IntegrationHub

Paris Release Platform Features

Last Tuesday, Chuck Tomasi (Sr. Developer Evangelist, ServiceNow), Kreg Steppe (Program Manager, ServiceNow) and Jeremy Duncan (Platform Architect, ServiceNow)  announced in the TechNow podcast some of the upcoming Paris release platform features. This release is available by now with the early access program and in October for public.

I want to share some of the features with you and those are pretty cool! You can find all information of the upcoming release in the release notes.

You can try the new release and features in the developer portal and request your own PDI (Personal Developer Instance)
Some of the benefits of the developer portal:

  • Free personal developer instance
  • Early access to releases
  • Free learning plans
  • Script API documentation
  • Developer meet-up information
  • Developer events
  • Developer blog
  • Share content
  • Videos

The recording is now available on demand:
https://www.servicenow.com/events/on-demand-webinars.html

Please note, all features are in the safe harbour state and changes could affect.

Automated Test Framework (ATF)
Improved indexing
Buttons can now be indexed to select the right one.

Authentication

OpenID Connect SSO
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an identity layer built on top of the Oauth protocol which provides a modern and intuitive SSO experience to you and your end users.

Self-Registration
External user self-registration enables a large group of users to register to a ServiceNow app without the help of an administrator.

Core Platform

Scoped data administration
With scoped data administration, administrators can now allow or disallow specific users to edit specific information within an application. Other users are not allowed to change those information.

Flow Designer

Order of Actions – Number
With the new release, the Actions in Flow Designer are now labled with an ongoing number, not longer dots for child actions. It’s easier now to identify the right action.

Duplicate Action Instance
Do you sometimes have to create multiple Actions which are nearly identical to each other? With the new icon next to Annotation and Trash Bin you can easily duplicate an Action, and the best is, it is already prefilled with the same Data Pills.

Ghost actions
With the new release, missing Spokes or Actions from an migrated Flow from your dev or test instance are now shown as a ‘Ghost Action’, also a message is displayed.

Make a decision
With a new flow logic, you are now able to easily make decisions based on certsin criterias.

Run with roles
Flows can only be executed with an system user or by the user who initiates session, and also with the roles of this user? But what if the flow needs to execute something where the user don’t has access to? With an very cool improvement, you are now able to add some temporary roles to this user to enable those specific Actions.

Those roles don’t have to be licensed, since they are temporary.

Send SMS Action
With a new Action, you can now send SMS to users.

User Access Control Critertia
This is also a very nice new feature. It’s something like domain separation, but not directly. You know there are hundrets of spokes available. Maybe an administratot know most of them or at least knows how to deal with numerous spokes installed. But what if an additional contributor needs to build flows or at least add or configure some Actions? Not only the high number of potentially installed Spokes are dangerous, also some Actions. You now can set permissions to enable some contributors to specific spokes, so they for example can edit or add Actions for systems or departments for which they are experts.

To do so, you can set those permissions in the Flow Menu.

IntegrationHub

Integration Authentication
With IntegrationAuthentication, you can now create new credentials without exit the Flow.

Process Automation Designer
Business Process Owners can now digitize,  visualize and manage end to end workflows to Business Services with an new Builder experience.

Upgrade Center
In the new Paris Release, there is a new Upgrade Center. Upgrades can be previewed or reviewed and you can manage skips with VTP.

This was only a short list of numerous new Platform Features in the Paris Release. Other cool improvements or coming features are in the Workspace, Studio, Playbook experience, Notifications, Platform backend, FlowAPI and FlowScriptAPI, Domain separation.

Referred Links
http://bit.ly/sn-break-point
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-release-notes/page/release-notes/family-release-notes.html

TechNow:
http://bit.ly/servicenow-technow
Community link: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=4d6eaeaddbd0dbc01dcaf3231f961964
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkGSnjw5y2U7HkJd7YkVtX93pA5pl8KDM

ServiceNow and Generation Z – the perfect fit?

Generation Z. Most people associate it with a ‘lazy’, ‘difficult’ or simply ‘another’ generation. They are considered disinterested and addicted to smartphones. What happens to the world of working when this generation enters?

Let’s take a closer look at the Generation Z. It extends mainly between the years 1997 to 2012, in which they were born. The first ones have already entered into the world of working, while the others will not enter the working world for a few years.

But: what is important to the Generation Z?

For most of them, it’s not work, a steep career or financial wealth that is important, but time for the family, personal freedom, self-fulfillment and, of course, having fun in life is.

They don’t want to spend a lot of time at work with manual processes, and they don’t want to rack their brains over open tasks. They want to live a relaxed life and experience many exciting things – and all this without the stress of work.

The first ‘digital natives’ – that describes it quite well. Almost everyone in the Generation Z has been involved with digital media since childhood and has been influenced by it – whether through television, the Internet, smartphones, etc. – so they are ‘fit’ in the new technologies.

They are more than familiar with the media. They know how to work efficiently with notebooks, smartphones, apps and co. Most of them ask themselves very early on when they start something ‘can’t this be done by smartphone?’. And it is exactly this thought that makes them masters of digitalization!

What does this have to do with ServiceNow? Very simple: ServiceNow wants to make working life easier in many areas due to the motto ‘make work, work better for people’. Who, if not Generation Z, would be best suited for this? ServiceNow offers a modern platform with extensive functionalities. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Flows, Workflows, Mobile Apps and numerous integrations are only a small list of the platform capabilities.

Working life is becoming more and more mobile. Everything has to be done on the go. An unbelievable amount has to be done in an unbelievably short time. By touching digital media at an early age, Generation Z fits perfectly with ServiceNow because both share the same passion.

I’m very excited to see how Generation Z makes working life easier with ServiceNow.

Release Notes: Orlando – first information to Flow Designer and IntegrationHub

Today I had the chance to get some Flow Designer and IntegrationHub information of the next ServiceNow release in Q1 2020: Orlando!
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The Orlando release is according to the motto ‘Smarter, Faster, Easier’.
Some of the release notes are described below on behalf of the Safe Harbor statement:

Flow Designer
Flow Designer is a Now Platform® Feature that gives you rich capabilities for automating processes in a single design environment. Flow Designer lets process owners use natural language to automate approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations without coding.

The published new functions include:

  • Support IntegrationHub
    • Data Transformations
    • 3rd party introspection of results
  • Dynamic Outputs
  • Dynamic Subflows
  • What changed trigger
  • Support Service Level Management
    • SLA Timer
  • Natural Language
    • Action title authoring

IntegrationHub
IntegrationHub is ServiceNow’s possibility to integrate 3rd party systems. It enables anyone-developers, IT generalists, and process analysts-to extend flows in Flow Designer to any 3rd party service and easily create end-to-end digital workflows.

Some new functions include:

  • Modernize Auth Framework
    • Custom Auth & Request signing
    • Connection Configuration UX v1
  • IntegrationHub Usage dashboards (Features, Password Reset, CSD (Client Software Distribution))
  • Data Stream
    • MID Support
    • Action API Support
    • Usability improvements
  • Codeless integrations
    • Input Sanitization transform for JDBC/SSH
    • Dynamic outputs
  • Orchestration Party
    • Migrate Client Software Distribution
    • Protocols: SFTP, Managed File Transfer

Also, in Q2 ’20 some SAP integrations are announced. Some of them are Ariba, BusinessSuite, Fieldglass, S4/Hana and Concur.