“What’s the ServiceNow Yokohama release date?” It’s the question that’s been on everyone’s mind in the ServiceNow community ever since the Xanadu release dropped. The wait is over! The ServiceNow Yokohama release is finally here, bringing cutting-edge AI-powered innovations designed to enhance automation, workflows, and enterprise efficiency.
From AI-powered capabilities to smarter Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and enhanced security and compliance features, the ServiceNow Yokohama release takes efficiency, automation, and user experience to the next level. Among its standout features is the AI Agent Studio, a game-changing enhancement that empowers businesses to deploy AI models seamlessly within the Now Platform.
Whether you are an IT leader, a CIO, or a service management professional, understanding the business value of upgrading to ServiceNow Yokohama is crucial. It offers revolutionary AI-powered features that can take productivity and cost savings for organizations across industries to the next level.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the key updates in the ServiceNow Yokohama release in more detail. We’ll also evaluate how organizations can leverage these enhancements to stay ahead in 2025 and beyond. Let’s dive straight into why the ServiceNow Yokohama release is the most exciting ServiceNow upgrade so far!
Table of Contents
The Top ServiceNow Yokohama Upgrades Across Key ServiceNow Modules
IT Service Management (ITSM) Enhancements
- ITSM Success Dashboard: The Yokohama updates have made tracking the success of your ITSM implementation easy by extending measurements to predefined success metrics for AI Agents, driving continuous improvement.
- Major Incident Management Record Page Enhancements: Enhancements to the Major Incident Management record page now allow teams to improve communications, including ad hoc updates and major incident playbooks, by integrating the DEX Desktop Assistant as an additional channel.
- DevOps: The Yokohama release enhances DevOps Change Velocity with deeper automation and intelligence. With seamless integration into the Harness orchestration tool, organizations can now discover Harness pipelines and streamline change automation
- Digital Product Release: The Yokohama release empowers product teams to gain end-to-end visibility into the release process, automate release readiness, and consistently plan and deliver new product versions with greater efficiency.
- Network Experience: The Network Experience feature helps teams analyze network and application performance, pinpoint bottlenecks, and proactively resolve potential issues to ensure a seamless digital experience.
- DEX Score: The Yokohama release introduces the Digital Experience Score (DEX Score) dashboard. By combining health metrics, user sentiment, and service experience scores across applications and devices, the DEX Score delivers valuable insights to help organizations enhance their employees’ digital experiences.
IT Operations Management (ITOM) Enhancements
- Service Observability: The Yokohama release has enhanced Service Observability, enabling teams to centralize critical signals, bridge workflows, and improve agility and reliability. Mapping application changes to the underlying infrastructure helps calculate blast radius, reduce MTTR, and track service goals aligned with business objectives.
- CSDM Version 5.0 & API Enhancements: The Yokohama release strengthens CMDB and CSDM with CSDM 5.0, extending unified data models across internal workflows and external services to enable seamless collaboration between human and AI agents. It also enhances API visibility and governance with API Insights and API Service Graph Connectors, helping organizations ensure regulatory compliance, identify risks, and integrate APIs into core IT workflows like change management and service operations.
- ITOM Health: In the Yokohama release, ITOM Health introduces advanced capabilities to enhance data integration, automation, and visibility. A notable enhancement is the ability to easily pull data from Splunk using the Splunk Polling data input, enabling real-time insights from pre-processed Splunk data. The release also brings improved automation with Group automation capabilities and seamless integration with log data connectors from the Integrations Launchpad.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Enhancements
- Smart Assessment Engine: The new Smart Assessment Engine enhances compliance case management by automating risk assessments directly within the app. It intelligently generates meaningful assessment scores based on responses and data types while auto-prefilling responses to accelerate analysis and decision-making.
- Digital Operational Resilience Incident Reporting: Yokohama allows organizations to strengthen their DORA compliance with an automated workflow designed for IT and security incident reporting. This update auto-triggers compliance cases, notifications, and assessments, with CMDB integration for better visibility. It also streamlines reporting by auto-generating initial, intermediate, and final reports while accurately classifying major incidents.
- Third-party Risk Management (TPRM): Yokohama enhances TPRM efficiency with pre-populated questionnaire responses for entities or engagements linked to the same active third party. Teams can also leverage a Microsoft Excel template to easily download, fill, and import questionnaires through the vendor portal, simplifying third-party assessments.
- Alert Correlation Using Network Traffic: Proactively address alerts and potential issues before they escalate into incidents or outages. Reduce alert noise and streamline responses by analyzing hidden patterns in network traffic and grouping related alerts, even without a fully mature CMDB, for faster resolution.
Customer Service Management (CSM) Enhancements
- Voice Interaction Page and Call Controls: Agents can now manage calls more efficiently with seamless control over transfers, conferences, holds, and mute directly through third-party CCaaS call controls. This creates a consistent experience for agents across all channels via the universal inbox while also enabling quick access to consult and blind transfer options within their workspace for smoother call handling.
- Embedded CCaaS Components: AI and automation tools from CCaaS platforms like Genesys are now deeply integrated into the ServiceNow Agent Workspace. This empowers agents with native access to Genesys capabilities, helping them resolve issues faster while staying in one place.
- Unified Routing on Third-Party CCaaS: ServiceNow now allows chat and case routing policies to be consolidated within third-party CCaaS platforms. By centralizing routing for all communication channels, it simplifies operations, reduces administrative overhead, and enables agents to accept calls directly from their inbox—ensuring faster and smarter customer service.
- Unified CCaaS Workforce Engagement Management (WEM): Users can integrate Genesys Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) tools with ServiceNow to deliver better forecasting, scheduling, and performance insights. With bi-directional data synchronization, teams can optimize agent productivity while ensuring service levels are met.
Enhancements in SAM, HAM, and HRSD
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Support: Easily connect to SAP S/4HANA Cloud public edition using the Integration Hub spoke. Automatically populate user subscription tables with user details and applied roles and streamline license tracking through a reconciliation process aligned with the FUE conversion model.
- Asset Attestation: The Yokohama release has strengthened asset data accuracy and security by creating and monitoring asset attestation capabilities. Validate the usage of serialized hardware assets, including those outside corporate offices, to minimize compliance risks and ensure a proper chain of custody.
- HR Appointment Setting for Deskless Workers: The Yokohama updates have made HR Service Delivery smooth by empowering deskless workers with a seamless experience to schedule in-person or virtual HR appointments directly through the employee service portal, improving access and flexibility.
Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Enhancements
- Financials Screen in Portfolio Planning: In Portfolio Planning, the new Financials Screen provides a clear view of cost rollups across approved budgets, forecasts, and actuals. It allows teams to analyze financial data by categories, cost types, or timeframes, helping ensure alignment with budgets and preventing overspending.
Spotlight On Other Key Features and Upgrades in the ServiceNow Yokohama Release
Enhancements in AI Agents & Now Assist
- AI Agent Studio: With AI Agent Studio, organizations can create and manage custom AI agents using just natural language prompts in a no-code / low-code environment. AI Agent Orchestrator is a central hub for AI Agents to work together and prevent AI sprawl.
- AI-Driven Process Mining: ServiceNow’s Yokohama release enhances Process Mining with AI-powered work notes analysis summarization, streamlining actionable insights for improvement. This allows businesses to analyze workflows, identify inefficiencies, and optimize processes with greater agility.
- Now Assist Everywhere: In the Yokohama release, Now Assist receives significant upgrades, expanding its capabilities across the platform. From enabling Voice Input for greater accessibility to enhancing Content Studio and Creator for faster content generation, Now Assist is now deeply integrated into multiple functionalities.
*We’ll cover these Now Assist enhancements in detail in Part 2 of this two-part blog series—stay tuned!
Automation and Workflow Enhancements
- ServiceNow Studio: ServiceNow Studio, the AI-powered unified environment for no-code, low-code, and pro-code developers, has a major update. The ServiceNow Studio now comes pre-installed on all upgraded instances, eliminating the need for manual installation.
- Automation Center Enhancements: The enhanced Automation Center offers a unified view to manage, track, and scale automation initiatives. It now features deeper integrations with external RPA tools such as UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere for seamless automation orchestration.
- Conversational Subflows: Conversational Subflows in Workflow Studio, introduced in Yokohama Release, simplifies the creation of virtual agent conversations and chatbot interactions phenomenally. These pre-configured, reusable automation flows help businesses streamline and automate complex conversations.
Security and Compliance Enhancements
- Access Analyzer: The Access Analyzer has been enhanced in the Yokohama release, allowing admins to perform complete analyses of permissions and access for selected users, groups, or roles.
- Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is now enabled by default for local logins to enhance security. Admins still have the flexibility to adjust the policy, extend enrollment deadlines, or grant exemptions for specific users or groups based on organizational needs.
New Capabilities Around Data Handling
- External Content Connectors for Search: The AI Search has been enhanced with advanced indexing and search capabilities for unstructured data and documents across enterprise systems like Confluence, SharePoint, Google Drive, Teams, Slack, and more, streamlining knowledge discovery from multiple sources. This updated Gen AI-powered search provides secure access across all enterprise data from a single entry point.
- Workflow Data Fabric: With the recent updates, users can now seamlessly connect structured, unstructured, and streaming data across systems to monitor operations in real time and drive continuous improvement.
Productivity and UX Enhancements
- Email Reply Recommendations: Email Reply Recommendations with Now Assist provides smart, AI-driven automatic suggestions for email responses in this release, minimizing errors and boosting productivity.
- Comprehensive Dashboard for Metrics and Interactions: The centralized dashboard has been enhanced to offer a complete view of metrics and user interactions. Users can continuously monitor key operational KPIs to enhance user experience and boost platform adoption.
- Data Snapshots in Performance Analytics: The enhanced data analysis capabilities with multi-level breakdowns allow grouping and filtering of indicator sources. Users can automate data collection to simplify workflows and minimize manual effort.
Dashboard Updates
- Dashboards for Third-Party Insights and Custom Analytics: Customize dashboards with preferred layouts to easily access insights and assessment data across various levels. Prioritize key metrics, tailor report views, widgets, and workflows for complete visibility and control over your Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) program.
- Fiber Broadband Rollout Template: Streamline broadband deployments with automated workflows and approval trackers. Gain a centralized view of project progress, manage dependencies, and reduce costs while onboarding customers faster with dashboards.
Final Thoughts on ServiceNow Yokohama: An AI Revolution for IT, DevOps, Business, and Service Teams
As AI evolves, businesses embracing agentic AI will unlock greater efficiency, reduced costs, and smarter decision-making. The ServiceNow Yokohama release marks a significant leap forward, transforming the Now Platform into a more intelligent, efficient, and intuitive solution for businesses through its AI-powered capabilities.
From faster development and debugging through ServiceNow Studio to streamlining workflows through Workflow Studio and enhanced process optimization through Process Mining, this release makes way for smarter workplaces and greater innovations.
As a trusted ServiceNow Partner, KANINI empowers businesses to maximize the value of the latest innovations in the ServiceNow Yokohama release. Book a free call with our ServiceNow experts to begin your ServiceNow transformation the Yokohama way!
Author
Ravi Rajamani
Ravi is the ServiceNow Practice Lead at KANINI. He brings close to 18 years of experience in the IT industry and has strong program & project management skills spanning ServiceNow, Resource Management, Solution Design, and Service Delivery. He has a proven track record of helping enterprise customers leverage ServiceNow platform efficiently.
