Combined Privacy Management release notes for upgrades from Xanadu to Zurich

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated August 11, 2026
  • 10 minutes to read
  • 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 Combined Privacy Management Release Notes for Upgrades from Xanadu to Zurich

    This consolidated guide details the key updates, new features, and changes for ServiceNow Privacy Management as customers upgrade from the Xanadu release family through Yokohama to Zurich. It is designed to help you understand enhancements, role changes, and important pre- and post-upgrade tasks to ensure a smooth transition.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Personal Data Rights Management (Xanadu): Introduced the Personal Data Rights application to automate and manage data subject access requests (DSARs) and consumer privacy rights efficiently, supporting global regulatory compliance.
    • Data Lineage Visualization: Provides a graphical view of how data is consumed and shared during processing activities, helping you assess and manage associated risks.
    • Regulatory Agency Library: Centralizes regulatory authority information and communication for better governance and compliance tracking.
    • Collaborative Chat Integration: Enables in-context communication via Microsoft Teams within processing activities, privacy cases, and rights requests, preserving discussions directly in relevant records.
    • Smart Assessment Engine: Enhances privacy and control attestations, allowing for dynamic response management and reporting with filtering options for classic and new attestations.
    • Role Enhancements:
      • Privacy Employee User: Enables employees to request privacy impact assessments, report privacy cases, acknowledge policies, and manage policy exceptions directly from the Employee Center.
      • Privacy Lite User: Allows business users to respond to assessments, manage issues, remediation tasks, and breach assessments, supporting detailed privacy risk workflows.
    • Criticality Factors (Yokohama): Integrates risk criticality scoring into privacy assessments and processing activities, reducing duplicate assessments and workload.
    • Information Object Categories: Introduces structured tagging of data types (e.g., biometric, contact data) to improve regulatory compliance and data governance clarity.
    • Privacy Case Management: Uses Smart Assessment Engine for privacy case action tasks, optimizing assessment workflows.
    • Data Subjects Enhancement (Zurich): Allows detailed definition of multiple data subject types per processing activity with volume, data elements, and user location tracking for granular compliance insights.
    • Privacy Management Dashboard: Provides a comprehensive view of privacy risk and compliance posture, including compliance scores, risk heatmaps, and global legal frameworks for prioritization.
    • New Screening and PIA Templates: Standardizes privacy impact and screening assessments with predefined questions and workflows to ensure consistency and reduce manual effort.
    • Processing Activity Improvements (Zurich Patch 1 & 4): Revamped overview pages and vertical layouts offer unified dashboards showing risk, compliance, and criticality scores for easier tracking and management.
    • External Personal Data Rights Request Form: Enables external stakeholders to submit requests via a website with email verification, expanding accessibility.
    • Access Control by Legal Entity: Restricts team access to processing activities relevant to their legal entity, reinforcing privacy by design.
    • Now Assist Integration: Leverages Generative AI to streamline privacy workflows by summarizing assessments, condensing issues, and merging control objectives.
    • Email Reporting of Privacy Incidents: Employees can now report privacy incidents directly through email, simplifying incident capture.
    • Custom Impacted and Related Areas: Allows privacy case managers to add tailored business area types to cases for enhanced context and management.

    Changes

    • Information Object Tagging: Transitioned from icon-based tagging to using a Data Classification field for better categorization and compliance alignment.
    • Assessment Initiation: Privacy assessment initiation now opens a pop-up window for detail entry instead of redirecting to a full form, streamlining the user experience.
    • Home Page Layout: Enhanced Privacy Management homepage organizes reports into clear tabs—Processing Activity, Risk and Compliance, Operations, and Privacy Cases—for improved navigation and readability.

    Activation and Upgrade Guidance

    Privacy Management must be requested and installed via the ServiceNow Store. Review pre- and post-upgrade tasks carefully before upgrading to Zurich to ensure compatibility and optimal configuration. No new browser, localization, or accessibility requirements were introduced in these releases.

    What to Expect

    Upgrading to Zurich from Xanadu or Yokohama will provide your privacy teams with advanced automation, improved risk assessment capabilities, enhanced collaboration tools, and a comprehensive dashboard for managing privacy compliance. The integration of AI assistance and external request handling further streamlines workflows. Role-based enhancements empower employees and business users with relevant privacy management capabilities, making compliance more efficient and scalable.

    Consolidated page of all release notes for Privacy Management from Xanadu to Zurich.

    How to use this page

    To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Privacy Management release notes onto one page. Read this summary of the new features, changes, and updated information for your product from Xanadu to Zurich.

    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 Privacy Management to Zurich

    Before you upgrade to Zurich, 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.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    New features

    Between your current release family and Zurich, new features were introduced for Privacy Management.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    Personal Data Rights
    Use the Personal Data Rights application that provides configurable workflows to manage and automate personal data rights requests efficiently, reducing the risk of non-compliance. The Personal Data Rights application enables customers to efficiently manage and fulfill Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs), consumer rights requests, and so on, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations. The application helps organizations to handle requests related to the personal data rights of their consumers while ensuring that employees can maintain data protection standards globally.
    Create data lineage
    Establish a data lineage to understand how data is being consumed and shared in a given processing activity. Creating a data lineage also helps you to understand and manage the associated risks for the data being shared. This feature provides a visual representation of data lineage or hierarchy.
    Create a regulatory agency
    Create regulatory agencies in the Privacy Workspace to identify the relevant regulatory authorities that are responsible for overseeing the businesses in the public interest. The centralized library consolidates all regulatory communication via emails.
    Collaborate and chat with cross-functional teams for processing activities, privacy cases, privacy assessments, and personal data rights requests
    Initiate quick discussions with key stakeholders while working on a processing activity, privacy case, or a personal data rights request. The chat feature is integrated with Microsoft Teams and a group is automatically created on Microsoft Teams when a discussion is initiated. The chat conversations that take place using the Discuss button are stored in the respective record making it simpler for the privacy teams to refer to them when working on a task.
    View smart attestations on the processing activities
    Use the Smart Assessment Engine feature to respond to attestations. View the reports of the new control attestations on the landing pages of the privacy analyst and the privacy manager. Utilize the filter in the Attestations report to select if you want to view the classic attestations or the new attestations.
    Changes in roles with the Privacy Employee user application
    Note:
    Only applicable to the customers with the GRC Privacy Employee User application (sn_privacy_emp) installed.
    When you install the new GRC Privacy Employee User application and assign the sn_privacy_emp.privacy_employee role to your employees, the role enables your employees to perform the following operations from the Employee Center:
    • Proactively request privacy impact assessments (PIAs) for new implementations, applications, and processes from the Employee Center.
    • Report privacy cases related to data privacy policy and regulatory violations.
    • Read and acknowledge organizational privacy policies.
    • Create policy exceptions.
    • Create privacy issues.
    Changes in roles with the GRC: Privacy Lite User application
    If the GRC: Privacy Lite User application (sn_privacy_lite) is installed, the following roles are considered as lite operators:
    • sn_privacy.business_user
    • sn_privacy.assessment_responder
    • sn_privacy_case.privacy_case_business_user
    • sn_grc_pdr.data_owner_admin

    Users with the lite operator role can do the following:

    • Respond to privacy assessment tasks as business users.
    • Respond to the processing activity's criticality risk assessments and object-based assessment.
    • View, update, and close assigned issues.
    • Respond to the assigned control attestations.
    • Respond to the assigned manual indicator tasks.
    • Create, update, and close assigned remediation tasks.
    • Work on the processing activity as a business user when it’s assigned to you to collect the required details.
    • Work on breach assessments and other privacy case tasks.
    • Respond to the detailed privacy risk assessments on each risk identified on a processing activity.
    • Respond to the assessment and investigation tasks assigned by the privacy team.
    • Work on personal data rights action tasks to handle data according to the requester's requests.

    Yokohama

    [Placeholder link text to key bundle-grc.configure-criticality-factors]
    Leverage criticality factors to evaluate the initial risks associated with processing activities. Integrate these factors into privacy assessments and automatically generate a criticality score upon assessment approval. These factors are also added to processing activities, enabling you to make updates at any time. Integrating these factors in a privacy assessment eliminates the need for a separate criticality assessment. This consolidation reduces the workload for the privacy teams.
    Smart assessments
    Use the new and improved assessment experience that enables:
    • capturing the data elements, the information object attributes, hierarchies
    • building the assessment questionnaire
    This new experience enables responders to update all the necessary details within the assessments, eliminating the need to update the processing activity separately.
    Configure categories
    Implement Information object categories to tag and classify information objects effectively. For example, attributes like iris scans and fingerprints are often referred to as biometric data, or email addresses and phone numbers can be tagged as contact information. Information object categories enable you to categorize these information objects under these broader classifications. This approach is useful in the following ways:
    • Enhances compliance with regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and so on by accurately capturing and tracking required data categories.
    • Improves clarity for business users, ensuring they can easily identify and work with terms they’re familiar with while adhering to regulatory standards.
    • Streamlines data governance by creating a structured framework that supports both regulatory needs and business operations.
    Smart assessment for privacy case management action tasks
    Use the new assessment experience of Smart Assessment Engine for privacy case action tasks. Only when an action task moves from the Draft to the Assigned state, the assessment can be sent. To use the smart assessment, a new property called enable_smart_assessments (sn_grc_case_mgmt.enable_smart_assessments) is introduced with the default value as true.

    Zurich

    Data subjects
    Select and define the multiple data subject types for each processing activity. You can capture the volume of data subjects that were processed, the specific data elements that were collected from the users, and the user locations. With this feature, you get a realistic, granular, and scalable representation of your processing activities.
    Privacy management dashboard
    Get an overview of your complete privacy risk and compliance posture from the Privacy Management dashboard so that you can quickly prioritize and remediate your processing activities. By looking at the Processing Activities, Risk & Compliance, and Operations & Case management sections, you can see the overall compliance score, trends, privacy criticality assessment scores, and risk heatmap. From the dashboard, you can also see information about the global legal framework to understand the regional obligations and the built-in risk metrics that automatically assess each processing activity.
    New screening and PIA templates
    Use the new Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) and Screening Assessment templates that provide standardized questions, evaluation criteria, and workflows so that you can perform a processing activity criticality and privacy risk assessment. With these new templates, you can ensure consistency, reduce manual effort, and support compliance with regulatory and organizational requirements.

    Changes

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some changes were made to existing Privacy Management features.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    Tagging of information object tags
    Use the Data classification field to tag information objects instead of using the tag icon.
    Initiating privacy assessment
    When you initiate a privacy assessment from either an entity or a processing activity, you’re no longer redirected to the Create new privacy assessment form, instead, a new pop-up window appears where you can specify all the assessment details.

    Zurich

    Zurich Patch 4
    Zurich Patch 1
    Processing activity tab
    The revamped Processing Activity overview page provides a unified dashboard that displays key compliance and risk metrics, such as risk scores, compliance scores, and criticality scores. This update makes it easier for privacy managers and analysts to assess the status of each processing activity, track open issues, and prioritize actions.
    Layout for processing activity record view
    The vertical layout of a processing activity enables you to see the information in a top-down linear flow. With this layout, you can see the sequential representation of a data processing workflow.
    Privacy management home page
    The enhanced Privacy Management home page now has dedicated tabs for Processing Activity, Risk and compliance, Operations, and Privacy Cases. This updated layout helps to improve readability by organizing your reports into clearly defined sections.

    Removed

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some Privacy Management features or functionality were removed.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Deprecations

    Between your current release family and Zurich, some Privacy Management features or functionality were deprecated.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Activation information

    Review information on how to activate Privacy Management.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    Install Privacy Management 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

    Install Privacy Management 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.

    Zurich

    Install Privacy Management by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store.

    Additional requirements

    If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Privacy Management we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Browser requirements

    If any specific browser requirements were introduced or changed for Privacy Management we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Accessibility information

    Review details on accessibility information for Privacy Management, such as specific requirements or compliance levels.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    Localization information

    If there are specific localization considerations for Privacy Management we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    No updates for this release.

    Yokohama

    No updates for this release.

    Zurich

    No updates for this release.

    Highlight information

    If there are specific highlight considerations for Privacy Management we have noted them here.

    Release Release notes

    Xanadu

    • Use the Personal Data Rights application to manage personal data rights requests from your customers or consumers, and employees in compliance with global privacy regulations.
    • Establish a data lineage to visualize data consumption, sharing, and the associated risks for a processing activity.
    • Use the Smart Assessment Engine to respond to and view new control attestations related to your processing activity.
    • Create a regulatory agency library to store and access regulatory details, including correspondence with the regulators.
    • Initiate chats from privacy assessments, processing activities, privacy cases, and personal data rights requests to collaborate with various teams to ensure quick responses.

    See Explore for more information.

    Yokohama

    • Integrate criticality factors into assessments and processing activities thereby simplifying the assessment process, and reducing the workload for privacy teams.
    • Use the Smart Assessment Engine to capture details regarding information objects and hierarchies, updating all details within the assessments and eliminating the need to separately update processing activities.
    • Implement information Object (IO) categories such as biometric data, to align with regulatory classifications and bridge the gap between requirements and user understanding.
    • Empower privacy case analysts to perform assessments on privacy cases using the Smart Assessment Engine

    See Privacy Management for more information.

    Zurich

    • A new external Personal data rights (PDR) request form enables customers, ex-employees, and third parties to submit PDR requests from a website with email verification.
    • Access Control by Legal Entity feature enables teams to access only processing activities relevant to their legal entity, maintaining privacy by design principle.
    • Now Assist for Privacy Management plugin uses Generative AI to streamline privacy workflows by summarizing assessments, condensing issues, and merging control objectives.
    • Reporting privacy incidents through email feature enables employees to report privacy incidents directly through email.
    • Impacted and related areas configuration allows privacy case managers to add custom business area types to privacy cases for better context.
    • Revamped Processing Activity overview page provides a unified dashboard showing key compliance and risk metrics for processing activities.

    See Privacy Management for more information.