External Content Connectors release notes
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Summary of External Content Connectors Release Notes
The ServiceNow® External Content Connectors application enables AI Search to index and search content and metadata from a wide range of supported external source systems, including cloud platforms, collaboration tools, and web sources. The Zurich release delivers significant enhancements to expand connector coverage, improve user permission mapping, and enhance crawl management and analytics.
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Key Features
- Expanded Source System Support: The Zurich release adds connectors for numerous new sources such as Adobe Acrobat Sign, Aha! Roadmaps, Cornerstone, Fluid Topics, ManageEngine, Workvivo, Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, Asana, DocuSign, Dropbox, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, HubSpot, Lucidchart, Miro, monday.com, Notion, SAP DMS, Smartsheet, Trello, WordPress, Workday, Zoom, Amazon S3, Box, GitLab, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Viva Engage, Zendesk Guide, and ServiceNow Knowledge Base articles.
- Google Drive Label Filtering: Configure Google Drive connectors to retrieve only content items tagged with specified label values, enabling more targeted content indexing.
- Webcrawler Enhancements: Retrieve content and links from URLs found in sitemaps during content crawls, with visibility into crawl start points via clickable links in crawl lists and history entries.
- User Permission Mapping Customization: Customize which fields are compared when mapping external source system users to ServiceNow AI Platform users, improving security and access control alignment.
- Improved Crawl Management UI: The connector creation interface now supports optional steps to configure crawl settings, schedule crawls, and link search sources to search profiles, streamlining setup and maintenance.
- Enhanced Analytics and Statistics: Monitor individual crawl runs and long-term connector performance with improved statistics and a redesigned analytics page accessible from the connector editor.
- Semantic Vector Indexing: Starting with version 2, connectors implement semantic vector indexing for crawled items, improving search relevance. Upgrading requires reindexing of existing content and users via content and user mapping crawls.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Support: Limited RBAC mapping support for Atlassian Confluence Cloud connector to align source system permissions with ServiceNow user roles.
- Connection Settings Flexibility: Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Teams connectors now accept certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in both hexadecimal and base64 formats. Atlassian Jira Cloud no longer requires an instance ID for connection.
Practical Considerations for ServiceNow Customers
- Installation: Install External Content Connectors via the ServiceNow Store by requesting the External Content Connectors Application Suite.
- Upgrade Guidance: When upgrading to versions supporting semantic vector indexing or version 4, plan for reindexing crawls of both content and user permissions to ensure all previously crawled content appears in searches.
- Role Management: Assign the
snextconn.xccadminrole to users responsible for creating and managing connectors and crawls. - Search Integration: Link external content connector search sources to AI Search profiles to make newly crawled content searchable within your ServiceNow environment.
- User Experience: Use the Coral theme with optional dark mode to enhance portal and mobile user interfaces when leveraging AI Search results from external connectors.
Benefits
By leveraging External Content Connectors, ServiceNow customers can unify search across a broad range of external content repositories, improving knowledge discovery and operational efficiency. Enhanced crawl management and analytics provide visibility and control over content indexing. Configurable user permission mapping ensures secure and accurate access control, aligning external content visibility with internal user roles. The expanded connector ecosystem supports diverse enterprise content sources, enabling richer AI Search experiences.
The ServiceNow® External Content Connectors application enables AI Search applications to search content and metadata from supported external source systems, such as Atlassian Confluence Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint Online. External Content Connectors was enhanced and updated in the Zurich release.
External Content Connectors highlights for the Zurich release
Configure your Google Drive external content connectors to only retrieve content items that have one or more of a specified set of label values applied.
Zurich Patch 7
- Expand your search experience with external content connectors for Adobe Acrobat Sign, Aha! Roadmaps, Cornerstone, Fluid Topics, ManageEngine, and Workvivo source systems.
- Retrieve content and links from URLs found in sitemaps defined for your web source system when running content crawls for the Webcrawler external content connector.
- View a content crawl's start point via links in the content crawl list and in content crawl history entries.
Zurich Patch 4
- Expand your search experience with external content connectors for Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, Asana, Docusign, Dropbox, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, HubSpot, Lucidchart, Miro, monday.com, Notion, SAP DMS, Smartsheet, Trello, WordPress, Workday, and Zoom source systems.
- Customize user permission settings, choosing the fields you want to compare when mapping source system users to ServiceNow AI Platform® users.
- Make external content connector crawl results searchable by linking connector search sources to search profiles from the connector editor.
- Monitor connector behavior on individual crawl runs and over time with improved crawl statistics and analytics.
Zurich Patch 1
- Expand your search experience by indexing searchable content from your Amazon S3, Box, GitLab, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Viva Engage, and Zendesk Guide source systems.
- Search KB articles from your ServiceNow instance.
- Make web content locally searchable by indexing pages from predefined or custom public web sites with the Webcrawler external content connector.
- Configure connector settings and schedule crawls as part of connector creation using the revamped UI.
See External Content Connectors for more information.
Important:
External Content Connectors is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
Important information for upgrading External Content Connectors to Zurich
Starting in version 2 of the External Content Connectors application, external content connectors implement semantic vector indexing for crawled items. When you upgrade to a version that supports semantic vector indexing, your existing connectors will reindex all previously retrieved items the next time they're visited by a crawl, even if those items' content is unchanged. To force semantic vector indexing of your external content items as soon as possible after upgrading, cancel any running crawls, then restart the canceled crawls manually.
When you upgrade to version 4 of the External Content Connectors application from an earlier version, searches may not show all previously crawled content until you complete both a content crawl and a user mapping crawl for each upgraded connector. The first content crawl run after the upgrade will reindex all searchable content from the source system, and the user mapping crawl will reindex all security principals from the source system. All crawled content should be shown in searches after both of these crawls are complete.
New in the Zurich release
- Zurich Patch 11
- Configure your Google Drive external content connectors to only retrieve content items that have one or more of a specified set of label values applied.
- Zurich Patch 7
- Adobe Acrobat Sign external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Adobe Acrobat Sign source system.
- Aha! Roadmaps external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Aha! Roadmaps source system.
- Cornerstone external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Cornerstone source system.
- Fluid Topics external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Fluid Topics source system.
- ManageEngine external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your ManageEngine source system.
- Workvivo external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Workvivo source system.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Connector admin role
- Users with the sn_ext_conn.xcc_admin role can create, configure, and review details for external content connectors and crawls.
- Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service source system.
- Asana external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Asana source system.
- Docusign external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Docusign source system.
- Dropbox external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Dropbox source system.
- GitHub Enterprise Cloud external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your GitHub Enterprise Cloud source system.
- HubSpot external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your HubSpot source system.
- Lucidchart external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Lucidchart source system.
- Miro external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Miro source system.
- monday.com external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your monday.com source system.
- Notion external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Notion source system.
- SAP DMS external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your SAP DMS source system.
- Smartsheet external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Smartsheet source system.
- Trello external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Trello source system.
- WordPress external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your WordPress source system.
- Workday external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Workday source system.
- Zoom external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Zoom source system.
- Configure user permission settings for an external content connector
- Specify the source system and User [sys_user] table fields to examine for matches when an external content connector maps source system users to your ServiceNow AI Platform users.
- Statistics for external content connector content crawls
- Review statistics about the documents (items or files with searchable content and metadata) retrieved by a content crawl.
- Statistics for external content connector user permission crawls
- Review statistics about the permissions (user and group-membership security principals) retrieved by a user permission crawl.
- Analytics for external content connectors
- Review metrics that show how your external content connector has run over time.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Amazon S3 external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from buckets in your Amazon S3 source system.
- Box external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from user boxes in your Box source system.
- GitLab external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from issues, wikis, merge requests, tags, branches, and commits in your GitLab source system's groups, projects, and repositories.
- Microsoft OneDrive external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from individual drives in your Microsoft OneDrive source system.
- Microsoft Viva Engage external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from conversations in your Microsoft Viva Engage source system's communities.
- ServiceNow® instance external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from KB articles in your ServiceNow AI Platform instance.
- Webcrawler external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from pages and subdomains in public web sources. Select a predefined web source or specify a custom web source.
- Zendesk Guide external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from articles in your Zendesk Guide source system's knowledge bases.
- Statistics for external content connector content crawls
- Review statistics for searchable items retrieved by a content crawl.
- Statistics for external content connector user permission crawls
- Review statistics for user and group permissions retrieved by a user permission crawl.
UI changes
- Zurich Patch 4
- Connector creation UI
- The connector creation UI now includes optional steps for configuring user permission crawls (for connectors that support them) and for linking connector search sources to your search profiles. If you want to change these settings for an existing connector, you can configure these settings from the connector editor.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Connector creation UI
- The connector creation UI now includes optional steps for configuring the new connector's crawl settings and creating and scheduling crawls for it. You can still configure these settings from the connector's editor, so you can skip these steps during connector creation if you want to configure crawl settings and create crawls later on.
- Zurich Early Availability
- Coral theme
- Coral is now the default theme for new portal, web, and mobile experiences with Next Experience or Core UI enabled. This theme provides a fresh look and feel, featuring brand-neutral illustrations to enhance your user experience. A dark theme option is available for web and mobile experiences.
Changed in this release
- Zurich Patch 7
- Sitemap support in the Webcrawler external content connector
- Retrieve content and links from URLs found in sitemaps defined for your web source system when running content crawls for the Webcrawler external content connector. A content crawl only retrieves sitemap URLs that include the crawl's starting point URL.
- Start point links for scheduled partial content crawls
- View the start point for a scheduled partial content crawl via a link in its entry in the the external content connector's list of crawls.
- Start point links in partial content crawl history entries
- View the start point for a scheduled partial content crawl via a link in its crawl history entries.
- Limited Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) support in the Atlassian Confluence Cloud external content connector
- Map source system user and group permissions assigned via RBAC roles to users in your ServiceNow AI Platform instance.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Analytics for external content connectors
- Analyze connector performance and behavior in a selected time period using the redesigned Analytics page. You can access this page from the connector editor.
- Atlassian Jira Cloud connection settings
- The Atlassian Jira Cloud external content connector no longer requires your Atlassian Jira Cloud instance ID as a connection setting.
- Microsoft OneDrive connection settings
- The Microsoft OneDrive external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Microsoft SharePoint Online connection settings
- The Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Microsoft Teams connection settings
- The Microsoft Teams external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Webcrawler external content connector
- The predefined web sources external content connector has been subsumed into the new Webcrawler external content connector, which enables you to specify a custom web source or select a predefined one.
Activation information
Install External Content Connectors by requesting the External Content Connectors Application Suite 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.
Accessibility information
- Dark theme
- The new Coral theme includes a dark theme option for web and mobile experiences. This option is commonly used to alleviate eye strain and improve readability.