ServiceNow Xanadu: Release Notes, New Applications, Platform Capabilities, Hidden Features

Shangdu, more popularly known as Xanadu, was the summer capital of the Yuan dynasty of China. Shangdu is located in the present-day Zhenglan Banner, Inner Mongolia. The city was a cultural melting pot that played host to visitors from throughout Asia and even further afield. Nowadays, the city site and associated tombs belong to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. ServiceNow honours Xanadu with the latest release.

The General Availability is planned for late Q3 (September) 2024. The Early Adopters as well as anyone with access to the Developer Program can use it on test purpuse.

In the following article, I will give an overview of the most exciting features, applications, and platform capabilities that are new. I will start with major ServiceNow applications, followed by new Now Assist Skills and the ServiceNow platform features. There will be definitely more, but this overview should give a rough understanding of the really impressive upgrade.

Xanadu Presents New ServiceNow Applications

IT Service Management – New in Xanadu Release

Application

Description

Proactive Engagement

Proactive Engagement assists organisations to improve employee productivity and satisfaction by proactively detecting and enabling employees to self-solve digital experience issues on a day-to-day basis. Proactive Engagement Key features: – Enables employees to self-solve digital experience issues by leveraging the proactive issue detection and resolution capability of the ServiceNow Digital End-User Experience product. – Engages employees to provide a seamless resolution experience through remedial actions (automations) and self-service content. – Provides quick scaling and consistent support for increasing the range of applications.

IT Operations Management – New in Xanadu Release

Application

Description

Service Reliability Management

Site reliability engineering practices are proliferating in most organizations as the delivery of application services to employees, customers, and partners has grown as part of digital transformation initiatives both in and outside of IT. Service Reliability Key Features: – Team-based experience – Service registration – Prebuilt integrations – Measure service health – On-call coverage – Remediate high severity alerts and incidents

Integrated Risk Management (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) – New in Xanadu Release

Application	Description
Smart Assessment Engine	Smart Assessment Engine (SAE) application helps you to reduce the manual burden and costs of your assessment processes through automation and evaluating various situations, aspects, or records. Smart Assessment Engine Key Features: – Assessment Workspace – Template designer – Migrate a legacy metric type to an assessment template

Financial Services Operations – New in Xanadu Release

Application	Description
Dispute Content Pack for US Regulations	The Dispute Content Pack for US Regulations helps issuers to handle regulatory requirements and protect consumer interests. It automates tracking and correspondence, which improves the dispute management process. Dispute Content Pack for US Regulations Key Features: – Monitor the status and details of each dispute case – Streamline the communication process by sending consistent and regulation-compliant messages to cardholders and other stakeholders – Provide clear information about the due dates and requirements of the Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Dispute Rules Content Pack for Mastercard	The Dispute Rules Content Pack for Mastercard application enables your agents to intake dispute-related information for various dispute categories, identify the reason code for the disputed transactions, and determine the eligibility for the disputed transactions. Your agents can do all these tasks by using the dispute rules and guidelines in the Mastercard Chargeback Guide. Dispute Rules Content Pack for Mastercard Key Features: – Disputes are effectively managed and resolved by the agents. – Dispute cases are thoroughly reviewed and analysed for optimal outcomes. – Mastercard dispute rules and guidelines are accurately applied by the agents. – Collaborative efforts with customers ensure that the required documentation is completed. – Disputes are categorised for accurate processing. – Chargeback eligibility is determined based on the Mastercard Chargeback rules.
Individual Life Claims	With the Individual Life Claims application, you can manage the initiation, processing, and resolving of individual life insurance policy claims for your customers from one centralized workflow. With this application, you can coordinate with others to manage the claims tasks across the parent and child claims. You can also collect and validate the required claim documentation, investigate the claim, and settle the claim. Individual Life Claims Key Features: – A claims data model that can cater to any life claim case – A clear and intuitive process for claim intake specialists, claim specialists, and claim managers – Support for working on multiple policies that are supported from a single claim case – Dedicated playbooks and workspaces that are built for various claim personas – A baseline workflow where you can view the claims from FNOL to the claim closure for individual life claims
Verifi Spoke	With the Verifi Spoke you can integrate your ServiceNow instance Verifi APIs to streamline the card dispute resolution process. This integration facilitates early connections between issuers and merchants in the dispute lifecycle, which simplifies conflict resolutions at the pre-dispute stage and minimizes chargebacks. Verifi Spoke Key Features: – Address disputes with merchants to prevent escalation, which saves time and resources for both issuers and cardholders. – Create, manage, and close dispute cases by using API actions to ensure smoother operations and enhanced collaboration among stakeholders. – Resolve disputes early with direct merchant involvement to minimize chargebacks. – Leverage streamlined processes and pre-dispute resolutions to reduce the effort required in managing disputes. – Improve cooperation and communication between cardholders, issuers, and merchants.

Employee Service Management – New in Xanadu Release

Application	Description
HR Service Delivery for Healthcare	The ServiceNow® HR Service Delivery for Healthcare application creates a standardized, digitized, and automated physician onboarding workflow using the Healthcare Professional data model. The application enables you to see the full picture for all the required onboarding information during and after physician onboarding. HR Service Delivery for Healthcare Key Features: – Healthcare professional data model – Healthcare onboarding journey with predefined activity sets – New HR services
Leader Hub	The Leader Hub app provides organizational and HR leaders with visibility into their organization’s talent so they can comprehensively understand the landscape of their workforce. This application helps leaders gauge their team’s strengths and deficiencies to confirm their employees have the appropriate skills and expertise to succeed in the present and future. Leader Hub Key Features: – At a glance – Org talent – Org skills – Orgs you support

Retail Operations – New in Xanadu Release

Application

Description

Retail Operations

The ServiceNow® Retail Operations Core application streamlines operations and optimizes communication within retail organization locations and with headquarters. By building upon the existing functionalities of Customer Service Management and Field Service Management, this application optimizes workflows, improves coordination, and ensures that both frontline and backend operations run smoothly and efficiently and is ideal for retail organizations looking to boost operational efficiency and maintain consistent standards across all locations. Retail Operations Key Features: – Report issues on behalf of the stores they are associated with. – Store-based case management – Visibility into store performance

Sales and Order Management – New in Xanadu Release

Application	Description
Lead Management	The Lead Management application enables your sales agents and sales development representatives to create leads and nurture them into opportunities. Lead Management Key Features: – Lead scoring – Lead qualification – Lead assignment – Lead nurturing – Lead segmentation
Sales Agreement Management	The ServiceNow® Sales Agreement Management application enables you to capture the scope and conditions from a quote for future sales transactions over a specified period between a buyer and a seller. Sales Agreement Management is a new application in the Xanadu release. Sales Agreement Management Key Features: – Sales agreement workflow – Sales agreement line items – Sales agreement price list

New Now Assist Skills in ServiceNow Xanadu

Application	Description
Now Assist for Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT)	The ServiceNow® Now Assist for TMT application brings generative AI to Proactive Service Experience Workflows. Improve productivity and efficiency by delivering better self-service, recommending actions, and delivering answers. Now Assist Skills: – Service Problem Case summarisation – Resolution notes generation – Test summarisation
Now Assist for Field Service Management (FSM)	The ServiceNow® Now Assist for FSM application brings generative AI to Field Service Management. Now Assist Skills: – Work Order Task summarisation
Now Assist for Financial Services Operations (FSO)	The ServiceNow® Now Assist for Financial Services Operations (FSO) application brings generative AI to Financial Services Operations. By creating summaries of the card disputes and insurance claims from the case records, agents can quickly view the key details. Now Assist Skills: – Case summarisation for insurance – Case summarisation for banking

New Platform Capabilities in ServiceNow Xanadu

ServiceNow Xanadu Release will introduce some new exciting features beside of the big applications above. This features extend platform capabilities and let ServiceNow developers create new applications easier and more efficient.

Below is an excerpt of some most hot platform features and if you eager to see them in action, follow the ServiceNow developer advocates that will showcase the new platform features and capabilities starting August and until late November 2024. Aside from livestreams that involve guest participation outside of our team, the team will be experimenting with a more agile commitment to content. Just check the Community Release Calendar for further details.

ServiceNow RaptorDB

ServiceNow announced powerful data enhancements to unlock value with ultra-scale and performance using RaptorDB during the Knowledge 2024. Now, the RaptorDB Pro is available for new and exciting clients. The RaptorDB Standard version is available for new clients. Exciting clients will be able to switch next year (2025).

RaptorDB Standard improves current database, while RaptorDB Pro enhances the database capabilities dramatically. It will handle vast amounts of information, perform complex analyses quickly, and optimize for better workflow performance. Everything that is critical in today’s AI‑driven landscape.

RaptorDB is ServiceNow’s fork of PostgreSQL that includes additional capabilities that supports the needs and specifics of the Now platform and the it’s users.

The hybrid transactional/analytical processing (HTAP) is the core of the architecture and combines the capabilities of the single platform of source with transactional processing and analytics. It allows you to reduce the costs and eliminate the heavy extract, transform, and load (ETL) process. It makes the new database is a lot faster; for example, the number of transactions per minute goes up from 35,121 to 93,257.

It’s integrated column-store index indexes and compresses your largest datasets, automatically. As result, the user gets faster results when viewing dashboards, executing reports and running ad-hoc queries.

According to TechZine, the performance gain will be most noticeable for large customers who are already demanding a lot from the database. ServiceNow expects a performance gain of 26% for smaller customers, 52% for medium-sized organisations, and 75% for really large organisations.

It looks like RaptorDB is based on Swarm64, a Berlin-based company, that built a fork of PostgreSQL with improved OLAP performance. ServiceNow bought Swarm64 in 2021.

Read the ServiceNow RaptorDB datasheet.

SDK V2 and a IDE inside ServiceNow

The new ServiceNow Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Software Development Kit (SDK) in the Xanadu release are tools designed by developers, for developers. They bring a new level of efficiency and capability to the platform, making it easier than ever to build, manage, and deploy applications within ServiceNow. Whether you’re new to the platform or a seasoned veteran, these tools are worth exploring in depth. Free of charge!

The ServiceNow IDE (Fluent) is a significant leap forward for developers working within the ServiceNow ecosystem. Built on the popular Visual Studio Code, the ServiceNow IDE brings this familiar environment directly into the ServiceNow platform, making it easier than ever to write, manage, and deploy applications. It offers a domain-specific language (DSL) based on TypeScript for defining the metadata files [sys_metadata] that make up applications and includes APIs for the different types of metadata, such as tables, roles, ACLs, business rules, and Automated Test Framework tests.

Key Features and Capabilities of ServiceNow IDE

• write and modify code, including Intellisense, keyboard shortcuts, the command palette, code and file search, and code navigation.
• Source control integration for bringing your own Git-based source control provider.
• Full support for ServiceNow Fluent, a domain-specific programming language for defining application metadata in source code, including language processing and validation.
• Integrated with the ServiceNow SDK for building ServiceNow Fluent source code into application metadata on your instance, as well as translating subsequent changes made to that metadata from embedded Now Platform user interfaces back into ServiceNow Fluent source code.
• Update and save changes to application metadata directly from other Now Platform user interfaces.

You can activate and install the ServiceNow IDE application through the Store.

With ServiceNow SDK you can use command-line interface (CLI) to manage changes between a local application and the application on an instance. It includes core libraries and tools for developing apps with application metadata written in code using the ServiceNow Fluent language, as well as server-side JavaScript modules and third-party libraries. ServiceNow developers can work more efficiently and less error-prone using the source-driven model with modern, industry-standard development paradigms.

When developing, you can decide whether you want to use ServiceNow Fluent and JavaScript modules and third-party libraries in the application (fluent) or only use JavaScript modules and third-party libraries (module). ServiceNow Fluent is a domain-specific language (DSL) based on TypeScript for defining the metadata files [sys_metadata] that make up applications and includes APIs for the different types of metadata, such as tables, roles, ACLs, business rules, and Automated Test Framework tests. The API supports working with various platform objects incl. Access control lists (ACLs), Application menus, Automated Test Framework tests, Business rules, Client scripts, Lists, Properties, Records, Roles, Scripted REST APIs, Tables etc. As result, you receive a proper application definition. Below you see the application definition and the result in ServiceNow.

Further insights into the SDK2 and ServiceNow IDE, please watch the Creator Toolbox episode. There is also valuable community articles and a Q&A forum available.

ACL’s

You have an additional option to the design single ACL rules. With Type you can specify if the rule should Allow access or Deny access. The last evaluates with a “deny-unless” approach, means the ACL denies the access to the record(s) by default unless unless the role, condition, and script requirements are met. And it has a priority over Allow-If ACLs in ACL Evaluation as it will be evaluated first.

You can find the new field Decision Type with two options “Allow If” and “Deny Unless” under the Operation field. The field is not mandatory and the default value is “Allow if”, a common approach, so you would not do anything unusual. But keep an eye on this feature when you design your access and right concept.

Email Reply Recommendations

This feature belongs to the Now Assist for CSM. The Email Reply Recommendation enables agents to automate the generation and rewriting of emails when communicating with customers. The generated reply can be reviewed and sent to the recipient.

When you work on the Customer Case (CSM) agents can compose an email as a response to an existing email or thread, and refine an email response if needed. Directly within the Activity stream on the workspace. See the screenshot below.

For this feature, you need to have Customer Service Management (CSM) incl. the license for Now Assist (Plus SKU). Refer to our blog about Now Assist and different types for SKU. Watch a short Video that shows the Email Reply capability.

Creator Studio

The new ServiceNow Creator Studio is the place where you can create custom, no-code applications. It helps you craft request-fulfillment applications without writing any line of code, so simple application. For more complex solutions, with heavy code, complex UI and integrations, you still need to you App Engine Studio and ServiceNow IDE.

In the Creator Studio, you can create request-based applications step by step starting with forms to gather request information and continue with workflows and playbooks, and workspaces that give fulfillers a place to address requests. A Citizen Developer might also need support from an experienced developer or from the IT department. This is where collaboration comes into play and it’s fully supported by ServiceNow and Creator Studio.

With delegated development you can enable (no-code) developers to invite other developers into apps so they can co-create and develop the app together. This capability is provided by The Now Platform Collaboration app and it is automatically installed with Creator Studio.

Check the video by Lauren McManamon where she introduces Creator Studio and is highlighting how it simplifies app development for no-code users and what benefits do the pro-coders have.

Analytics Generation

Now Assist, ServiceNow AI capability, supports users during creation of reports and analytics. The new feature Analytics Generation generates reporting artifacts in a conversational mode, right from a virtual agent like pane on the right side. For example, you can ask for information about the number of open incidents and get a single-score data visualization. Analytics Generation is part of the Now Assist for Creator application.

Check a great video by Robert Ninnes that shows and explains Analytics Generation:

You can install the Analytics Generation as part of the Now Assist for Creator (sn_now_creator) application that is available on the ServiceNow Store. It currently supports only the data visualization generation skill, so simple reports. No complex Performance Analytics, yet.

Deactivate a portal and redirect to an alternative one

You change from the Service Portal to the Employee Center, any custom portal or want make sure, that your employees and customers don’t land on an inactive portal? You can now configure an “Alternative Portal” when you deactivate an exciting portal.

Earlier, you had to display a message or an announcement on top of your old portal and develop your own redirect solution. With Xanadu, you can do it easily by your own. It is a small but very useful capability.

If you don’t specify an alternate portal, users receive a message that the portal has been deactivated. Read about this capability and how to configure it in the ServiceNow docs.

Data Management Policies like Deletion of Unreferenced Records etc.

With ServiceNow Data Management you can better control table data growth and improve the overall data quality in the Now Platform. You can define what data when should be archived or deleted. Additionally, you can see the consumption of table space.

With Xanadu, you receive a new policy experience and a set of predefined policies. Each policy defines either a deletion or an archiving rule. An admin can easily create new policies for tables that must be flushed or archived.

Explore Data Management and it’s capabilities.

Turn on ECMAScript 2021 (ES12) mode for any script

In Xanadu you you turn on the ECMAScript 2021 (ES12) mode within Script Incudes, Business Rules etc. whenever you need in a particular script field. By using ES12, you can apply the latest programming practices, making their code more reliable and future-proof and the solutions in ServiceNow robust and scalable. The ES12 and prior modes differ a lot. You can check the comparison on the ServiceNow Docs.

By leveraging modern programming techniques provided by ECMAScript 2021 (ES12), you can create better-performing and scalable ServiceNow applications and solutions. This ultimately improves the user experience and contributes to the success of ServiceNow projects.

1. Using the new syntax, such as the optional chaining operator (?.), you can safely access object properties without null or undefined checks. This leads to cleaner and more concise code.
2. In general, the ES12 mode reduces code complexity and improves performance and the new operations like Object.fromEntries() and Object.values() provide you better capabilities for data and structure manipulation. The developers can manage and maintain applications easier over time.
3. Modern JavaScript techniques introduced in ES12 can enhance the performance of ServiceNow applications, allowing them to run faster and more efficiently.
4. Cleaner, more maintainable code reduces development time, enabling faster deployment of ServiceNow solutions.
5. As code becomes easier to manage and maintain, businesses can save on long-term maintenance and support costs.
6. The performance improvements and modern code practices in ES12 translate to better usability and smoother interactions within ServiceNow applications.

You can check some very simple examples in the code below:

var IncidentHelperUtils = Class.create();
IncidentHelperUtils.prototype = {
    initialize: function() {},

    // Example 1: Using Optional Chaining (?.) to safely access object properties
    getIncidentShortDescription: function(incidentSysId) {
        var incidentGR = new GlideRecord('incident');
        if (incidentGR.get(incidentSysId)) {
            return incidentGR?.short_description || 'No description available'; // Safely accessing short_description
        }
        return 'Incident not found';
    },

    // Example 2: Using Nullish Coalescing (??) for default values
    getPriorityLabel: function(priority) {
        const priorityLabels = {
            1: 'Critical',
            2: 'High',
            3: 'Moderate',
            4: 'Low'
        };
        return priorityLabels[priority] ?? 'Unknown Priority'; // Returning default if null or undefined
    },

    // Example 3: Using Object.entries() to manipulate objects
    getIncidentFieldNames: function(incidentSysId) {
        var incidentGR = new GlideRecord('incident');
        if (incidentGR.get(incidentSysId)) {
            let fields = [];
            for (let [key, value] of Object.entries(incidentGR)) {
                fields.push(key); // Collecting all field names
            }
            return fields;
        }
        return [];
    },

    // Example 4: Using Object.fromEntries() to transform entries back to object
    getIncidentSummary: function(incidentSysId) {
        var incidentGR = new GlideRecord('incident');
        if (incidentGR.get(incidentSysId)) {
            let entries = Object.entries({
                number: incidentGR.number,
                state: incidentGR.state,
                priority: incidentGR.priority,
                short_description: incidentGR.short_description
            });

            return Object.fromEntries(entries); // Converting entries back to object
        }
        return {};
    },

    // Example 5: Using String.prototype.replaceAll for better string handling
    sanitizeIncidentDescription: function(description) {
        if (description) {
            return description.replaceAll('confidential', '***'); // Replacing all instances of 'confidential'
        }
        return '';
    },

    // Example 6: Using Optional Chaining with arrays
    getFirstAssignedGroupMember: function(incidentSysId) {
        var incidentGR = new GlideRecord('incident');
        if (incidentGR.get(incidentSysId)) {
            var assignedGroup = incidentGR?.assignment_group?.getDisplayValue() ?? 'Group not found';
            return assignedGroup;
        }
        return 'Incident not found';
    },

    type: 'IncidentHelperUtils'
};

Read the great article by Willem on the ServiceNow community who showcases a comprehensive list of real-world examples.

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What do you thank about the Xanadu release and what are your favourite capabilities?

Kostya Bazanov, Managing Director, Sep 25, 2024

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