Changes to New York features and products

Prior to the New York release, you could edit the sprint details only from the Sprints module using lists and forms. Now, you can edit the sprint details directly from the Agile Board.

Prior to the New York release, the capacity that you set for the assignment group on the Group form was used across all the sprints for the assignment group. Once set, you could not update the capacity.

• Business Services has been changed to Services in the Capability Planning view.
• Business Architecture, Application Architecture, and Technology Architecture have been renamed as Business Portfolio, Application Portfolio, and Technology Portfolio, respectively.
• The Manage Relationships button in the Capability Planning view has been renamed as Manage Capability Hierarchy.

• Internal processing of duplicate CIs uses the new duplicate_of attribute instead of the ServiceNow Discovery discovery_source attribute to maintain data integrity that is associated with duplicate CIs. The Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) no longer changes the value of the discovery_source CI attribute to ‘Duplicate’ to denote a duplicate CI. Instead, IRE sets the duplicate_of attribute as a reference to the master CI of the duplicate CI (if known).

• You can now apply health inclusion rules to the CMDB Health duplicate metric instead of using an identification inclusion rule. The CMDB dashboard then shows a smaller subset of duplicate CIs that require remediation. This is supported only in the global domain.

• Include a non-CMDB table in a CMDB query. For example, including the Task or the Request table in a CMDB query lets you query for CIs that are associated with incidents. You can use the glide.cmdb.query.non_cmdb.black_listed_tables property to exclude non-CMDB tables from the list that appears in Query Builder. The default non-CMDB tables list includes common tables such as Task, Request, and Incident.
• Export a query definition that you previously saved to an XML file for importing in another environment. For example, you can import a query definition from a test environment to a production environment.
• Toggle between list view and card view in the Saved Queries tab of the CMDB Query Builder.
• Enable the Display Results in New Tab setting to show query results in a new separate tab instead of underneath the Query Builder canvas.

• Identification/Reconciliation properties
• Query Builder properties
• Duplicate CI Remediator properties
• Baseline properties
• Dependency Views properties

• When constructing an input payload in Identification Simulation , use the Copy Script button to copy JSON scripts to the clipboard. You can then paste that script into a third-party software or to another screen of the identification simulation, and run it.
• When applying CI Identification and Reconciliation to import sets, you can configure a target table per record in the import set. If you specify different target tables, records from the same import set are imported to multiple target tables.
• Improved performance of the identification engine: For optimization, allow local caching of the default number of query result entries for independent CIs. This number is set by the system property glide.identification_engine.independent_items_local_cache_count.

• Title Field is renamed as Card title field.
• Additional fields is renamed as Card additional fields.
• Description field is renamed as Card description field.

• The label for Implement state has been changed to In Progress state.
• The field name Why this improvement is important has been changed to Business justification.

• The navigation path to configure OpenFrame has changed from System Properties > OpenFrame to OpenFrame > Configurations.
• The icon class for Open Frame configuration only supports the phone and video icons.

• The OpenFrame Agent Presence module has been added to the OpenFrame application to enable the display of agent availability in Agent Workspace.
• The Presence field in the OpenFrame Agent Presence record gets updated when the agent presence is set in workspace CTI.

• The show_phone UI macro is installed when the Openframe plugin (com.sn_openframe) is activated and not when the Customer Service CTI Demo Data plugin (com.snc.customerservice_cti_demo) is activated.
• The show_phone_customer_service UI macro is installed when the Openframe plugin (com.sn_openframe) and Customer Service plugin (com.sn_customerservice) is activated.

• View the account hierarchy on the Case form. Expand and collapse the hierarchy and click an account to view the account details in a sub tab.
• For cases that are created from a community discussion, customer service agents can view and respond to the discussion from the case form.
• The timeline ribbon component supports both contacts and consumers.
• The list panel includes a section for Major Issue Management and a filtered list of accepted major cases.
• View the Knowledge Gaps and Child Cases related lists on the Case form.
• View the Task SLAs and Approvers related lists on the Escalation form.

• With the case manager role, contacts can create and view requests for themselves or on behalf of other contacts from the same account.
• With the customer admin role, contacts can create and view requests on behalf of child accounts.
• With the partner role, contacts can create and view requests for other accounts.

Following upgrade to the New York release:

• New case tasks use the CSTASK prefix.
• Existing case tasks, regardless of state, use the TASK prefix.

• SNMP probe parameter [use_getbulk]
• MID Server configuration parameter [mid.snmp.use_getbulk]
• MID Server properties [mid.snmp.use_getbulk]

If you previously had this probe parameter set to Off, the global settings remain Off to avoid unnecessary issues. You can set the parameter to True to turn GETBULK on. If you previously had this probe parameter turned On, the global settings remain On.

The Windows-installed software probe has been updated to enhance performance. This probe now uses the admin$ share folder as the default. When the MID Server queries the target, the output is now written as JSON instead of XML. For more information on Windows Discovery, see the knowledge base article KB0752537.

There is a new probe parameter output_format that controls the output format of the probe and should not be changed. The probe post-processing script was updated to handle the new format. You must have a minimum of 10 MB of free space for this to work.

• User Engagement: Shows the number of users actively working with guided tours and trending over a time.
• Tour Statistics: Shows user engagement trends and patterns. This tab helps you build more successful tours by analyzing tour completions and tour failures.

• Order an Item — Text enhanced with more specific detail and renamed to Submit a Request. Enables you to order basic items directly within ITSM Virtual Agent.
• Reset Password — Text enhanced with more specific detail and renamed to Get Password Reset Link. Enables you to obtain a link to directly reset a password within ITSM Virtual Agent.
• System Status — Text enhanced with more specific detail and renamed to Service Disruptions. Enables you to view known outages and degradations within ITSM Virtual Agent.

You can now internationalize an instance to Norwegian or Swedish. Also, you can internationalize an instance to Korean with a new plugin that replaces the older, deprecated plugin.

The documentation for System Localization now has a cleaner, more rationalized structure.

• Asynchronous search filters: Set filters to narrow your search for knowledge articles. The search filters are not shown by default.
• Duplicate articles search: Eliminate duplicate articles when creating an article through improved duplicate detection that uses machine learning-based similarity results.
• Ability to filter search results using category hierarchy: Narrow your search results by category. The search results include articles in the parent categories and associated child categories.

• Article links in notifications: Click an article link in the article subscription or Article Quality Index (AQI) notifications to be automatically directed to the Knowledge Management Service Portal.
• Improve productivity by managing notifications when an article is submitted for approval, approved for publishing, or rejected for publishing.

• The action level of anomaly detection can be configured to manage overall data load as needed. Use the anomaly_detection_action_level configuration setting to increase or decrease the anomaly detection processing that is applied to specific configuration items (CIs) and metrics at different stages of implementation.
• The time series modeling and anomaly score calculations accuracy is improved. These improvements provide more robust anomaly detection and fewer false positives through dynamic threshold analysis of control factor.

• Open the application service map for an application service that appears in Insights Explorer.
• Operational Intelligence MID Servers support higher metric ingestion rate. This ability reduces the Insights Explorer refresh interval to a minute and therefore, the metric data that you view in Insights Explorer is more up to date.

If you have a time series widget with the Relative Compare visualization, and you put it on a breakdown dashboard, you can now configure the widget to follow the breakdown elements that a dashboard user selects. Previously, time series widgets with the Relative Compare visualization could not follow elements on breakdown dashboards.

For more information about breakdown dashboards, see Using breakdowns on dashboards.

A user sees only the Spotlight records that reference the evaluated records within the domains of that user.

• Application Portfolio Management (com.snc.pa.apm): New CIO dashboard
• Communities (com.snc.pa.communities): Redesigned Communities dashboard
• Customer Service (com.snc.pa.customer_service): New Proactive Customer Service Operations dashboard

• The Category and Type fields on the Demand form become read-only after any work entity is created from the demand. If the work entity is deleted, these fields become editable.
• Demand Budget was renamed Create Demand Budget in the related link of the Demand form.

• View related links and lists on the Project form based on the value set for the Execution type field.
• Add or remove stories from either your Agile or Hybrid projects using the Manage Stories option under the options icon in the Project Workbench.
• The Planning Console's project context menu shows the Create Agile Phase and View Stories options only for Agile and Hybrid projects. The options are no longer available for Waterfall projects.
• For an Agile project, the planned effort, actual effort, and planned cost from the associated stories roll up to the project.
• View and track the progress of a project from various aspects using the widgets and reports on the Analytics tab of the Project Workspace.
• The following fields were added to the project status report:
  • Project Name
  • Phase
  • Actual End Date
  Note:

  For upgrade customers, the Phase field in the project status report for existing reports remains empty. For new reports, the Phase field displays the current phase of the project such as Initiating, Planning, and Executing.

• View the planned start date and planned end date for a project in the Planning console by default.
• Configure the hint text for a column label for the Planning Console, Portfolio and Program workbench (Timeline view), and Gantt Chart related link of the Release module.
• Avoid unexpected behavior upon installation of other plugins such as Project Portfolio Suite with Financials (com.snc.financial_planning_pmo) with restructured planned task V2.
• You can no longer delete a project in the Work in Progress state.
• Upon changing the state of a project task from Work in Progress to Closed Skipped or Closed Incomplete, the Percent complete field retains the current value and becomes read-only.
• The selected field preferences on the Financials tab of the Project Workspace are saved and are available when you reopen it.
• You can specify negative planned costs on the project cost plans to capture the refunds on the projects so that the Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Estimate At Completion, and Estimate To Complete values are up to date.

Prior to the New York release, you could edit the sprint details only from the Sprints module using lists and forms. You can now edit the sprint details directly from the SAFe Board.

• When you clone a request that contains a multi-row variable set, the information that is specified in the multi-row variable set is available in all cloned requests.
• A multi-row variable set is now visible in the variable summarizer in Service Portal.

Services can exist without a parent taxonomy node only until they are in the Pipeline phase with an Approved status. At this point, the service must be associated with a parent taxonomy node.

Services cannot be in the Catalog or Retired phase without association to a parent taxonomy node.

All services should have at least one associated offering. A service cannot move to the Catalog phase without an offering.

The Edit Weights related link is added to the Service form.

The View Toggle button is added to the Service form.

Service offerings are operational only when the parent service is in an operational state.

Service offerings are retired when the parent service is retired.

When a service offering is retired, a notification is sent to users with the catalog_admin role indicating that associated catalog items are orphaned. A user with the catalog_admin role can then deactivate the orphaned catalog items.

The Edit Performance Weights related link is added to the Service Offering form.

The View Toggle button is added to the Service Offering form.

The Service Availability related list is removed from the Service Offering form.

• Most software publishers (like Microsoft) require applications that are delivered via Citrix to be licensed based on potential access from a user or a device instead of actual application usage. License compliance reporting for software delivered through Citrix considers users and devices with potential access to applications. See Software Asset Management upgrade information for the manner in which this change has been handled.
• The Citrix discovery probe uses a discovery pattern that may misidentify a device as a Citrix Delivery Controller. A change has been made to the pattern used by Citrix discovery probe to address this issue.
• On the client access record form, a new field User/Device count replaces the total device count field.

• A new column, Is discovered is added to the Named User Type [samp_named_user_type] table.
• The Named user types navigation menu is filtered to show records where the column Is discovered equals true.
• The Named User Types form has a new related list, SAP roles, which is used to map named user types to roles.
• The SAP Users form has two new related lists, SAP user activities and SAP web activities.
• The SAP System User [samp_sap_system_user] table has a new column, Optimized named user type, which is visible in the default list view.
• The SAP dashboard has new widgets: Users for role-based optimization, Potential indirect users from user activity, and Potential indirect users from transaction activity.
• A new Downloads menu item is added to the SAP module. Download the SAP ABAP code directly from the ServiceNow instance.
• On the SAP connection, the UI action has been modified to test the SAP connection and the version of the deployed ABAP code.

• Downgrade rights can be deactivated on the Software Entitlement form. Deleting downgrade rights is no longer supported.
• Downgrade rights support is added to the following calculators:
  • Common: Per Core, Per Processor
  • Microsoft: Per Core (with CAL), Per Core

• Virtual Agent web client interface:
  • + option for starting or ending a conversation, which was formerly available in the More options menu.
  • Topic search and pagination controls
  • New color theme and heading for Live Agent chat interface
  • Attachment and send icon for uploading image attachments during Live Agent chat.
• New commands for bot conversations in messaging integrations: help (provides a short list of useful commands), agent (transfer to live agent), and logout (unlink a ServiceNow account from a messaging integration).

• Conversation settings: In the General Settings, use the Setup Topics tab to select and configure setup topic elements for your conversations. Use the NLU Settings tab to enable NLU for your instance.
• Virtual Agent Designer:
  • Topics page opens in a platform window (navigate to Collaboration > Virtual Agent > Designer).
  • Topic management features: Topics page provides additional filters for organizing and viewing your topics. You can also create or modify topic categories to group related topics.
  • NLU properties in Topics Property page: When NLU is enabled, you can set NLU properties for the topic. Select the NLU Model for the topic and the Associated Intent that maps to the topic. You can enable the Resume topic flow feature to let users to return to the original topic after conversation switching occurs.
  • NLU fields in property sheets for Input controls: For the Text, Static Choice, Reference Choice, Boolean, Date Time, and Carousel controls, you can enable NLU and entity extraction at the node level. You can specify the Associated Entity for the control, select Enable NLU at Input Node to allow text input at the node level, and select Confirm Entity Recognition to ask the user to confirm the entity value extracted by your virtual agent.
• The context variable vaContext.deviceType is available for identifying a Virtual Agent messaging channel in scripts. For example, vaContext.deviceType === 'slack' identifies the Slack messaging channel.

• Adapter Configuration page: Features three tabs for reviewing and configuring Commands (formerly called Keywords), Bot Messages, and System Messages.
• Uninstall the Virtual Agent integration from Slack: Use the Uninstall option on the Messaging Apps Integration page to remove a Slack messaging integration from an instance.
• Redirect user authentication to a Service Portal: After installing a Virtual Agent messaging integration, you can specify a Service Portal in which end users complete the user authentication step, instead of in their ServiceNow instance. End users working with the bot for the first time complete authentication before continuing with the bot in the messaging application.
• Control topic visibility in Virtual Agent messaging channels: Exclude a topic from a Virtual Agent messaging channel by using a condition script that controls the visibility of that topic in the channel. The condition uses the vaContext.deviceType context variable to identify the messaging channel (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Workplace, or Facebook Messenger) from which the topic is excluded.
• HTML bot response control for messaging integrations: Supports relative URL links.

Version 8.0: Added configuration for Assignment Rules and Microsoft Security Response Center configuration for Vulnerability Solution Management within SetupAssistant.

Version 9.0: The template integration can no longer be deleted. Disable it instead.