ServiceNow Orlando Release: What to Expect

ServiceNow has now landed in Orlando with exciting features, patch releases, notable changes, and hotfixes to existing functionalities. Not much time has gone since the NewYork release that had path-breaking features like guided app creator, integration hub, two new portals – Operator Workspace and Service Owner Workspace, and made enhancements to the Virtual Agent besides making Agent Workspace available. 

ServiceNow is here again with its Orlando release with major attractions such as updates to Predictive Intelligence, Mobile Onboarding, and Virtual Agent in addition to introducing AI and Analytics in their release. The AI engine in the Now intelligence helps predict issues and automates action through analytics. Both AI and Analytics together improve the speed and efficiency of an incident or problem cycle. 

Here is a consolidated release notes information for new and updated Orlando features:

1. Deeper Insights into Analytics:  

Performance Analytics: Ask questions and receive answers using natural everyday language.

Mobile Dashboards: 

• Embed Performance Analytics and reports in mobile apps. 
• Display time series and single score widgets on landing pages and drill in to view timelines, targets, gaps, and individual records.

2. Robust Natural Language Understanding:

Compare the accuracy of trained and published models and clone an entire model including the intents, entities, and synonyms. 

3. Integration Hub

• Easy data transformations of data pills without the need to write a script and with evolved, no-code capabilities to get dynamic outputs in your flows.
• Boost speed and productivity with a growing library of codeless integrations(spokes) published monthly in the ServiceNow Store.
• Use transform functions to reformat text, perform mathematical calculations, and more.
• Rapidly build low-code, custom SaaS integrations using Flow Designer and IntegrationHub for any SaaS vendors that have an API. 

4. Flow Designer enhancements

• Unlock sophisticated use-cases with dynamic sub-flows that derive action(s) based on set parameters.
• Use FlowAPI methods to execute actions, flows, or sub-flows in server-side scripts using either blocking or non-blocking methods.

5. Mobile App Management

• Validate mobile device policies before allowing access to apps, remove app data remotely, and restrict attachment sharing and copy/paste between apps. 
• Now you can Visualize session counts, active users, and geographic locations, use heat maps and session playbacks to analyze user behavior. 
• Find items, services, and articles with Photo Search. Quickly scan groups with QR/barcodes.

6. Smart and Fast CSM

• Provides a configurable way to derive the entitlement based on several fields related to the case record.
• Automate workflows for proactive case creation to improve your operational efficiency and respond to customer issues faster.
• Provide your customer service agents with a view into the real-time service health of an account’s install base. 
• Correlate customer issues with the operational health of install bases and provide a faster response to the customer.
• Integrate Customer Service Management into Microsoft Outlook and then you can create, view, and edit a CSM contact or a Case from within MS Outlook.

7. IT Operations Management 

Reduce cloud spend significantly. Identify who owns cloud resources with native analytics and automate right size requests with ITSM change control.

8. Certificate Inventory and Management

• Automate discovery of digital certificates, get automated alerts and tasks when certificates are about to expire. 
• Provides a unified dashboard for service health with powerful, consistent drill-down capabilities. 
• Deliver operational metrics for tracking the severity of an issue. 
• Scales to enterprise requirements with intelligent event aggregation.

9. CMDB

Robust Transform Engine: 

• Get out-of-the-box mechanism to transfer data to CMDB from 3rd party resources and format 3rd party data properly in CMDB by using automated rules.

IntegrationHub-Extract Transform Load (ETL): 

• Get an automated flow with a step-by-step guide to integrating data from your sources.

10. IT Service Management 

Mobile Agent enhancements: 

• Prioritize work based on a categorized list of incidents/requests and manage schedules with a visual calendar view.
• Swiftly manage and respond to major incidents from any mobile device. 

Agent Workspace enhancements: 

• Accelerate incident resolution by leveraging “Agent Affinity”.
• Automatically initiate workflows to fill knowledge gaps. 
• Meaningfully integrate with problems and changes in the same interface.

Automated Test Framework enhancements:

• Upgrade faster by automating the manual tests.
• Expanded library of quick-start tests with 243 new tests.
• Integrate and execute ATF test suites from a centralized location using ATF Rest API’s.

11. Upgrades made swift :

HI Upgrade Wizard: 

• Reduce time to upgrade with step-by-step guidance. 
• Assist customers on the right upgrade path using easy to follow navigation. 
• Easily access a centralized repository of key upgrade resources.

HI Upgrade Assist: 

• Stay current by automating your upgrades. 
• Use an automated service provided by the ServiceNow team, to offload upgrade scheduling tasks. 
• Ensure that you stay current by letting ServiceNow Team help you manage your upgrade scheduling activity. 

The Orlando release aims at making people work smarter and make informed decisions by incorporating AI and ML features that bring a promising future for business software systems. It is definitely a leap over previous releases and customers, their employees and organization can benefit from the enhanced features and upgrades.

Keep watching the same space for the upcoming ‘Paris’ release.