Combined Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature release notes for upgrades from Xanadu to Yokohama

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 20, 2026
  • 6 minutes to read
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    Summary of Combined Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance Feature Release Notes for Upgrades from Xanadu to Yokohama

    This consolidated guide provides ServiceNow customers with essential information on the Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) feature updates from the Xanadu release up to Yokohama. It highlights new features, changes, and activation details to assist with upgrade preparation and to maximize use of the enhanced GRC capabilities.

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    New Features Introduced in Xanadu

    • Issue Grouping Management Methods: Manage related issues either collectively through a parent issue or individually as child issues. New fields include Group level (to identify issue hierarchy) and Management method (to specify management style).
    • Confidentiality and Inheritance Enhancements: Improved controls on confidentiality when grouping issues. Confidential child issues must be under confidential parents; changing confidentiality status automatically adjusts issue grouping to maintain data integrity.
    • GRC Licensing Overview Dashboard: A self-service dashboard that tracks license usage trends and projects future consumption across Integrated Risk Management, Business Continuity Management, and Privacy Management for up to 12 months, with data archived for five years.
    • New GRC Employee Role: Available via the GRC Employee User application (entitlement required). Allows employees to acknowledge policies, report risks and compliance cases, request policy exceptions, and communicate with the Compliance team through the Employee Center.
    • Lite Operator Role Enhancements: Addition of snaudit.reader and snaudit.approver roles to Lite Operator category, enhancing audit access. Certain roles are reclassified as Lite Operator roles when specific GRC applications are installed.
    • Entity Filter Deletion/Modification Warning: Prevent accidental data impacts by displaying warnings with impact analysis before entity filters are deleted or changed.
    • Document Designer Integration: Integration with Microsoft 365 for ServiceNow Reporting enables users to update and insert live data and reports directly into Word documents, streamlining document creation.
    • Role Attribution to Licensing Mapping: This mapping tab on the Licensing Overview dashboard helps understand license assignments based on roles and user combinations, facilitating compliance and license management.
    • Stakeholder Mapping in Entities: Define and assign customizable stakeholder roles (personas, groups, users) to single or composite entities, supporting collaborative risk assessments and projects.

    Changes, Removals, and Deprecations

    There were no changes, removals, or deprecations to the Common GRC feature between Xanadu and Yokohama releases.

    Activation and Additional Information

    • Installation: Common GRC can be installed by requesting the application from the ServiceNow Store. Customers should verify entitlements and installation requirements via the subscription dashboard or contact ServiceNow support.
    • No Updates: No updates were made in Yokohama for activation instructions, additional requirements, browser requirements, accessibility, or localization.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Efficiently manage and organize related issues using enhanced issue grouping with confidentiality controls.
    • Gain visibility into license consumption trends and plan accordingly with the GRC Licensing Overview dashboard.
    • Empower employees with the new GRC Employee role to actively participate in compliance workflows directly from the Employee Center.
    • Improve audit process participation through enhanced Lite Operator roles.
    • Streamline documentation by integrating live reporting data into Microsoft Word via Document Designer.
    • Clarify license responsibilities and stakeholder involvement with role-to-license mapping and stakeholder entity mapping features.

    Consolidated page of all release notes for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature from Xanadu to Yokohama.

    How to use this page

    To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature release notes onto one page. Read this summary of the new features, changes, and updated information for your product from Xanadu to Yokohama.

    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 Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature to Yokohama

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

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    New features

    Between your current release family and Yokohama, new features were introduced for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu
    Management method in issue grouping
    Group and manage issues from a parent issue, or manage child issues independently using the group issue management method. When you select the Management method as Manage parent, the child issues inherit the values of the State, Response, and Explanation fields from the parent issue. When Manage child is selected, the child issue maintains its own State, Response, and Explanation fields individually.
    As a part of this feature, the following two new fields were added on the issue record in the Issue grouping section:
    • Group level: Identifies whether an issue is a child, parent, or a standalone issue.
    • Management method: Indicates whether the issue is managed from a parent issue or as an individual child issue.
    Confidentiality and inheritance enhancements in issue grouping
    Streamline the issue grouping process with the following enhancements:
    • Add confidential child issues only under a confidential parent issue.
    • Add nonconfidential child issues under a confidential or nonconfidential parent issue.
    • Change a confidential parent issue to nonconfidential. This action will remove all confidential child issues under the parent issue, making them standalone issues after you save the record.
      Note:
      When you change a nonconfidential child issue to confidential, which is under a nonconfidential parent issue, this action removes the child issue from the nonconfidential parent issue. The child issue becomes a standalone issue and no longer linked to the parent issue.
    GRC Licensing Overview dashboard
    Use the self-service GRC Licensing Overview dashboard to track license usage trends and next month's projected usage based on role allocation. You can see the monthly aggregated counts of license consumption across different product families including Integrated Risk Management, Business Continuity Management, and Privacy Management. The following infrastructure enhancements were made:
    • Expanded the unique user usage table capacity from 9 months to 12 months.
    • License consumption details are archived for five years.
    • Aggregated monthly counts of license usage are stored.
    Introducing GRC Employee role
    Install the new GRC Employee User application and assign the GRC Employee role to your employees. The users with the GRC Employee role can perform the following activities from the Employee Center:
    • Read and acknowledge organizational policies.
    • Report risk events and issues.
    • Request policy exceptions.
    • Report a compliance case to the Compliance team.
    • Raise inquiries and requests to the Compliance team.
    Note:
    This update is only applicable to customers who are entitled to and have installed the GRC Employee User application. For more details, review the entitlement on the subscription dashboard or contact ServiceNow.
    Lite operator role enhancements
    The sn_audit.reader and sn_audit.approver roles were added as Lite Operator roles. These new roles are available to all customers.
    The following Operator roles are reclassified as Lite Operator roles when GRC Employee User application and GRC Business User Lite applications are installed:
    • sn_grc.business_user
    • sn_risk_advanced.ara_assessor
    • sn_irm_cont_auth.authorization_official
    • sn_irm_cont_auth.reader
    • sn_irm_cont_auth.executive_read
    Note:
    This reclassification is only applicable to customers who are entitled to and have installed the GRC Employee User application. For more details, review the entitlement on the subscription dashboard or contact ServiceNow.
    Entity filter deletion or modification warning
    Avoid the unintended consequences of deleting or modifying an entity filter with a warning message. This message includes an impact analysis of the affected entity, risk, and control records.
    Document designer integration
    You can update and add content using Microsoft 365 for ServiceNow Reporting now integrated with the Document designer application to insert data and reports into a Microsoft Word document.
    Role attribution to licensing mapping tab
    Use the Role attribution to licensing mapping tab on the GRC Licensing Overview dashboard to understand how licensing applies to roles and users. This tab helps you with the following:
    • Identify the license treatment for all the default GRC roles.
    • Determine the license treatment of a specific user based on their assigned roles.
    • Determine the license treatment for a specific combination of roles.
    Map stakeholders in entity
    Use the Stakeholders related list in the entity form to define stakeholders with customizable roles relevant to single and composite entities. This feature enables effective team involvement in risk assessments and risk assessment projects. You can add persona, group, and users in the stakeholder list.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Changes

    Between your current release family and Yokohama, some changes were made to existing Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature features.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Yokohama, some Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature features or functionality were removed.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

    Between your current release family and Yokohama, some Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature features or functionality were deprecated.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    Install GRC 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.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Additional requirements

    If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Browser requirements

    If any specific browser requirements were introduced or changed for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Accessibility information

    Review details on accessibility information for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature, such as specific requirements or compliance levels.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Localization information

    If there are specific localization considerations for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    		 No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

    If there are specific highlight considerations for Common Governance, Risk, and Compliance feature we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu
    • Group issues within your workspaces to organize and manage related issues, and streamline the issue grouping process with the confidentiality and inheritance enhancements.
    • Select an existing standalone issue to serve as the parent for other related issues during issue grouping.
    • Track license consumption across different product families using the GRC Licensing Overview dashboard.
    • Use the new GRC Employee role to report or request GRC workflows, and read and acknowledge policies from the Employee Center (Only applicable to customers who are entitled to and have installed the GRC Employee User application).
    • Read and approve audits, and read audit related tables with the enhanced Lite Operator changes.
    • Update and add content using Microsoft 365 for ServiceNow Reporting now integrated with the Document designer application.

    See Governance, Risk, and Compliance for more information.

    Yokohama

    		 No updates for this release.