The beginning of August brought early availability to the latest release of the Now Platform from ServiceNow: Vancouver. Vancouver will be rolled out broadly later in Q3 and comes on the heels of Utah, which was released earlier this year. The new release features loads of new capabilities and upgrades that bring additional power and agility to the platform.
Here’s an overview of what you can expect from the new release and how it can positively impact your solutions.
An Emphasis on AI and Machine Learning
ServiceNow announced Now Assist – its new generative AI solution providing more self-service capabilities – in July and it looks to be a major focus of the Vancouver release. ServiceNow’s release messaging states that Now Assist will be used to benefit employees, customers, and agents/admins. Virtual Agent and Now Assist for Search will help simplify the employee and customer experience, while its case/chat summarization, text-to-code, and Flow Designer next-best-action functionality is designed to cut costs and make teams more efficient.
Machine learning is also a key element of a new ITSM feature. ServiceNow will be rolling out Task Intelligence for ITSM, which allows users to “set up, deploy, and track solution-based models” using machine learning. Task Intelligence’s incident prediction model helps companies categorize incidents and predict the fields they will come from.
ITSM and ITOM Upgrades
As two of the platforms we work most closely in, we were interested to see what ServiceNow pushed out for both ITSM and ITOM. Along with Task Intelligence, ServiceNow is also releasing updated features for a number of products like Digital Portfolio Management, Change Management, and Workflow Optimization.
On the ITOM side, one of the major enhancements centers around ITOM Visibility. Companies can now access automated service suggestions using a new Service Mapping homepage, add segments to previous application services, and leverage Discovery and Service Mapping Patters for discovery both horizontally and top-down.
Trust Through Security
Vancouver also gives users greater flexibility and power when it comes to security and risk management. Several new products focus on security, including Data Discovery and Compliance Case Management. Data Discovery lets users find, classify, and report on sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) in order to better protect that important data. And Compliance Case Management is used for looking into and fixing complaints, breaches, and other compliance issues.
ServiceNow also provides Zero Trust access through Vancouver, ensuring security by forcing every device, system, and network to be verified before gaining access. Without the ability to trust certain devices and applications by default, breaches and other issues are less likely to occur.
Approaching the Vancouver Release and Upgrade
The above are just a portion of the many new and updated features that are coming with Vancouver. In addition to the dozens of new and upgraded capabilities, Vancouver also includes a number of available patches, issue fixes, and plug-in changes.
This can provide a series of challenges. A new release brings myriad changes to review, regression testing to execute, and a need to understand best practices around family release upgrades. If you don’t have the necessary resources or bandwidth in house, it may require working with a partner, especially if customizations are needed.
Many companies also don’t upgrade with every release – instead skipping a release and upgrading once a year or even less frequently. That can cause further problems, so don’t put these off for too long. But you also don’t need to be first in line when Vancouver drops. There is something to be said for waiting a bit while bugs are discovered and solved before upgrading.
Make sure you are aware of and prepared for all the changes that come with moving from Utah to Vancouver. And if you need help configuring any new solutions or using this as an opportunity to expand your ServiceNow ecosystem, talk to a partner who knows the platform inside and out.
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