ServiceNow’s latest version upgrade, the Utah Release, has arrived! Get ready to improve the overall performance of your ServiceNow platform with the new modules, features, and enhancements that have been rolled out with Utah.
This article offers a deep insight into the enhancements made to some of the most significant applications of ServiceNow, such as IT Operations Management (ITOM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG), among many others.
ServiceNow releases these upgrades twice every year and the core aim of every release, including the brand-new Utah release, is to provide organizations with top-notch applications that increase their operational efficiency, enable them to meet customer and employee expectations, and broaden their market reach.
Sit back, relax, and let’s take a closer look at what all ServiceNow’s Utah has to offer to its users.
Highlights of ServiceNow Utah Release
1) Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) Management
The ServiceNow ESG application–a tool that enables organizations to manage and report the status of their ESG initiatives– now has some interesting new features and enhancements, such as the “Workday ESG integration plugin” and the “Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) content upgrade” in the Utah release.
With the integration of ESG management with “Workday”, the HR-related data (which is required for ESG reporting) can be transferred automatically from the Workday application to the ServiceNow ESG management application, and the organization can save a lot of time.
The content upgrade of the GRI standards is another significant enhancement made in the ServiceNow ESG application. Organizations can now disclose their sustainability activities effectively according to the latest 2021 GRI standards.
2) IT Operations Management (ITOM)
The ServiceNow ITOM module, which includes applications such as ITOM Visibility and ITOM Governance, has also been updated with new features in the ServiceNow Utah release. Here’s what the latest versions of each of these applications now offer:
i) ITOM Visibility
With ServiceNow ITOM Visibility, users can oversee the organization’s IT infrastructure and services through a dashboard. The Utah release adds a new feature to the application that provides users with automated suggestions on mapping application services in their workspace. These application services are identified and recommended by ServiceNow’s Service Mapping tool, leveraging predictive intelligence.
ii) ITOM Governance
A new feature of the ServiceNow ITOM Governance application (which helps manage an organization’s cloud resources) is “CI Finder Mapping”. When the “ServiceNow Cloud Configuration Governance” application, a part of ITOM Governance, runs a scan of an organization’s cloud resources (e.g. servers), users can use the CI Finder Mapping to identify whether the resources connect to the respective Configuration Items (CIs) in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This enables easy resolution of configuration issues identified during the scan and better management of cloud resources.
Furthermore, “Bulk Remediation” is another significant addition that allows users to identify multiple similar configuration issues and solve them at once.
3) Security Operations (SecOps)
ServiceNow Security Incident Response and ServiceNow Vulnerability Response, the two significant applications under the ServiceNow SecOps module, have the following updates in the Utah release:
i) Security Incident Response
The Security Incident Response workspace is modernized with the “Next Experience UI” to provide a seamless user experience to the security team while managing incidents, right from incident identification to resolution.
ii) Vulnerability Response
The ServiceNow Vulnerability Response application includes a “Vulnerability Manager Workspace”. This Workspace has been optimized in the ServiceNow Utah Release to enable the security team to manage vulnerabilities across applications, containers, and configurations. The security team can now filter the required vulnerable items on the workspace (e.g., Filter only container vulnerabilities) and resolve them accordingly.
4) Employee Service Management
The ServiceNow Employee Service Management module allows organizations to deliver required services to employees efficiently and create a delightful experience for them. Following are a few of the applications under the Employee Service Management module that have updates in the Utah release:
i) Employee Center
A new feature–Taxonomy Management–has been added to the “ServiceNow Employee Center” application. This feature allows users to organize knowledge articles under appropriate categories so that employees in the organization can access them as and when required through the employee center portal.
ii) Granular Delegation
With the “Granular Delegation” application, employees can delegate specific tasks to their colleagues through the portal. In the Utah release, this application has been enhanced to allow administrators to create groups and add employees and the list of tasks that can be delegated to them. This way, employees can quickly identify other suitable employees on the portal and delegate tasks to them efficiently.
iii) HR Service Delivery (HRSD)
The ServiceNow Utah release brings the following new features to the HRSD application:
- Integration with Magnit
- To enable the HR department to streamline the onboarding process for independent contractors, ServiceNow now allows users to integrate HRSD with “Magnit”, a workforce management application. They can effortlessly identify contractors on Magnit, add them to ServiceNow, and allot relevant work items for the contractors on the ServiceNow platform.
- Integration with Workday Learning
- Another new enhancement in the HRSD module is the integration with the “Workday Learning” application. Employees of an organization can view their projects and other work items on the ServiceNow platform instead of the Workday Learning application.
- Workforce Optimization for HR
- Without a proper solution, it can be difficult for HR Agent Managers to oversee team members and their activities. To allow managers to easily create schedules, assign duties, monitor members’ performance in real-time, and track time off requests from their portal, ServiceNow has introduced the “Workforce Optimization for HR” application in the ServiceNow Utah release.
5) IT Service Management (ITSM)
Below is a list of ServiceNow ITSM-related applications that have been enhanced in the ServiceNow Utah release. These apps allow organizations to ensure better management of their IT services from a centralized platform.
i) Workforce Optimization for ITSM
With the “Workforce Optimization for ITSM” application, organizations can have better control over their IT service agents’ tasks and activities. The ServiceNow Utah release has improved the application to allow agents to enroll themselves in the desired learning courses, get course recommendations based on their past learning activities, and check course completion status.
ii) Benchmarks
“Benchmarks” application has been enhanced to allow organizations to gain insights into their key organizational metrics and compare them with those of their peers in the industry-
6) Customer Service Management (CSM)
To enable organizations to solve customer service requests efficiently from a centralized platform, the ServiceNow CSM application becomes instrumental. Some of the new features added to ServiceNow CSM in the Utah release are:
i) Language Detection in Task Intelligence
Task intelligence now allows customer service agents to automatically identify the language used in the service requests and transfer the requests to relevant remediation groups effortlessly.
ii) Service Definitions
The “Service Definitions” feature allows organizations to connect customers’ service requests with relevant services or products. This way, when customers raise a request, the services relevant to that request will be displayed automatically, thereby helping the agents to solve customer queries faster.
iii) Modifications in Recommended Actions
The ServiceNow Utah release includes an updated “Recommended Actions” feature which allows organizations to set up and provide agents with recommendations for solving customer queries. Organizations can now modify the recommendation card to display all the necessary details for the agents.
7) Financial Services Operations (Industry-based ServiceNow Module)
Financial Services Operations, one of the industry-based modules of ServiceNow, comes with a new application–” Intelligent Servicing for Fraud”–in the ServiceNow Utah release. With this application, users in a financial services organization can create tasks for suspicious and fraudulent activities identified against a particular account.
Wrapping Up
With every new release, ServiceNow intends to provide solutions that can help organizations adapt to market changes effectively and be future-ready. The points discussed in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. Our next blog post around the ServiceNow Utah release will talk about the developer-focused enhancements made to the platform.
If you’d like to get expert guidance on upgrading your ServiceNow platform to Utah, get in touch with our experts at KANINI. We help organizations implement the right ServiceNow solutions and ensure a smooth upgrade process by extensively assessing existing systems and operations.
Author
Jeeva Xavier
Jeeva is a ServiceNow Technical Architect at KANINI. With 13+ years of experience in Information Technology and the ServiceNow platform, he brings in-depth expertise in designing and implementing ServiceNow solutions such as ITSM, CSM, HRSD, FSM, and more. Jeeva specializes in ensuring smooth ServiceNow upgrades and migration.
