External Content Connectors release notes
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Summary of External Content Connectors Release Notes
The ServiceNow External Content Connectors application enhances AI Search by enabling indexing and searching of content and metadata from a wide range of supported external source systems such as Atlassian Confluence Cloud, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Adobe Acrobat Sign, and many more. The Zurich release introduces expanded connector support, improved user permissions configuration, enhanced crawl analytics, and a revamped user interface for connector creation and management.
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Key Features
- Expanded Connector Support: The Zurich release adds connectors for numerous new sources including Adobe Acrobat Sign, Aha! Roadmaps, Cornerstone, Fluid Topics, ManageEngine, Workvivo, Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, Asana, DocuSign, Dropbox, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, HubSpot, Lucidchart, Miro, monday.com, Notion, SAP DMS, Smartsheet, Trello, WordPress, Workday, Zoom, Amazon S3, Box, GitLab, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Viva Engage, Zendesk Guide, and ServiceNow Knowledge Base articles.
- Semantic Vector Indexing: Starting with version 2, connectors implement semantic vector indexing for more effective content search. After upgrading, full reindexing occurs during the next crawl to ensure accurate search results.
- User Permission Configuration: Administrators can customize how source system users are mapped to ServiceNow AI Platform users by selecting specific fields for matching, improving security and access control.
- Enhanced Crawl Management and Analytics: Improved statistics and analytics provide insights into content and permission crawl performance, enabling better monitoring and optimization of connector operations.
- Webcrawler Enhancements: The Webcrawler connector now supports retrieving URLs from sitemaps, allowing more comprehensive web content indexing. It also allows selection of predefined or custom web sources.
- Improved User Interface: The connector creation UI streamlines configuration by including optional steps for crawl scheduling, user permission settings, and linking connectors to search profiles, facilitating faster setup and management.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Limited RBAC support is available for Atlassian Confluence Cloud connectors to map permissions accurately.
- Connection Settings Updates: Connectors for Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Teams now accept certificate SHA1 thumbprints in both hexadecimal and base64 formats, simplifying authentication configuration.
Key Outcomes
- ServiceNow customers can extend AI Search capabilities to a broad variety of external content sources, enhancing knowledge discovery across enterprise systems.
- The semantic vector indexing upgrade improves search relevance but requires reindexing after upgrading, which customers should plan for during maintenance.
- Administrators gain precise control over user permission mappings, improving security and ensuring appropriate access to indexed content.
- New analytics and crawl statistics enable proactive monitoring of connector performance and content freshness.
- Improved UI and enhanced connector features reduce setup time and complexity, facilitating faster deployment and ongoing management.
- Webcrawler advancements allow richer indexing of public web content, supporting broader search scenarios.
Activation and Upgrade Considerations
External Content Connectors must be requested from the ServiceNow Store for installation. Upgrading to Zurich versions with semantic vector indexing requires running a full content crawl and user mapping crawl to ensure all content is indexed and searchable. Administrators should cancel running crawls before restarting to expedite reindexing.
The ServiceNow® External Content Connectors application enables AI Search applications to search content and metadata from supported external source systems, such as Atlassian Confluence Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint Online. External Content Connectors was enhanced and updated in the Zurich release.
External Content Connectors highlights for the Zurich release
Zurich Patch 7
- Expand your search experience with external content connectors for Adobe Acrobat Sign, Aha! Roadmaps, Cornerstone, Fluid Topics, ManageEngine, and Workvivo source systems.
- Retrieve content and links from URLs found in sitemaps defined for your web source system when running content crawls for the Webcrawler external content connector.
- View a content crawl's start point via links in the content crawl list and in content crawl history entries.
Zurich Patch 4
- Expand your search experience with external content connectors for Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, Asana, Docusign, Dropbox, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, HubSpot, Lucidchart, Miro, monday.com, Notion, SAP DMS, Smartsheet, Trello, WordPress, Workday, and Zoom source systems.
- Customize user permission settings, choosing the fields you want to compare when mapping source system users to ServiceNow AI Platform® users.
- Make external content connector crawl results searchable by linking connector search sources to search profiles from the connector editor.
- Monitor connector behavior on individual crawl runs and over time with improved crawl statistics and analytics.
Zurich Patch 1
- Expand your search experience by indexing searchable content from your Amazon S3, Box, GitLab, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Viva Engage, and Zendesk Guide source systems.
- Search KB articles from your ServiceNow instance.
- Make web content locally searchable by indexing pages from predefined or custom public web sites with the Webcrawler external content connector.
- Configure connector settings and schedule crawls as part of connector creation using the revamped UI.
See External Content Connectors for more information.
Important:
External Content Connectors is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
Important information for upgrading External Content Connectors to Zurich
Beginning with version 2 of the External Content Connectors application, external content connectors implement semantic vector indexing for crawled items. When you upgrade to a version that supports semantic vector indexing, your existing connectors will reindex all previously retrieved items the next time they're visited by a crawl, even if those items' content is unchanged. To force semantic vector indexing of your external content items as soon as possible after upgrading, cancel any running crawls, then restart the canceled crawls manually.
When you upgrade to version 4 of the External Content Connectors application from an earlier version, searches may not show all previously crawled content until you've completed both a content crawl and a user mapping crawl for each upgraded connector. The first content crawl run after the upgrade will reindex all searchable content from the source system, and the user mapping crawl will reindex all security principals from the source system. All crawled content should be shown in searches after both of these crawls are complete.
New in the Zurich release
- Zurich Patch 7
- Adobe Acrobat Sign external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Adobe Acrobat Sign source system.
- Aha! Roadmaps external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Aha! Roadmaps source system.
- Cornerstone external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Cornerstone source system.
- Fluid Topics external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Fluid Topics source system.
- ManageEngine external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your ManageEngine source system.
- Workvivo external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Workvivo source system.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Connector admin role
- Users with the sn_ext_conn.xcc_admin role can create, configure, and review details for external content connectors and crawls.
- Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service source system.
- Asana external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Asana source system.
- Docusign external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Docusign source system.
- Dropbox external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Dropbox source system.
- GitHub Enterprise Cloud external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your GitHub Enterprise Cloud source system.
- HubSpot external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your HubSpot source system.
- Lucidchart external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Lucidchart source system.
- Miro external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Miro source system.
- monday.com external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your monday.com source system.
- Notion external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Notion source system.
- SAP DMS external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your SAP DMS source system.
- Smartsheet external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Smartsheet source system.
- Trello external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Trello source system.
- WordPress external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your WordPress source system.
- Workday external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Workday source system.
- Zoom external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from your Zoom source system.
- Configure user permission settings for an external content connector
- Specify the source system and User [sys_user] table fields to examine for matches when an external content connector maps source system users to your ServiceNow AI Platform users.
- Statistics for external content connector content crawls
- Review statistics about the documents (items or files with searchable content and metadata) retrieved by a content crawl.
- Statistics for external content connector user permission crawls
- Review statistics about the permissions (user and group-membership security principals) retrieved by a user permission crawl.
- Analytics for external content connectors
- Review metrics that show how your external content connector has run over time.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Amazon S3 external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from buckets in your Amazon S3 source system.
- Box external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from user boxes in your Box source system.
- GitLab external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from issues, wikis, merge requests, tags, branches, and commits in your GitLab source system's groups, projects, and repositories.
- Microsoft OneDrive external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from individual drives in your Microsoft OneDrive source system.
- Microsoft Viva Engage external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from conversations in your Microsoft Viva Engage source system's communities.
- ServiceNow® instance external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from KB articles in your ServiceNow AI Platform instance.
- Webcrawler external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from pages and subdomains in public web sources. Select a predefined web source or specify a custom web source.
- Zendesk Guide external content connector
- Retrieve searchable content and metadata from articles in your Zendesk Guide source system's knowledge bases.
- Statistics for external content connector content crawls
- Review statistics for searchable items retrieved by a content crawl.
- Statistics for external content connector user permission crawls
- Review statistics for user and group permissions retrieved by a user permission crawl.
UI changes
- Zurich Patch 4
- Connector creation UI
- The connector creation UI now includes optional steps for configuring user permission crawls (for connectors that support them) and for linking connector search sources to your search profiles. If you want to change these settings for an existing connector, you can configure these settings from the connector editor.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Connector creation UI
- The connector creation UI now includes optional steps for configuring the new connector's crawl settings and creating and scheduling crawls for it. You can still configure these settings from the connector's editor, so you can skip these steps during connector creation if you want to configure crawl settings and create crawls later on.
- Zurich Early Availability
- Coral theme
- Coral is now the default theme for new portal, web, and mobile experiences with Next Experience or Core UI enabled. This theme provides a fresh look and feel, featuring brand-neutral illustrations to enhance your user experience. A dark theme option is available for web and mobile experiences.
Changed in this release
- Zurich Patch 7
- Sitemap support in the Webcrawler external content connector
- Retrieve content and links from URLs found in sitemaps defined for your web source system when running content crawls for the Webcrawler external content connector. A content crawl only retrieves sitemap URLs that include the crawl's starting point URL.
- Start point links for scheduled partial content crawls
- View the start point for a scheduled partial content crawl via a link in its entry in the the external content connector's list of crawls.
- Start point links in partial content crawl history entries
- View the start point for a scheduled partial content crawl via a link in its crawl history entries.
- Limited Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) support in the Atlassian Confluence Cloud external content connector
- Map source system user and group permissions assigned via RBAC roles to users in your ServiceNow AI Platform instance.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Analytics for external content connectors
- Analyze connector performance and behavior in a selected time period using the redesigned Analytics page. You can access this page from the connector editor.
- Atlassian Jira Cloud connection settings
- The Atlassian Jira Cloud external content connector no longer requires your Atlassian Jira Cloud instance ID as a connection setting.
- Microsoft OneDrive connection settings
- The Microsoft OneDrive external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Microsoft SharePoint Online connection settings
- The Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Microsoft Teams connection settings
- The Microsoft Teams external content connector now accepts certificate SHA1 thumbprint hashes in hexadecimal format as well as in base64-encoded format.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Webcrawler external content connector
- The predefined web sources external content connector has been subsumed into the new Webcrawler external content connector, which enables you to specify a custom web source or select a predefined one.
Activation information
Install External Content Connectors by requesting the External Content Connectors Application Suite 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.
Accessibility information
- Dark theme
- The new Coral theme includes a dark theme option for web and mobile experiences. This option is commonly used to alleviate eye strain and improve readability.