • sn_problem_write
    • sn_change_write
    • sn_request_write
    • tracked_file_reader
    Additionally, with the installation of the ITSM Gen AI (com.sn.itsm.gen.ai) plugin, the knowledge_user, and now_assist_panel_user roles are integrated within the sn_service_desk_agent role.

    The sn_service_desk_agent role can be used starting with SOW version 6.1.

    Enhanced security model adoption for incident tables
    Help prevent unauthorized access to incident-related tables using Deny-Unless ACLs. A Deny-Unless authentication ACL restricts access for a non-authenticated user, such as a public role user. Without access, the user can't perform any actions on incident-related tables, including reading, writing, deleting, creating, or accessing the report view.
    This feature is activated automatically and applicable on the following incident-related tables:
    • kb_template_incident_kcs_articl
    • kb_template_incident_kcs_template
    Additionally, this feature is available on the following incident-related tables of new or zBoot instances after installing the ITSM Enhanced Security Features (com.snc.itsm.enhanced_security) plugin:
    • incident
    • incident_task
    • task_ci
    • task outage
    The ITSM Enhanced Security Features (com.snc.itsm.enhanced_security) plugin can be installed and activated by an admin via a support request. Existing or upgrade users must test and evaluate the results in their non-production instance, and then install the plugin and implement the security change in their production instance.

    For more information, see Deny-Unless ACL.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Changes

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some changes were made to existing Incident Management features.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    Email redirection behavior for major incident email notification links
    In major incident email notifications, you can now decide where the links to a major incident record are redirected. Instead of a major incident record automatically opening in the classic UI16 interface in Major Incident Management, the record can be opened in SOW. The major incident record link in an email notification opens in SOW only if the following conditions are met:
    • The Redirect SOW Email notification (sow_email_notification_redirect) property is set to true. Setting this property to true enables the email redirection behavior for all tables including major incident.
    • The Redirect SOW Email notification for Major Incident Management (sn_major_inc_mgmt.sow_email_notification_redirect.mim) property is set to true.
    • You have the sn_sow_user role.

    The ITSM Notifications Redirection (com.snc.itsm.notifications_redirection) plugin is installed and activated automatically to support this behavior.

    Email redirection behavior for incident email notification links
    In incident email notifications, you can now decide where the links to an incident record are redirected. Instead of an incident record automatically opening in the classic UI16 interface in Incident Management, the record can be opened in SOW. The incident record link in an email notification opens in SOW only if you have the sn_sow_user role and any of the following conditions are met:
    • The Redirect SOW Email notification (sow_email_notification_redirect) property is set to true. Setting this property to true enables the email redirection behavior for all tables including incident.
    • The Redirect SOW Email notification for Incident Management (sow_email_notification_redirect.incident) property is set to true. You can create this property if you want to enable or restrict the email redirection behavior specifically for the incident table. This property, if created and set, overrides the Redirect SOW Email notification (sow_email_notification_redirect) base system property.

    The ITSM Notifications Redirection (com.snc.itsm.notifications_redirection) plugin is installed and activated automatically to support this behavior.

    To ensure consistency, the email notification templates for incident tasks are also updated to send the notification from Service Operations Workspace (SOW) in the same format as sent from classic UI16 interface similar to incident. Also, the template theme is updated to match the Next Experience theme.

    Incident and problem workflow changes
    When a problem is fixed and the Share fix option is triggered, the event is added to the Work notes (Private) field instead of the Additional comments (Customer visible) field for the incident associated with the problem record.

    This feature is available in the base system for the new customers. For existing or upgrade customers, admin must set the Communicate problem workaround to incident worknotes (com.snc.incident.communicate_prb_workaround_to_inc_worknotes) system property to true to enable the feature.

    Changes in the reopening incident behavior
    Enable the agents with incident write access, callers, requesters, or Opened by end users to reopen a resolved incident. Both the caller and the requester can view and use the Reopen option on the incident classic UI16 form and the Portal UIs, such as Service Portal and Employee Service Center (ESC) portal.

    An agent can view and use the Reopen option on the incident classic UI16 form to reopen any incident that is assigned to them or to other agents. However, on the Portal UI, an agent can only view and use the Reopen option to reopen an incident if it’s assigned to them.

    Sorting CIs in incident forms
    The search performance of the available CIs for the Configuration item field on an incident form is enhanced to promote a clean UI and quick loading and sorting of the CIs. The search results that list the CIs are sorted alphabetically by CI name instead of by CI class and then CI name. The ref_ac_order_by=sys_class_name attribute is removed from the default attributes on the cmdb_ci field of the Task [task] table, which increases the performance of the field.

    This change is applicable to new and existing users using the default attributes. You can use the Override attributes option to restrict this change for any required child tables that extend to the cmdb_ci field of the Task [task] table.

    Zurich

    Incident task record behavior changes
    When an incident task is closed, you can no longer edit the field values in the incident task form. Disabling the fields helps prevent any further updates or modifications to closed incident tasks, reducing audit risks.
    Incident and problem workflow changes
    When a problem record is linked to an incident or multiple incidents, the incident and problem workflow has the following enhancements:
    • When a fix or workaround is shared from the problem record, an event is added in the activity stream of the incident record as work notes. The event includes a brief description of the provided fix or workaround and a link to the problem record.
    • When a Known Error (KE) article is linked to the problem record, an event is added in the activity stream of the incident record as work notes. The event includes the links to the problem record and the KE article.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some Incident Management 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 Incident Management 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 Incident Management.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    Incident Management is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.

    Zurich

    Incident Management is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.

    Additional requirements

    If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Incident Management 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 Incident Management 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 Incident Management, such as specific requirements or compliance levels.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    Localization information

    If there are specific localization considerations for Incident Management 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 Incident Management we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Yokohama

    • Increase the operational efficiency of the tier 1 service desk agents with the dedicated sn_service_desk_agent role.
    • Control whether an incident or major incident record link in an email notification redirects you to the record in the classic UI16 interface or Service Operations Workspace (SOW).
    • Enable agents with incident write access, callers, requesters, and Opened by end users to reopen a resolved incident from the Incident Management classic UI16 form, SOW, or Portal UIs.
    • Restrict unauthorized access to incident-related tables using deny ACLs.
    • Search for a configuration item (CI) in a list alphabetized by the CI name with an improved search performance.

    See Incident Management for more information.

    Zurich

    • Help prevent changes to closed incident tasks to promote data integrity and to maintain a clear audit.
    • Manage and resolve incidents effectively with the incident and problem workflow enhancements.
    • Coral is the new default theme for Next Experience and Core UI, offering a more user-friendly experience.

    See Incident Management for more information.