Next Experience release notes

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
  • The ServiceNow® Next Experience application delivers an intuitive, personalized experience that enables your organization to drive productivity, improve engagement, and inspire learning with the ServiceNow AI Platform®. Next Experience was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.

    Next Experience highlights for the Yokohama release

    • Create personalized keyboard shortcuts to streamline your workflow and boost productivity.
    • Track the filters that you apply to your Workspace lists within the History menu. Each time you change your filter, the History menu displays a separate entry.
    • Quickly locate and adjust your user preferences by using the new streamlined search function.
    • User preference icons now adopt your theme colors.

    See Next Experience UI for more information.

    New in the Yokohama release

    Fuzzy search results returned within the Unified Navigation menus
    Find relevant search results even with shortened text by using the fuzzy results filter, which ranks results based on their similarity to your search query. Adjust the minimum accuracy score to help fine-tune filter behavior.
    Customizing the Next Experience keyboard shortcuts
    Assign specific actions to unique key combinations to quickly execute tasks. See the Accessibility information section for details.
    Activity stream user preference available
    Enable the activity stream to automatically expand all activities from within the Workspace user preference group.
    Next Experience keyboard shortcuts
    Use a new keyboard shortcut to open and close the Now Assist panel and another keyboard shortcut to enable Now Assist voice input mode.

    UI changes

    Enable keyboard focus on truncated text user preference
    The "Enable keyboard focus on truncated text" user preference has been updated to "Enable keyboard focus on text that displays a tooltip."
    Improved keyboard shortcut modal
    The keyboard shortcut menu has improved usability in the following ways:
    • The modal now includes two columns that include the keyboard shortcut and a description with a scrollable list of available shortcuts on the viewed page.
    • A search field enables you to search for shortcuts that are relevant to the page you’re viewing.
    • A Close button enables you to easily close the modal.

    Changed in this release

    Next Experience preferences
    The new user preference panel provides a more efficient, streamlined way for you to work. Use the new search bar to locate your preferences. A wider modal displays all preference groups and when you select a group, all the individual preferences that are related to it appear in the same window.

    Activation information

    Next Experience is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default when the user loads or upgrades to the Yokohama release. If there are known problems with turning on Next Experience on an instance, an opt-out system property can be created prior to upgrade.

    Theme Builder comes with the Next Experience and is active by default.

    Browser requirements

    The Yokohama release doesn't support Internet Explorer 11. The iOS version of Firefox is also not supported.

    Accessibility information

    Customize Next Experience keyboard shortcuts
    Create your own keyboard shortcuts for frequently used actions.
    Next Experience keyboard shortcuts
    Keyboard shortcuts categorized: Keyboard shortcuts for each page are now organized into categories: Page Action, Page Navigation, Global Navigation, and General.
    New keyboard shortcuts: Two new Next Experience keyboard shortcuts are available, one shortcut to open and close the Now Assist panel and another to enable voice input for Now Assist.
    Accessibility improvements for keyboard interactions: Use the right and left arrow keys to expand and collapse rows.
    Configure Next Experience accessibility preferences
    Voice input for Now Assist

    A new user preference activates voice-to-text input in the Now Assist panel. With this feature, you can use your voice to access Now Assist skills in the Now Assist panel in any supported language.

    This preference appears only if your system administrator has enabled the voice input for the Now Assist feature for your instance. For more information, see Enable voice input for the Now Assist panel.

    Once your system administrator has enabled voice input for your instance, the "Enable voice input for the Now Assist panel" user preference is displayed.