ServiceNow’s Orlando Release: What’s New?

Orlando is around! The journey of ServiceNow, which started from Aspin, has reached to Orlando. We all know ServiceNow brings up a massive list of features with every release, so instead of composing a large file, I have highlighted some exciting features with some suggestion to consider for the upgrade. So, if you are planning your upgrade to Orlando, then this blog can help you utilize new features and mitigate any issues that may occur.

Here is the list of my favourites:

1. Agent Affinityis an “Advanced Work Assignment” feature that lets you assign work items by an agent’s work history, related task, or account team affinity. Agent Affinity ensures that the same agent is assigned to a similar work item instead of orienting a new agent every time. This feature is also available for an incident to route to agents based on historical affinity.
2. Workspace Agent Chat introduced a feature where managers can view ongoing chat conversations and join them to assist agents and requesters.
3. Agent workspace is now renamed to “Workspace Experience” and has brought up some of the most awaited features:
   1. Custom Logos: You can now replace the ServiceNow logo with one of your own! Though there are some sizing limitations.
   2. Custom Branding: You can now use up to 2 brand colours. ServiceNow introduced two system properties. One applies on the header, and the other property reflect on critical areas (list categories on the left, as a background colour when hovering over icons)
   3. Custom Landing page: If you find that the default landing page does not meet your needs or that you are looking for more specific information, the UI Builder allows an administrator to set up a custom landing page.
   4. Form Annotation: This is a huge step forward for customers who are looking to customize their form to provide context/clarity around specific fields.
   5. Field modal: ServiceNow introduces two additional field types: glide_list and HTML. ServiceNow added a feature that informs the user that the field type is not supported when placed out on the form

4. HR Service delivery also introduced some cool features:
   1. You can train a predictive model to auto-determine the correct HR service for a case.
   2. You can train a predictive model to act as an HR agent to categorize HR cases submitted by email automatically.
   3. Use Center of Excellence (COE) ACL Configuration to allow specific groups to read or write access to HR cases under a particular Center of Excellence(COE). For example, you might not want the Talent Management group to be able to view cases created by the Benefits group.

5. Widget diagnostics can be very helpful if a portal page is not working as expected. To identify the customization levels of widgets on a portal page, open the widget context menu and select Show Widget Customizations. Widgets show the following colour-coding
   1. Green – base system widget
   2. Yellow – cloned widget
   3. Blue – new widget
   4. Red – customized widget

6. Mobile Branding is finally here! Now customers and employees can recognize their company in the mobile App.

7. Extension for visual studio code brings some relaxation for developers. This feature enables you to edit applications within your ServiceNow instance. You can edit your applications offline and using Visual Studio Code JavaScript features reduces development time and improve code quality.
8. Source control integration enables the application developers to integrate with a GIT source control repository. It allows to save and manage multiple versions of an application from a non-production instance.

Some Considerations for Upgrade:

1. In Jakarta and later, Internet Explorer versions before IE11 are no longer supported. If you are using Internet Explorer 11, ensure that Protected Mode is disabled.
2. ServiceNow workspaces do not support mobile devices, and, starting with the Orlando release, Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Edge. Instead, use Microsoft Edge-Chromium or one of the other supported browsers listed in Generally supported browsers.
3. The Document Viewer Plugin (com.snc.documentviewer) is activated by default during the upgrade to the Orlando release.
4. The Flow Designer for service catalog (com.glideapp.servicecatalog.flow_designer) plugin activates during the upgrade.
5. If you have HR Service Delivery and upgrading from any release before Kingston and you have customizations that reference script includes, you might experience issues with Restricted Caller Access (RCA) errors. For more information, refer to the HR Service Delivery upgrade information.
6. The Knowledge Management with Knowledge Centred Support (KCS) plugin (com.glideapp.knowledge2) was deprecated in the Madrid release and support for this plugin is available until the Orlando release only.
7. In the Service Level Agreement (SLA) definition form, there is a new field added known as Flow that allows you to select a flow activity which runs for all task SLAs associated with it.
8. When you upgrade to Orlando, every time you create a new skill level type, the Default skill level is associated with it. You can change the skill level after you make the upgrade.

Want More?

Release notes:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-release-notes/page/release-notes/release-notes-summaries.html

Pre and post-upgrade checks:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-release-notes/page/release-notes/upgrades/reference/upgrade-and-migration-tasks.html

Written by –

Shakshi Gupta

SERVICENOW TECHNICAL CONSULTANT

Tribe – HR