Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) Release Notes
Summarize
Summarized using AI
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.
Summary of Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) Release Notes - Xanadu
The ServiceNow® Enterprise Architecture product, formerly known as Application Portfolio Management (APM), has been enhanced and rebranded in the Xanadu release to better unify strategic and operational teams for achieving business objectives. This release introduces new functionalities, a redesigned workspace, and a restructured portfolio for improved architectural modeling, visualization, and management.
Show less
Key Features
- Enterprise Architecture Workspace: Central platform for accessing all Enterprise Architecture capabilities, including deprecated APM modules now only available here, encouraging transition to the new workspace.
- Enterprise Modeling and Visualization: Allows users to create and update diagrams for business application hierarchies and capability maps, supporting ArchiMate® standard shapes. Diagrams can be associated with architectural artifacts, shared with defined access, and workflow-enabled for approval and committing to the database.
- Architectural Decision Record (ADR) Artifacts: New artifact type to help capture and align architectural decisions with business requirements.
- Digital Integration and Interface Enhancements: Link digital interfaces with CMDB APIs to identify integrations, deployed environments, and design aspects, improving visibility into digital services.
- Technology Portfolio Restructuring: Consolidated pages including TRM catalog, Technical Debt, TPM lifecycles, risk, audits, and enhanced viewing of information objects, SDLC components, and credentials.
- Portfolio Section Improvements: Expanded structure covering Business Architecture, Application Portfolio, Information Portfolio, Architectural Artifacts, TRM, Digital Integrations, and personal entity views to streamline management and insights.
- TPM and TRM Enhancements: Broader CMDB CI support, including Docker containers and serverless hardware; new OS tracking for software TRM products and wildcard support for lifecycle versions.
- User Interface Updates: New navigation icons, tabs, and dashboard widgets (e.g., TCO scoring for business applications) to enhance usability and reporting.
Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers
- Existing customers can continue using legacy APM modules but are encouraged to transition to the Enterprise Architecture Workspace for full functionality and support.
- New customers activating Enterprise Architecture will access all modules through the Enterprise Architecture Workspace, with deprecated modules removed from the global navigation menu.
- Modeling and visualization tools facilitate stakeholder communication and strategic planning by visually representing application hierarchies and business capabilities aligned to IT architecture.
- Improved integration tracking between digital interfaces and CMDB APIs enhances operational transparency and management of digital assets.
- The restructured portfolio and enhanced dashboard provide clearer insights into business applications, technology risks, and total cost of ownership (TCO), supporting better decision-making.
- Administrators have more granular control over configuration options, access rights, and artifact management within the Enterprise Modeling and Visualization environment.
Next Steps
- Leverage the Enterprise Architecture Workspace to access and manage all architectural artifacts, modeling diagrams, and portfolio components.
- Use the Enterprise Modeling and Visualization feature to create diagrams for business capabilities and application hierarchies, applying ArchiMate® standards where applicable.
- Configure and monitor technology portfolios and digital integrations using the enhanced TPM and TRM capabilities.
- Adopt the Architectural Decision Record (ADR) artifact type to document key architectural decisions in alignment with business goals.
- Review and adjust user roles and permissions for Enterprise Modeling and Visualization to secure access appropriately.
Activation of Enterprise Architecture requires a separate subscription (com.snc.apm). Customers should consult their ServiceNow representative to understand licensing and enablement options.
The ServiceNow® Enterprise Architecture unites strategic and operational teams, enabling organizations to achieve their business objectives. Enterprise Architecture was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.
Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) highlights for the Xanadu release
- The ServiceNow® Application Portfolio Management product is expanding to ServiceNow® Enterprise Architecture.
- Some Application Portfolio Management modules are deprecated and no longer searchable from the All menu. However, all the deprecated modules are available within the Enterprise Architecture Workspace. You must use the Enterprise Architecture Workspace to leverage those features and functionalities.Note:Existing customers can continue to use these navigation links. However, for new activation customers, the navigation will not be available from the All menu.
- Create diagrams for your business applications hierarchy map, business capability map, and associate them with architectural artifacts and plan the future state modeling of your IT, with alignment to the business, using the Enterprise Modeling and Visualization functionality in Enterprise Architecture Workspace.
- Support for industry standard ArchiMate® shapes to create modeling diagrams. ArchiMate is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
- Support for Architectural Decision Record (ADR) type artifact to help you align artifacts with your business requirements.
- Create a one-to-many relationship between a digital interface and CMDB APIs. Find out which digital integrations and interfaces use which APIs. Identify the environments where they’re deployed. Group the deployed APIs and relate them to the digital interface, which describes the design aspects of the related APIs.
See Enterprise Architecture for more information.
New in the Xanadu release
- Exploring Enterprise Modeling and Visualization in the EA Workspace
- Use the Enterprise Modeling and Visualization functionality in Enterprise Architecture Workspace to create diagrams for your applications hierarchy. You can associate the diagrams with architectural artifacts and plan the future state modeling of your IT with alignment to the business. Creating modeling diagrams can you help your stakeholders to understand the complexities of the organization. Perform the following tasks using the Enterprise Modeling and Visualization:
- Technology Portfolio
- The Technology Portfolio section has been restructured and new features have been added. The section now contains the following pages:
- TRM catalog
- Technical debt
- TPM lifecycles
- TPM risk
- Technology portfolio audit
- Digital integration and interface enhancements
-
- View Information Objects and SDLC Components associated with a digital integration or digital interface.
- View Credentials assigned to a digital interface, digital integration, and business application.
- Set the Provider company instead of Provider business application, for a Provider digital interface in a digital integration.
- Portfolio section enhancements
- The Portfolio section has been restructured and new modules and features have been added. The following is the new structure:
- Business Architecture
- Business Units
- Departments
- Goals
- Value Streams
- Value Stream Stages
- Business Capabilities
- Business Processes
- Demands
- Application Portfolio
- Business Applications
- Application Services
- Digital Integrations
- Digital Interfaces
- Information Portfolio
- Data Domains
- Information Objects
- Architectural Artifacts
- Architectural Artifact Versions
- Diagrams
- My Entities
- My Business Capabilities
- My Business Processes
- My Business Applications
- My Application Services
- My Information objects
- My Architectural Artifacts
- My Technology Reference Model Products
- My Digital Integrations
- My Digital Interfaces
- Business Architecture
- Setup section enhancements
- The configuration for Enterprise Modeling and Visualization is the following:
- Shape Libraries
- Modeling menu options
- Entities
- Relationships
- Connect a digital interface with the CMDB API in the EA Workspace
- Create a relationship between a digital interface and a CMDB API from the digital interface related list. Find out which digital integration uses which API. Find the environments where they’re deployed and group the deployed APIs.
- Working with the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard
- The following widgets are available on the TCO tab of the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard.
- Business applications by TCO score
- Business application TCO by cost type and planned disposition for FY:Q (Current quarter)
- Top 10 business applications with the highest cost for FY:Q (Current quarter)
- Manage information objects of a business application in EA Workspace
- Relate a business application to an information object using the CI relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] table of type Uses::Used by. Use this suggested relationship to get the logical data of the information object, which can be used to leverage the business application.
- Technology portfolio management (TPM) enhancements
- Added support for all CMDB configuration items in Technology Portfolio Management (TPM). By default, TPM support docker containers and serverless hardware tables. An admin user can configure any of the supported CMDB CIs for TPM.
- TRM product enhancements
-
- For a software TRM product, the Operating system field is added. Using this field, the operating system on which the software TRM product can be deployed, is tracked.
- Added support for creating wildcard for TRM lifecycle versions, to make it easier to specify a TRM standard without the need to specify the minor version.
- Support for Architectural Decision Record (ADR) type artifact
-
Create or update an artifact with type architectural decision record (ADR) to align it with your business requirements.
UI changes
- Technology Portfolio view
- The Technology Portfolio icon (
) is added in the left navigation of the Enterprise Architecture Workspace. - Digital Integration and Interface
- New tabs are added for Information Objects and SDLC Component in the Digital Integration and Digital Interface records.
- Portfolio list view
- New modules and features have been added in the Portfolio section.
- Enterprise Architecture Workspace Dashboard page
- In the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Dashboard page, the Business Portfolio tab has been added. For more details, see Working with the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard.
- Enterprise Architecture Workspace home page
- In the Enterprise Architecture Workspace home page, the Technology Portfolio Audit and the Technical Debt tabs have been removed from the Needs Attention section.
- Add a TRM product in Enterprise Architecture Workspace
- The Operating system field is added to the Technical debt page and business application Lifecycle Timelines page.
- View the unified map for a business application in Enterprise Modeling and Visualization
- A new button Model with Enterprise Modeling and Visualization is added in the business application CMDB node map.
- Add related records in the modeling diagram
- The Entities section in the Add related records window shows the number of entities and the relationship type (CI relationship or Reference).
- Add additional category details for TRM products
- The Other Category field is added in the Request TRM Product form and the Create TRM product form. Using this data, you can filter for TRM products using additional categories details.
- Business application form
- The Target date field is added in thePlanned disposition section of the business application form.
Deprecations
Starting with the Xanadu release, some modules are deprecated from Enterprise Architecture (formerly known as Application Portfolio Management). The navigation links to the deprecated modules are removed from the All menu. If you’re an existing customer, you can continue to use these navigation links. However,
if you’re a new activation customer, navigation to these modules using the navigation links from the All menu won’t be available. All the deprecated modules are available within the Enterprise Architecture Workspace. You’re encouraged to use the Enterprise Architecture Workspace to leverage those features and functionalities. The deprecated modules are:
- Application Portfolio Management Home
- Application Portfolio
- Application Portfolio Analysis
- Architectural Artifacts
- Business Application Lifecycles - Service Requests
- Application Ratings
- Capability Ratings
- Information Portfolio
- Technology Portfolio Management
- Technology Reference Model
- Administration
- Business Processes
- Business Capabilities
- Application Families
- Application Category Groups
- Application Categories
- Application Indicators
- Scoring Profiles
- Bubble Chart
- Demand Actions
- Portfolio
Activation information
Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) is available with activation of the Enterprise Architecture (com.snc.apm), which requires a separate subscription. For details, see Enterprise Architecture.