What’s new in ServiceNow’s Xanadu Release?
Xanadu revolutionizes public sector service delivery, supercharging ServiceNow's suite of eight powerful products. This game-changing release unveils a host of innovative features tailored for government entities, promising enhanced efficiency and unprecedented citizen engagement. Buckle up as we explore how Xanadu is set to redefine public service!
Customer Service Management
The Xanadu release for Customer Service Management (CSM) continues to enhance ServiceNow's superior integration of service organizations, products, and customer service. With improved capabilities in case management, AI-driven insights, and user experience, organizations can now deliver even more personalized and efficient support across various touchpoints.
Highlights:
Intelligent Recommendations: Multiple recommended actions context records for situation-specific guidance.
Enhanced Decision Trees: Restart options in playbooks with retained execution history for adaptive processes.
Streamlined Service Catalogs: Decision trees as catalog items for easier access to guided decision-making.
AI-Powered Insights: Task Intelligence similarity models integrated with Recommended Actions for more accurate suggestions.
Modernized User Interface: New playbook templates in UI Builder with AI features and modern UI elements.
What’s New:
Inter-Organization Support: Better visibility and coordination across business locations.
Service Organization Restructuring: Unparenting from company table for flexible service entity management.
External Fulfillment Capabilities: Allowing external business locations to fulfill customer cases.
Enhanced Visualization: Install base hierarchy visualization in CSM Configurable Workspace.
Intelligent Case Creation: Utilizing Provider Service Organization information for accurate case routing.
Quality Assurance: Quick start tests for verifying CSM functionality post-upgrades.
Process Optimization: Enhanced process mining to identify and address inefficiencies.
Field Service Management
Xanadu Field Service Management (FSM) revolutionizes field service operations with its advanced features. The platform's intelligent scheduling capabilities optimize technician routes and minimize travel times, while its robust territory management tools ensure optimal resource allocation.
Highlights:
Intelligent Scheduling: New objectives and task bundling for optimized schedules.
Territory Insights: Capacity analytics dashboard for effective resource allocation.
Flexible Workforce: Agent relocation capabilities and flexible work locations.
Enhanced Dispatcher Tools: Multi-timezone views and intelligent scheduling guidance.
Mobile Empowerment: Sales opportunity creation in the Now Mobile Agent app.
What’s New:
Schedule Optimization Health: New dashboard for monitoring optimization performance.
Workforce Visibility: Improved calendar views for better resource management.
Multiple Work Types: Configurations to handle diverse service scenarios.
Quality Management: New features to ensure consistent service excellence.
Marketplace Automation: Enhancements for streamlined service delivery.
Accessibility Improvements: Updates for WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance.
Public Sector Digital Services
The Xanadu release for Public Sector Digital Services focuses on enhancing citizen engagement, this update introduces new features designed to foster a more interactive and responsive relationship between government agencies and the public. Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, the release empowers government agencies to deliver more personalized and effective public services, ultimately enhancing the overall quality of life for citizens.
Highlights:
Comprehensive Benefits Management: Enhanced Social Benefits Playbook for efficient case handling.
Information Security: Document redaction capabilities in Information Request Playbook.
AI-Assisted Case Management: Auto-generation of case summaries and resolution notes.
Citizen-Centric Analytics: Migration of Constituent Service Dashboard to Platform Analytics.
Detailed Citizen Profiles: Updated constituent card with comprehensive applicant information.
What’s New:
Streamlined Benefits Processing: Updates to intake and decision stages in the Social Benefits Playbook.
Citizen Self-Service: Improved applicant process on the Government Service Portal.
Case Flexibility: New capabilities to cancel draft cases and bypass eligibility screening when needed.
Intelligent Assistance: Introduction of Now Assist for PSDS, leveraging AI for public sector-specific tasks.
Data-Driven Insights: Enhanced analytics for better decision-making and service planning.
UI Builder
Xanadu propels ServiceNow's UI Builder to the forefront of user experience design, revolutionizing the creation of digital interfaces across the platform. This turbocharged toolset empowers developers to craft stunning, responsive web experiences for workspaces, portals, and custom applications, leveraging the full power of the Next Experience to deliver modern, performant, and scalable front-end architecture.
Highlights:
Resource Library: Access videos, guided tours, and product documentation to develop and practice UI Builder skills.
Guide Learning: Follow step-by-step tutorials to explore features and complete tasks.
Enhanced Usability: Benefit from a dark theme for improved visibility in low-light environments.
Responsive design: Create pages that adapt seamlessly to different devices, ensuring optimal user experiences.
Efficient data handling: Leverage multi-table data resources to fetch information from multiple sources and bind it to components with ease.
What’s New:
Enhanced page control: Set screen conditions declaratively using a condition builder to control page visibility without writing scripts.
Improved contextual sidebar: Configure the Contextual sidebar component with tabs for simplified configuration and a vertical layout.
Responsive page design: Create tailored pages that adapt to different screen sizes for optimal user experiences.
Flexible data integration: Retrieve data from various sources and easily add it to a single component using field mappings.
Multi-form support: Add multiple forms and form controllers to a single page for complex workflows.
Intelligent Experiences/AI
Xanadu significantly boosts ServiceNow's AI and machine learning capabilities, enhancing the platform's ability to automate complex workflows and deliver intelligent insights across the enterprise.
Highlights:
Multilingual AI Support: Dynamic translation capabilities in Now Assist for global operations.
Intuitive Navigation: New platform skill for easier table and list finding.
AI-Powered Content Creation: "Write with Now Assist" for chat and email suggestions.
Custom AI Development: Now Assist Skill Kit for tailored AI skill creation.
Knowledge Management: AI-generated knowledge articles from similar cases/incidents.
What’s New:
Predictive Intelligence UI Upgrade: Migration of Prediction Results dashboard to Next Experience UI.
Generative AI Enhancements: Improved prompts for semantic filtering and recursive summarization.
Document Intelligence: Data normalization features and support for Simplified Chinese and Japanese.
Performance Optimization: Boosted performance for Generic Prompt, Generate Content, Summarization, and Sentiment Analysis.
Monitoring and Integration: Improved dashboards and document classification workflow integration.
Workflow Studio
Xanadu elevates ServiceNow's Workflow Studio application, empowering process analysts to create sophisticated automations with unprecedented ease and flexibility. This enhanced toolset revolutionizes workflow design, enabling the rapid construction of complex, multi-step processes using intuitive, code-free interfaces and a rich library of reusable components.
Highlights:
Enhanced data security: Protect sensitive data in execution details by using the operations read role.
Improved variable support: Enhanced support for the variables data type in subflow and action inputs.
Transparent flow generation: View annotations to understand the text directions used to generate actions, flow logic, and subflows.
Enhanced security: Sign and validate any flow, subflow, or action for increased integrity and trust.
What’s New:
Granular control over read access: Grant user roles to control what users with read access can see in execution details, from basic information to all details.
Transparent flow generation: View annotations to understand the text directions used for each item added by flow generation, providing valuable insights.
Enhanced security: Sign and validate any flow, subflow, or action to ensure integrity and trust.
Core Platform
The Core Now Platform enhancements promise a streamlined and efficient experience, ensuring that the backbone of your state and local governance tasks operates seamlessly.
Highlights:
Modern JavaScript: Utilize ECMAScript 2021 features in your server-side scripts for improved performance and functionality.
Enhanced text editor: Benefit from the upgraded TinyMCE editor with expanded formatting options and editing capabilities.
Efficient data storage: Capture multiple attributes and their values in a single column, streamlining table design.
Automated job scheduling: Experience the new Automatic Jobs Scheduling feature with rollback and configuration retrieval for optimized event processing.
What’s New:
Dynamic schema for storing attributes: Create and store structured groups of attributes and their values in a dynamic attribute store field.
Migrate existing sys event applications to Message Processing Framework: Migrate your existing sys event queues to Message Processing Framework. You can also roll back a queue back to its previous configurations.
Geo point functions: Convert longitude and latitude columns to a geo point field. Convert a geo point field or any valid numeric values or columns into longitude and latitude columns or values.
System Events and Scheduled Jobs enhancements: Try the new Active Jobs tile in the System Events dashboard that states the number of jobs associated for a queue in processing framework. You can also review the details of the completed jobs by using the new Stuck Jobs and Permanent Error Jobs tiles on the Scheduled Jobs dashboard.
About the Author
Megan Mulvihill is a Solution consultant that brings many years of ServiceNow expertise to the table. Whether she's exploring the “what-if” scenarios to unlock new possibilities, or showcasing platform capabilities through demonstrations, Megan's enjoys working with customers and helping them explore the art of the possible. When she's not working, she can be found cheering on her daughters at either a soccer pitch or a hockey arena.