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

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2026
  • 20 minutes to read
  • Consolidated page of all release notes for Strategic Planning from Vancouver to Washington DC.

    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 Vancouver to Washington DC.

    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 Washington DC

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    • Starting with v2.1.0, accessing the Goals module in Strategic Planning requires the sn_apw_advanced.spw_goal_user_read and sn_apw_advanced.spw_goal_user roles for read and edit access, respectively. After upgrading Strategic Planning, assign these roles to the existing goal users to manage goals in Strategic Planning.
    • Starting with v2.1.0, the existing targets with the Type field set to Milestone are considered qualitative targets. After upgrading Strategic Planning, for such existing targets, the Unit of measure is set to Yes/No, the Base value is set to No, and the Target value is set to Yes automatically. Also, the Actual value is set to Yes if the progress value is 100%, otherwise the value is set to No.
    • If you’re upgrading from an older version to Strategic Planning v2.1.0 or higher, a fix script is run to remove the milestone_editor role from the roadmap_editor role because the roadmap_editor role is no longer used. In this case, you may experience a longer time for the upgrade to complete if your ServiceNow instance has a large number of users with the roadmap_editor role. For more information, see KB1443618.
    • If you’re upgrading from an older version to Strategic Planning v3.0.0 or v3.4.0, the entities list may not load in the select entities step while you create or edit a portfolio plan. In this case, you must add the script in the List component for the Select entities page. For more information, see KB1566418.

    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.

    New features

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    Simple centralized interface to access financials
    • Use the centralized interface for financials to manage expense lines and cost plans from the side panel for Agile entities and your planning items.
    • Forecast and track labor costs for epics.
    • Forecast and modify planned costs using the inline editing feature.
    • Generate labor costs for Agile entities depending on the attribute-based resource assignments.
    • Generate and report the attribute-based labor costs for demands based on the new resource assignments capability.
    • Create baselines to capture the snapshot of financial costs manually or by using a scheduler to track the changes in project financials over time.
    • Use the baseline comparison view to compare the latest financials with a baseline or any two baselines to easily analyze the variance in costs.
    • Forecast the financial estimates for Agile epics using the new financials section on the Details tab.
    Comprehensive view of resource capacity allocations
    • View the capacity allocation by generating the resource capacity.
    • View the capacity allocation for your planning items by setting capacity attribute filters.
    • View comprehensive capacity details on the Capacity Planning page for your planning items.
    • Use filters to view the resource capacity for planning items with different planning state, type, priority, status, and so on.
    • Easily understand the overutilized resource capacity using the resource overutilized icon (Rescource overutilized icon.).
    • Identify the planning items or resource groups with no resource allocation using the resource assignments unavailable icon (Resource assignments unavailable icon.)
    • Work on resource mapping for the planning items with actual dates using the work in progress icon (Work in progress icon.) against the Gantt chart bar.
    Scoring in Strategic Planning
    • Score items to priorities and rank them based on a defined framework that is based on your requirements.
    • Assign a scoring framework for your portfolio plan. You may also customize or create a scoring framework based on your business needs.
    • Rank your items based on the scoring attributes.
    Managing Feedback in Strategic Planning
    • Eliminate sifting through various channels by capturing feedback, suggestions, and concerns related to the product in a central repository. Convert the feedback into planning items that can be prioritized, planned, and implemented.
    • Analyze trends and identify the top tags and customers to gain valuable insights. View statistics and take corrective actions on customer feedback.
    • Incorporate customer feedback by creating demands, epics, or projects from feedback or a product idea in the Feedback module.
    • Submit feedback directly from Microsoft Outlook email.
    • Collect ideas as feedback by integrating the Idea portal with Feedback.
    • Collaborate on documents related to a product idea, feedback, or planning item through the Docs component.
    • Personalize the feedback or product idea page using filters to enable your customers to quickly find and engage with feedback or product ideas that are the most relevant to their interests.
    • Link feedback or product ideas directly to non-planning items to address customer concerns promptly in a central location and to ensure that every input is considered when making decisions.
    Enable rough prioritization of work using MoSCoW

    Create a baseline of priorities to use when grooming and prioritizing work for your portfolio by categorizing planning items using the Must have, Could have, Should have, or Won't have (MoSCoW) values in the List and Hierarchy views of the Prioritization tab.

    Make quick edits in the Hierarchy view of high-level portfolio plans

    Improve focused planning by using an editable Hierarchy view for high-level portfolio plans. Make inline edits to item details such as Priority, MoSCoW, and others. Update the approved dates of an item in the timeline using the drag functionality.

    Experience a consistent data set in Prioritization or Roadmap

    Apply quick filters to all the views of the Prioritization or Roadmap tabs at once so that you can view a consistent data set for your portfolio plan.

    These filters are persistent so that you can view the same data set and continue your planning even when you log back in.

    Show or hide parent entities in the Hierarchy view

    Get a more comprehensive view of how work is aligned by enabling the display of all parent entities in the Hierarchy view of the Prioritization tab, even those entities with no planning items associated with them.

    Enhancements to goal management in Strategic Planning
    • Enhanced Goals module UI: Use the enhanced UI for more actionable insights on goals and targets within a portfolio plan.
      • The Dashboard tab (formerly the Overview tab) provides more actionable insights on goals and targets.
      • The List tab hides downstream and upstream goals enabling you to focus on only the goals and targets of a particular portfolio plan.
      • The Hierarchy tab displays the goals of the parent entities of the portfolio plan entities with the goals and targets of the portfolio plan enabling you to more simply plan and align your portfolio plan goals with the goals of the parent entities.
    • Set quarterly or yearly breakdowns for a target:
      • Set quarterly or yearly breakdowns for your long-term targets to easily track and update the actuals in quarterly intervals.
      • Manage the targets of your goals cumulatively over quarterly or yearly intervals to easily track and update the actuals for both short-term and long-term targets by setting the Cumulative field to true on the Target form.
      • Define the sn_gfa.target_breakdown_decimals system property to set the desired number of decimals to be visible on the target breakdown values.
    • Qualitative targets: Set qualitative targets for your goals by setting a unit of measure of the qualitative target type.
    Additional user roles to access the workspace
    Use the new roles to view or manage your resource capacity, financials, portfolio plans, and free-form roadmaps:
    • Goal management roles:
      • sn_apw_advanced.spw_goal_user_read - Read access to view goals.
      • sn_apw_advanced.spw_goal_user - Edit access to create and manage goals.
    • Product feedback roles:
      • pf_user - Edit access to create and manage feedback and product ideas.
      • pf_read - Read access to view feedback and product ideas.
      • pf_basic - Edit access to create and manage feedback and product ideas in product feedback but doesn’t provide access to product feedback from the Strategic Planning workspace.
    • Capacity Planning roles:
      • sn_align_ws.spw_capacity_user - Edit access to generate capacity planning.
      • sn_align_ws.spw_capacity_read - Read access to view capacity planning.
    • Financial planning roles:
      • sn_align_ws.spw_financial_user - Create cost plans and expense lines for planning items.
    • Portfolio planning roles:
    Portfolio plan enhancements
    Take advantage of the portfolio plan enhancements to save your time while you manage your portfolio plans and roadmaps:

    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.

    Changes

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    Multiple condition builder to create portfolio plans

    Control the type of data included in your portfolio plan with the improved ability to set complex filter conditions in the Create portfolio plan wizard.

    Group by preference in Prioritization List view

    Retain the grouping of data by an attribute in the List view of the Prioritization tab even when you switch to the Kanban or Hierarchy views.

    Personalize Kanban view of Prioritization page of Strategic Planning Workspace
    View only the fields that you need on the Kanban cards by modifying the data using the settings panel.
    Business stakeholder role
    Use the Business stakeholder [business_stakeholder] role to create and update portfolio plans and free-form roadmaps. You can also access the Goals page with the business stakeholder role.

    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.

    Removed

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    • The filter condition builder in the side panel of the Roadmap tab has been removed.
    • Column-level filters in the List and Hierarchy views of the Prioritization tab have been removed.

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    No updates for this release.

    Washington DC

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

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Strategic Planning.

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    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.

    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.

    Additional requirements

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    No updates for this release.

    Washington DC

    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

    Vancouver

    No updates for this release.

    Washington DC

    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

    Vancouver

    Forced colors

    The following views of the workspace support the use of Forced Colors, a mechanism that is most commonly activated through an operating system setting for Forced Colors/High Contrast Themes.

    1. List and Hierarchy views of Prioritization and Goals.
    2. Timeline view of portfolio plan and free-form roadmaps.

    This enhancement enables users to customize the colors of their user interface and web content to meet their individual visual needs. For example, users with low vision might enable Forced Colors to help them successfully view the user interface.

    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.

    Localization information

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    No updates for this release.

    Washington DC

    No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

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

    Release Release notes

    Vancouver

    • Align feedback with the product roadmap to analyze and collate feedback into ideas using the Feedback feature. You can link the feedback or idea to an epic, initiative, or project, and manage customer feedback seamlessly.
    • Score your items based on a defined measure and prioritize them based on their scores. Also, rank your items based on the score values.
    • Effectively plan resource capacity while finalizing portfolio plans.
    • Manage your financials and generate labor costs for attribute-based resource plans for planning items.
    • Manage your goals in the enhanced UI in the Goals view. Set quarterly or yearly target breakdowns for the long-term targets to track and update actuals cumulatively or non-cumulatively.
    • Create a copy of an existing portfolio plan, free-form roadmap, or planning item, to save your time while creating a similar one. Save your roadmap timescale view selection in the roadmap preferences.
    • Use the sn_align_core.ap_read_only role to view the shared portfolio plans and free-form roadmaps.

    See Strategic Planning for more information.

    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.