ServiceNow Quebec Release: New Features & Enhancements
Written by Rajesh Paila
Senior Software Engineer ServiceNow at Royal Cyber
On January 21st, ServiceNow introduced the Quebec release within the community. The company announces a new release twice a year, the previous releases being ServiceNow Paris (Q3 2020) and Orlando (Q1 2020). With Quebec's release, ServiceNow announced new features and enhancements that the organizations can leverage in their ecosystem.
ServiceNow operates on an n-1 support model, which means that you can either upgrade to the newly launched Quebec release or the previously available Paris release. The Quebec release simplifies and optimizes the processes, delivers an intuitive customer experience, and helps organizations build digital workflow apps with a single cloud platform. Let’s learn more about the new features and enhancements that you can expect from this new release.
What’s New in the ServiceNow Quebec Release
NOW Platform:
With the ServiceNow platform, you can transform your enterprise – optimize existing processes, enhance operational efficiency, provide complete visibility into your infrastructure, connect diverse assets, etc.- Natural Language Query: Ask your questions in plain language and get answers. You can receive support for German, Japanese, French, and Spanish language with spell check, dynamic suggestions, etc.
- UI Builder: Build new pages or customize existing pages for workspace and portal experience using ServiceNow custom/design components.
- Platform Encryption: Protect your data using the industry’s best practices encryption, access control, and key lifecycle management and protection.
- Virtual Agent Enhancements: Auto-resolve incident intercept issues with the help of the Virtual Agent before they get to a human agent.
- NLU Workbench: Build, train, and test your NLU model and customize it with your organization’s language, acronyms, and vocabulary.
- Performance Analytics Enhancements: Create, configure, and share improved analytics experience with dashboards.
- AI Search: With this feature, you can deliver a consumer-grade search experience to your users.
IT Workflows:
The ServiceNow platform is not just a ticketing tool. You can use it for IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), and IT Business Management (ITBM), Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), IT Asset Management (ITAM), Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and more.ITSM
- ITSM Virtual Agent: With AI’s power introduced, you can quickly deploy the Virtual Agent and get expected business outcomes. AI will provide topic recommendations and intercept and deflect issues with the help of the Virtual Agent.
- Process Optimization: Uncover bottlenecks and inefficiencies with visual business process flows from the data in audit trials. Using this feature, you can deliver optimal output with all the processes.
- Incident Response Playbooks: Automate the tasks in the resolution process by visualizing the workflow. This feature eliminates human errors and delays and resolves all the incidents with a limited need for human intervention.
ITBM
- Scenario Planning: You can compare and create scenarios against your business objectives. The scenarios can have different budgets and projects.
- PPM Collaboration: You can now connect where the teams collaborate to provide structure and context in ServiceNow.
ITOM
- Machine Learning for Service Mapping: To reduce the time spent collecting and analyzing information, you can map custom business services with machine learning.
- Predictive AIOps: Predict incidents and proactively prevent them by combining event management with log analysis and anomaly detection.
APP ENGINE
- IntegrationHub:ServiceNow has introduced new codeless REST API triggers that will help external systems to call ServiceNow workflows with no code and integration flow templates. This feature helps in automating the most common integration patterns.
- Flow Designer: Improvements in UX, enhancements to out-of-the-box flow actions, and more significant developer support can help you improve the performance, usability, and security of the ServiceNow platform.
- App Engine Studio:A fast, intuitive, and low code development environment has been introduced to enable you to build applications that can power your enterprise.
ITAM
- Machine Learning Normalization:Identify and normalize unknown software using machine learning. With the help of this feature, you can gain a complete and accurate record of the software estate.
- Hardware Asset Refresh: Reduce maintenance costs and risk of legacy hardware, and plan and execute hardware refreshes to reduce tech debt and operating expenses.
GRC
- Regulatory Change Management: For an on-going regulatory change, you can now ingest regulatory intelligence RSS feeds. You will also get a dashboard to see all the events, tasks, and due dates.
- Operational Resilience Management: Anticipate, adapt, respond, and prevent adverse events. The dashboard shows risks, issues, controls, and critical services for technology, facilities, people, processes, and suppliers.
CMDB
- Performance Improvement of the Query Builder:Quebec will enable faster query processing times in the background that will allow you to multitask and ensure future improvements.
- Data Foundation: A free CMDB data foundation dashboard has been introduced in the ServiceNow platform that will enable you to monitor your CI and relationships.
These are only a few important features and enhancements that we have listed from the Quebec release. You can visit the ServiceNow website to learn the rest.
Are you ready to Upgrade?
Royal Cyber, a ServiceNow Specialist Partner, has certified consultants that can perform the upgrade for you. We also provide post-upgrade support and maintenance that you may need, saving time and resources.
