ServiceNow releases a new version with significant changes twice a year, with the goal of enhancing the efficiency of the platform. New modules, applications, or enhancements, as well as fixes for existing products, are often included.
The latest ServiceNow San Diego version includes plenty of exciting new features and updates. As a result, upgrading your instance to the new version demands forethought, testing, and validation, as each feature release has significant additions, thus you should constantly consider the impact of new functionality on an instance.
At ABIT Puresoft, we’re excited for the San Diego version, which features streamlined, ideally modern workspaces that boost employee satisfaction and productivity. We can now help our customers link ServiceNow to even more systems, both modern and legacy, thanks to the platform’s extension.
In the following article, we have compiled a list of ABIT Puresoft’s favorite San Diego features per product, to assist you in beginning the upgrade journey and discovering some of the perceived benefits.
1. IT Service Management
As with any ServiceNow release, the San Diego version includes some fantastic new ITSM enhancements. The most notable of these is the new Digital Portfolio Management program, which allows you to examine the whole life cycle of your services and apps in a single, unified location. The Digital Portfolio Management application provides a centralized location for customers to manage their service and technology portfolios. The application connects services, apps, item configurations, and the individuals that execute the work using ServiceNow’s Common Service Data Model (CSDM). This allows to keep an eye on the overall health of the solutions you own or use.
2. IT Business Management
With ITBM solution, ServiceNow was clear that they want to enable organizations to manage their entire change portfolio in alignment with the organization’s strategy in today’s complex and volatile environment beyond the boundaries of IT, with a new name and a brand-new UI.
This update includes a new UI for the project workspace, a better Alignment Planner Workspace (Roadmap), increased benefit plan utilization, and deeper connectivity with other platform capabilities. These aspects enable organizations to deepen the connection between their strategic goals, tactical implications, and operational execution. It will also improve the capacity to focus on the right initiatives while executing in compliance with the most recent agile approaches.
3. IT Operations Management
Relationship-based application services can be developed and populated in the blink of an eye with San Diego’s new Dynamic Service population.
The main advantage is that they eliminate the conventional technique of developing and filling ServiceNow service maps, which was time-consuming and difficult to set up. As a result, there has recently been an increase in interest in alternate techniques. Tag-based service mapping, for example, is becoming increasingly popular, however it is limited to tagged CIs.
Even untagged CIs can become part of an application service using the Dynamic Service population approach. This achieves the same functionality as tag-based service mapping without the use of any tags.
4. HR Service Delivery
With San Diego, HR agents can add a case or task to an open activity set under an automated lifecycle event case like an onboarding process. When an ad hoc case or task is created, the subject can see it in their Employee Center or on their mobile app. The new version allows you to add child tasks manually in ongoing lifecycle events without disrupting their original structure. Employees and agents alike will benefit from this.
5. Customer Service Management
The customized CSM workplace, paired with the new Next Experience, makes life easier for agents than ever before. Agents may now switch between workspaces and the standard UI with ease thanks to unified navigation. Agents can also use list personalization to customize workspace list views, including column width, without having to construct their own lists. Finally, theming allows agents to select a preferred theme, including the new, slick-looking dark mode.
These improvements may appear trivial, but they solve some of the fundamental usability issues that workspace adopters confront. Those issues have now been resolved with minimal effort on the part of the platform administrator.
6. DevOps
San Diego introduces a new approach for DevOps teams to onboard apps and tools via a service request in the Service Portal. DevOps teams may quickly request that their apps or tools be onboarded utilizing ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box (OOTB) DevOps catalog items, which is a crucial step toward automating updates.
Furthermore, this OOTB extra onboarding procedure enables for the tracking of the progress of each onboarding request, reducing the amount of manual and recurring onboarding chores.
7. Field Service Management
Unlike the previous ServiceNow release, the San Diego version includes Field Service Management updates and enhancements (FSM). The most notable of changes is that dispatchers can now create a scheduling plan without automatically notifying field service personnel.
Soft booking, in conjunction with enhancements to the appointment booking software, guarantees that no multiple reservations occur. This makes dispatchers’ planning far more efficient; scheduling tasks and creating an optimum scheduling plan is now easier than before. Agents will only be contacted once the dispatcher has confirmed their assignments.
8. App Engine Studio
ServiceNow App Engine enables those most knowledgeable with the business issues at hand to simply design applications and digital workflows. Meanwhile, App Engine enables pro-code developers to create increasingly complicated applications.
Developers that wish to create a personalized app now have an entirely new user experience with the ServiceNow San Diego release. Users may construct forms in minutes thanks to the simple drag-and-drop Form Builder. New bespoke applications may be constructed more easily and quickly than ever before using templates in the App Engine Studio.
