Employee Center release notes

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Employee Center release notes - Xanadu Release

    The Employee Center application in the Xanadu release enhances ServiceNow’s multi-department portal aimed at improving service delivery and employee engagement. This release introduces features that support field and shift workers, improve content management and user feedback, and streamline integrations with services like SharePoint Online. Employee Center is available through the ServiceNow Store and requires plugin installation via the store.

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    Key Features

    • Employee Center Pro Kiosk: Provides deskless and shift workers with easy, self-serve access to job-related information such as shift schedules, time-off details, AI-powered search, request tracking, and targeted communications with guided help links.
    • Content Engagement: Enables employees to react, comment, and share news articles. Managers gain insights into engagement metrics including views, shares, and reactions.
    • Reusable Articles: Accelerate news article creation by using predefined content layouts within templates, improving content authoring efficiency.
    • Guided Self-Service (GSS): Offers a visual Q&A format for employees to self-serve on complex topics like time-off balances.
    • Content Operations Dashboard: Centralizes content management tasks such as tracking publishing schedules, managing content requests, and reviewing ownership of pages and widgets.
    • Content Analytics: Integrated into Platform Analytics, it provides visualizations of content performance across portals and mobile apps, showing metrics like user interactions and task status.
    • Rich Content Editor Enhancements: Supports pasting formatted content with source styling or as plain text matching the destination format, and allows hiding video rendering parameters to prevent unauthorized edits.
    • Experience and Service Feedback: Collect and analyze three feedback types (experience, service, survey) with integration into Success Dashboard and Virtual Agent, also accessible via Now Mobile app for easier user feedback collection.
    • SharePoint Online Search Connector: Improves SharePoint integration by streamlining site permissions and enabling granular access control per user personas.
    • Additional Enhancements: Includes quick start tests post-upgrade, creation/editing of rich content directly from portal widgets, and new demo data for content campaigns.

    Changes and Removals

    • Content Analytics: Now part of Platform Analytics Experience, consolidating dashboards for unified analytics access.
    • Feedback Functionality: Expanded feedback types and anonymity options, plus integration with Virtual Agent assist.
    • SharePoint Connector: Improved permission management and persona-based access control.
    • Removed: Content Publishing and Content Experiences demo portals are no longer included.

    Activation and Next Steps

    To activate Employee Center, request and install the necessary plugins from the ServiceNow Store. Review available apps and submit requests through the store portal. After deployment or upgrades, run provided quick start tests to verify proper functionality, especially if customizations are applied.

    The ServiceNow® Employee Center application is a multi-department, dynamic portal for service delivery and employee engagement. Employee Center was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

    Employee Center highlights for the Xanadu release

    • Increase operational efficiency by field workers and shift workers by providing in-context information with the Employee Center Pro Kiosk.
    • Gather quick feedback from the users on their user experiences and their service experiences with Experience and Service Feedback.
    • Streamline the SharePoint Online Search Connector site permissions and other granular access control.
    • Enable employees to engage with news articles through reactions, comments, or sharing the articles.
    • Access content management tools from Content Publishing, Content Analytics, and Content Governance plugins in the Content Operations dashboard.

    See Employee Center for more information.

    Important:
    Employee Center is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

    New in the Xanadu release

    Accelerate news article creation with reusable articles
    Create news articles faster and more efficiently by leveraging prebuilt reusable articles within content templates. Reusable articles offer a predefined content layout into which content authors can input text and images.
    Content engagement
    Gather feedback on content:
    • Employees can engage with news articles by selecting a reaction icon, leaving a comment, or sharing the article.
    • Managers can view metrics for employee engagement with an article such as the number of views, shares, and reactions.
    Employee Center Pro Kiosk
    Empower deskless workers with simplified access to important information related to their job through a kiosk that provides self-serve opportunities such as:
    • Access shift and time-off details.
    • Get queries answered with the help of AI Search.
    • Track the status of requests.
    • Provide enhanced Employee Center Pro kiosks that can highlight targeted communication and self-service content.
    • Leverage guided help links that make the kiosk environment accommodative and easy to navigate.
    Guided Self-Service in Employee Center
    Provide employees with an intuitive, visual, Q&A-based experience for self-serving on highly used complex topics such as time off balance through GSS.
    Content operations dashboard
    View engagement metrics for published content, manage the content publishing calendar, handle incoming content requests, and review the ownership for pages and widgets through the Content Operations dashboard.
    Content Analytics support for Content Publishing
    View data visualizations of performance metrics for content published to the portal or the Now Mobile app using a publish plan or content schedule. Access metrics such as the most-clicked content, most-clicked notifications, number of user interactions by content, and task status.
    Enhanced copy-paste options in Rich Content Editor
    Copy and paste formatted content into the Rich Content Editor while retaining the original source formatting or paste the content as plain text that matches the formatting of the destination text box.
    Integrated service and experience feedback in Now Mobile®
    Access feedback functionality more easily through the Experience and Service feedback functionality in Now® Mobile.
    Create rich content from portal widgets
    Create or edit content directly from the Employee Center portal pages.
    Hide parameters in the Rich Content Editor
    Content administrators can configure content rendering parameters for hosted videos to be hidden in the Rich Content Editor so these parameters can't be modified by users.
    New campaign demo data for Content Experiences
    Access example campaigns to better understand campaign structuring, explore sample bundle trigger configurations, and discover possible use cases.
    Quick start tests for Employee Center

    After upgrades and deployments of new applications or integrations, run quick start tests to verify that Employee Center works as expected. If you customized Employee Center, copy the quick start tests and configure them for your customizations.

    Changed in this release

    Content Analytics
    Content Analytics is now part of the Platform Analytics Experience. When you navigate to All > Content Analytics > Dashboards, the Content Analytics dashboards are displayed alongside Platform Analytics dashboards.
    Experience and Service Feedback
    Access the following enhancements within the feedback functionality:
    • Leverage three different types of feedback - Experience, Service, and Survey feedback to gain more insight from your users.
    • Integrate the experience feedback response with the Success Dashboard indicators.
    • Configure service feedback to keep it anonymous after feedback is submitted.
    • Access Experience and Service Feedback in Virtual Agent assist.
    SharePoint Online Search Connector
    Enhance your Microsoft SharePoint experience with the following upgrades:
    • Streamline the site permissions and other granular access controls.
    • Grant permission and provide access to specific personas.

    Removed in this release

    The Content Publishing and Content Experiences demo portals have been removed.

    Activation information

    Install Employee Center plugins by requesting them 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.