Combined Strategic Planning release notes for upgrades from Washington DC to Xanadu

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated June 16, 2026
  • 20 minutes to read
  • Consolidated page of all release notes for Strategic Planning from Washington DC to Xanadu.

    How to use this page

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

    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 Strategic Planning to Xanadu

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Starting with v4.0.2, you can access the Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Pro-licensed features only in Strategic Planning Workspace. If you have been using Portfolio Planning Workspace to access SPM Pro-licensed features, such as Goals, Product Feedback, and Hybrid Portfolio Planning, you must now install Strategic Planning to access these features. For more information on the features that can be accessed only in Strategic Planning Workspace, see Exploring Portfolio Planning in Strategic Planning.

    If you’re upgrading to Strategic Planning v4.1.2 and previously had customized the List view or the Hierarchy view of the Goals page using the Personalization side panel, the user interface enhancements done in v4.1.2 may not appear. In this case, you must delete your user preference records. For more information on how to delete user preferences made using the Personalization side panel, see KB1642037.

    Xanadu

    After upgrading to Strategic Planning v4.3.2, run the Migrate BreakdownInterval To Checkinfrequency scheduled job. This scheduled job migrates the existing values in the Review frequency and Breakdown interval fields to the Check-in frequency field in the target records. For more information on how these values are migrated for targets with different values, see Target breakdowns migration.

    New features

    Between your current release family and Xanadu, new features were introduced for Strategic Planning.

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Enterprise Agile Planning in Strategic Planning
    • Support multiple agile teams and their scaling needs within a single instance using flexible work and team hierarchies.
    • Plan, visualize, and track work across teams with insights into dependencies using the Planning Board tab for each team.
    • Prioritize work items and schedule them into iterations such as Planning Intervals or Sprints using the Backlog tab for each team.
    • Upgrade your Agile configuration to align with the evolving needs of your organization.
    • Get insights into team progress, velocity trends, and alignment of work to overall organizational goals using configurable dashboards.
    Feedback or Product idea list view enhancements
    • Use inline editing to allow real-time updates and modify feedback or product idea details.
    • Edit multiple rows at once and eliminate the need to modify each record individually.
    Product feedback enhancements
    • Understand the popularity of feedback using Votes field and prioritize the feedback to make informed decisions. These votes are directly received from the idea portal.
    • Identify and prioritize feedback with the Importance field on feedback records and make informed decisions based on the feedback.
    Create feedback filters in Strategic Planning
    • Group and sort feedback with feedback filters.
    • As a product manager, create and organize product feedback based on filter criteria, and focus on feedback that is important to you.
    Plan efficiently with additional pre-defined lenses
    • Using the Business Capability lens, enterprise architects can plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work in the Strategic Planning Workspace based on the business capabilities and business applications by aligning with the strategy.
    • Using the Project Program lens, program managers and portfolio managers can plan, prioritize, and roadmap work in programs.
    Tagging planning items
    • Add tags to your planning items to categorize them based on your requirement. Any tagging additions or removals made to a record are automatically synced across all views in the Planning page and the Scoring page.
    • Filter the planning items by the assigned tags.
    • Use inline editing in the List view of the Prioritization tab when adding and removing the tags to your planning items.
    Planning enhancements
    • Quickly view and manage the item details from the side panel using the Preview record icon (View item details icon.) in the List view of the Prioritization tab and the Scoring page.
    • The type of planning item is displayed on the item’s details page so that you can identify what the item is, such as a demand or a project.
    • When creating a planning item, the Planned start date field and the Planned end date field are populated automatically with the Approved start date value and the Approved end date value respectively.
    Prioritization enhancements
    • Assign the highest and lowest ranks to the planning items using the Move to top option and the Move to bottom option respectively from the row context menu icon (Row context menu icon.).
    • Delete planning items using the Delete option from the row context menu icon (Row context menu icon.).
    Goal management enhancements
    • Track how current and future work contribute to meeting a primary or non-primary target by associating the target with work items. When you create a primary goal or target relationship with an item that already has a primary relationship, the existing association becomes a non-primary and a new primary relationship is created.
    • Associate multiple planning items at a time to a goal or target from the enhanced Align work model, the item’s side panel, or the item’s full details page. You can also remove the existing association with the goal or target from the side panel or full details page of the goal or target.
    • View and manage an association between a planning item and a goal or target using the View aligned work option in the row context menu icon (Row context menu icon.). The Aligned work tab introduced in an item’s side panel helps you add or remove an association between work items and a goal or target
    • Search the aligned work items of the goal or target from the item’s side panel by the name, owner, or type of the work items.
    • The list of goals and targets appear in the expanded mode by default in both the List view and the Hierarchy view so you can view all goals and targets in a hierarchical manner when accessing the page.
    • The user preferences are saved automatically to retain the customizations, such as to view or hide columns and the width of the columns, so that you don’t need to set your preferences the next time you access the Goals page.
    • When creating a target, the Contributors field on the Target form is automatically populated with the contributors of its goal.
    • Run the Create Goals Demo Data with Target Breakdowns scheduled job to create a target breakdowns demo data for the targets.
    • For cumulative targets with the breakdown interval set to Quarterly and Yearly, the Target values are populated automatically for each quarterly and yearly breakdown respectively. For example, for a cumulative target created to achieve $10M in the year 2024, the target breakdowns Q1-24, Q2-24, Q3-24, and Q4-24 are created with the Target values $2.5M, $5M, $7.5M, and $10M respectively.
    Financial planning for planning items
    • Customize widgets to view the financial details, such as allocated budget, EAC, Variance, a breakdown of planned costs, and actuals to date by cost type.
    • Export Costs or Baseline comparison information as Microsoft Excel or CSV formats. Use these files to share the financial performance of your planning items to relevant business stakeholders, even if they don't have access to your ServiceNow instance.
    • Create expense lines to capture any unplanned costs to meet your work requirements without associating them to any forecasted planned costs. For more information, see Add or edit expense lines.
    • Delete any de-scoped cost plans using the row context menu icon (Row context menu icon.) to manage your financials.
    • Save your preferences to retain the customizations you have made, such as viewing or hiding columns and viewing time scope.
    Scoring enhancements
    • Apply filters on the Scoring page to view the required data set. These filters are saved as your preferences. This also helps you view the same data set and continue your planning when you log back in.
    • When a demand is converted to a project, the score and rank of the item are automatically copied to the newly created project.
    Export data of portfolio plan items from Scoring or Prioritization
    Export data of your portfolio plan items from the Scoring page or the List view of the Prioritization tab into a Microsoft Excel or CSV file. Share the data and collaborate with your business stakeholders. If the filters are applied on the view, the filtered data is exported.

    For more information, see Export planning items data from Scoring to Excel or CSV and Export data of portfolio plan items from Prioritization to Excel or CSV.

    Strategic Planning with PPM, Agile 2.0, and SAFe
    • The Program field has been added to all planning item tables and the Program and Portfolio fields have been added to the Epic [rm_epic] table to support the Project Program lens.
    • Enable the Sync tags option on the Table Map form for each planning item table to synchronize the tags from alignment to the execution tables and vice versa. By default, the value is set to true. If there are any existing tags, the tags are automatically synced from alignment to the execution tables and vice versa. For more information about the Table Map form, see Table map form.
    • The Flow type mapping for planned dates of the Demand [dmn_demand] table is updated to both alignment to execution and execution to alignment.
    Operation work in Capacity Planning
    Create operation resource assignments for your group and view the updated capacity in Capacity Planning view.

    Xanadu

    Show or hide features for your portfolio plan
    As a portfolio manager, show or hide the features, such as Goals, Scoring, Prioritization, and Roadmap, of your portfolio plan. This capability helps you share only the portfolio plan data that matters to your stakeholders and restrict access to the other data.
    Goal management enhancements
    • Create daily, weekly, or monthly target breakdowns according to how often you want to update and track the progress of the target. The target breakdowns are created based on the value selected in the Check-in frequency field. For example, if you select Monthly in the Check-in frequency field for a target spanning a year, then 12 monthly target breakdowns are created.
    • Updating actuals for a target has been simplified with an enhanced UI:
      • In the Check-in actuals window on the Progress tab of the target’s side panel, update the actual value of any time period or breakdown.
      • In the Progress tab of the target’s side panel, view the trend of the target’s progress in a line or bar graph. You can also edit the planned target and view the check-in history of the target actuals.
    • When creating a target, the Target breakdown details section of the Target modal shows the planned target values for each target breakdown in a tabular format, which helps you visualize the final target value spread across the target’s time period.
    • On the Target form, use the Baseline reference field to compare future target performance with the actual value that was achieved in the last year or before the target was created.
    • Add targets to a new goal using the Save and add target option on the Goal modal. Also, you can use the Save and add new target option to add more targets for the goal.
    • Run the Create Goals Demo Data with Target Breakdowns scheduled job to create demo data with goals and target breakdowns. For more information on this scheduled job, see Create goals demo data with target breakdowns.
    • Create a copy of a goal or target using the Duplicate option from the row context menu icon (Row context menu icon.). For more information, see Create a copy of a goal or target.
    • Activity stream is enabled for the targets and goals in the full details record page.
    Planning enhancements
    • Filter planning items in the Prioritization page and roadmap bars in the Roadmap page with multi-value fields, such as tags, business applications, and business capabilities.
    • In the Child items related list of an EAP planning item, view child items associated with the epic in EAP.
    • When you view a portfolio plan, you can copy a portfolio plan that you don't have edit access to and edit the plan as needed. For more information, see Copy a portfolio plan.
    Now Assist in Strategic Planning
    • Generate a summary of selected text on Docs using the Planning item Gen AI Docs skill. You can summarize, elaborate, and shorten the selected content on Docs.
    • Summarize a large volume of feedback using the multi feedback summarization skill on the Feedback page.
    • Create a demand within the Employee Service Management (ESC) portal using the Now Assist conversational catalog creation capability.
    • Summarize the complete content of a document with the Planning item Gen AI Docs skill to help save time on manual content analysis.
    Collaborate using Docs
    • Store the information of key artifacts and other details of planning items, such as Epics, Capabilities, and Features, directly from within the workspace.
    • Manage team-level documentation for Agile team, ART, Solution Train, and Portfolio.
    • Create multiple rich-text documents at each planning item level or Agile team level.
      • Help avoid data loss and parallel editing with real-time collaboration.
      • Tag team members to their action items.
      • Insert media and URLs.
    Docs for planning items
    • Store the information of key artifacts and other details of planning items, such as Demands, Projects, and Epics, directly from within the workspace.
    • Create multiple rich-text documents at each planning item level.
      • Help avoid data loss and parallel editing with real-time collaboration.
      • Tag team members to their action items.
      • Insert media and URLs.
    Migrate from SAFe

    Transition from Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) applications, such as Essential SAFe and Portfolio SAFe, to EAP. Use the Guided Setup module in the Strategic Planning application to execute your migration step by step.

    This migration is intended to be one-time only. Initiating the migration again later while continuing to use SAFe applications with EAP won't carry any changes made to the SAFe records that are already migrated.

    Override the default planning calendar for Agile Teams

    For Agile Teams and Agile release trains (ARTs), the Override planning calendar field enables team members to change their planning calendar. The updated calendar is automatically applied to any child teams and takes effect at the beginning of the next iteration.

    Persistence of personalization settings for the EAP PI planning board

    Personalization of the settings made in the PI planning board for a team type are applied across the workspace according to user, team type, and work item type. For example, settings applied to one ART, such as enabling the Dependencies toggle, Team backlog lane, or compact cards, are applied to all ARTs in the workspace for a user.

    Optimize planning using scenario planning
    • Create scenarios in a simulated environment and adjust the prioritization and timelines of planning items.
    • Check the alignment of planning items with goals to verify the delivery of strategic outcomes.
    • Visualize the differences between goal alignment and trade-off decisions between scenarios by comparing scenarios side by side.
    • Approve the best scenario as the live portfolio plan for execution and making informed decisions.
    Export goals and targets data to Excel or CSV
    Export goals and targets from your portfolio plan into a Microsoft Excel or CSV file to share the data and collaborate with your business stakeholders.
    Export a roadmap or free-form roadmap to PowerPoint
    Export a roadmap or free-form roadmap from a portfolio plan into a Microsoft PowerPoint file to share data and collaborate with your business stakeholders. The predefined template helps you generate reports for your roadmap, including roadmap milestones, item milestones, vertical lines, and horizontal lanes.

    You can export a roadmap for the maximum tenure of lanes a year at a time. You can also choose between Compact mode, which exports 25 horizontal lanes per slide, or Default mode, which exports 15 horizontal lanes per slide, when exporting your roadmap.

    You can select the data that you want to be exported into the report by editing the predefined templates or creating your own branded template. For more information, see Create a Microsoft PowerPoint template.

    Plan at a high level using the Project Program lens
    Plan at a high level by building portfolio plans for program [pm_program] items using the Project Program lens. Score and prioritize the programs and track them using roadmaps.
    Feedback enhancements
    • Manage the feedback filter card directly from the feedback homepage by sorting, pinning, sharing, updating, or deleting it.
    • Allow access to specific users or groups when sharing the feedback filter card, and review the users who have access to it.
    Financials in Strategic Planning
    • Migrate the existing planning items budget from the classic UI to Next Experience using the Migrate Budget option.
    • As a portfolio manager, allocate and manage the budget of your planning items using the Budget vs cost view.
    • As a project manager, compare a budget to the captured costs of your planning items and reforecast the planned costs to meet the approved budget.
    • Compare financial baselines to view simple financials and budget.
    • View the cost plans, expense lines, and financial baselines of sub-projects using the Financial view of a parent project.
    • Widgets in the Cost view of parent projects display the rolled-up value of the planned costs, expense lines, budget, and variance.
    • Create custom labor cost types and map them with a unique sys_id to generate labor costs.
    Capacity Planning in Strategic Planning
    • Select a primary attribute to auto-select the resource criteria based on the planning items in the portfolio.
    • Automatically generate resource capacity using a scheduled job at your desired cadence.
    • View only prioritized planning items in the bottom tray of the Capacity Planning screen.
    • View the total capacity, estimate, and available efforts of a resource using the heatmap view.

    Changes

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Enable or disable scoring frameworks
    Enable or disable the base system scoring frameworks as needed. Enabling or disabling the scoring frameworks can be done only by administrators.

    Xanadu

    Break down work from a parent work item
    Create child work items directly from the parent record page.
    • The Child items tab on the work item record page is replaced with the tabs of each associated child item. For example, the full details page of an Epic shows separate tabs for its child work items, capabilities, features, and stories, based on the EAP configuration.
    • New button is added to each tab to create work items directly from the parent work item record page.
    Enhancements to the PI planning board in EAP

    The PI planning board displays all work assigned to the current Agile structure level as well as its child teams.

    Feedback
    The Product Feedback application name is changed to Feedback.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Xanadu, some Strategic Planning features or functionality were removed.

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

    Between your current release family and Xanadu, some Strategic Planning features or functionality were deprecated.

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Product idea deprecations
    The product idea overview page has been deprecated in the Washington DC release.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Strategic Planning.

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Install Strategic 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.

    Xanadu

    Install Strategic 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.

    Additional requirements

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Browser requirements

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Accessibility information

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    Support for truncation
    The following views of the Strategic Planning Workspace were updated to show the truncated text for non-interactive elements when the Enable keyboard focus on truncated text accessibility user preference is turned on.
    • List view of the Prioritization tab and the Goals page
    • Hierarchy views of the Prioritization tab and the Goals page
    • Timeline view of portfolio plan and free-form roadmaps
    • Scoring
    • Capacity Planning

    This enhancement supports sighted users who rely solely on a keyboard to use the ServiceNow platform. For more information, see Configure Next Experience accessibility preferences.

    Invisible Controls
    The following views of the Strategic Planning Workspace were updated to automatically display controls that aren’t normally visible when the Show all buttons without the need to hover accessibility user preference is turned on.
    • List view of the Prioritization tab and the Goals page
    • Hierarchy view of the Prioritization tab and the Goals page
    • Timeline view of portfolio plan and free-form roadmaps
    • Scoring
    • Capacity Planning

    This enhancement supports users with cognitive and physical disabilities, such as low vision or mobility limitations, who use the ServiceNow platform. For more information, see Configure Next Experience accessibility preferences.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Localization information

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

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

    Release Release notes

    Washington DC

    • Scale your organization's Agile planning with real-time visibility into work progress, streamlined communication, and progress tracking dashboards.
    • Customize widgets to view financial information.
    • Create expense lines to record and manage unplanned expenses to meet your work requirements that aren’t related to any planned costs.
    • Align with the business strategy by using the Business Capability lens and the Project Program lens to plan and prioritize work.
    • Export and share the financial information of your planning items in a Microsoft Excel or CSV format with your business stakeholders.
    • Export data of your portfolio plan items from the Scoring page and the List view of the Prioritization tab to a Microsoft Excel or CSV file to share the data and collaborate with your business stakeholders.
    • Categorize your planning items based on your requirement by adding tags.
    • Track how current and future work contribute to meeting a primary or non-primary target by associating the target with work items.
    • View operational resource assignments on the Capacity Planning screen.

    See Strategic Planning for more information.

    Xanadu

    • Show or hide the features of your portfolio plan so you share only the most important data with your stakeholders.
    • Update actuals and track the progress of your targets in daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly intervals with the enhanced target breakdown feature.
    • Filter the planning items and roadmap bars with multi-value fields, such as tags, business applications, and business capabilities.
    • Create rich-text documents to store and manage artifact information for planning items and Agile teams in EAP.
    • Create scenarios to simulate changes to the portfolio plan, compare scenarios for visualizing trade-off decisions, and approve a scenario to revise the live plan.
    • View the cost plans, expense lines, budget, and financial baselines of sub-projects at the parent project level. View the financial performance of a project using the rolled-up planned and actuals costs in the widgets of parent projects.
    • Select a primary attribute to populate resource criteria automatically from the resource assignments of the prioritized planning items, and view the team's capacity in the Capacity Planning screen.

    See Strategic Planning for more information.