ServiceNow has presented the Washington D.C. platform release, in which generative AI takes a major role. In addition, ServiceNow also presents other new features, including Workflow Studio, Platform Analytics, Sales and Order management and the Common Services Data Model.
It is that time again for a new ServiceNow platform release. Every six months ServiceNow releases a new version named after a city. They have arrived at the letter W and ServiceNow has chosen to name it after Washington D.C. In this new version, there is a lot of focus on AI features and new products in which AI plays an important role. What is striking is that ServiceNow seems to be choosing to limit the role of AI in some ways and put control mainly in the hands of humans. It seems to seek the ultimate balance between humans and artificial intelligence.
Also read: Knowledge23: Do people now know what ServiceNow is and does?
ServiceNow mainly opts for smarter chatbots
To maintain that balance between humans and artificial intelligence, ServiceNow seems to have chosen to focus primarily on chatbots in many different forms. ServiceNow has added chatbots for various solutions, such as Now Assist for IT Service Management, Now Assist for Customer Service Management, as well as HR Service Delivery, Creator, Field Service Management and IT Operations Management.
All chatbots are capable of summarizing information and generating texts based on a knowledge base. Others might be able to generate code. With the introduction of Washington, the Now platform appears to be getting more extensive AI features.
Now Assist for ITOM AIOps
For example, ServiceNow in Washington introduces Now Assist for ITOM AIOps. Now Assist for ITOM AIOps can analyse all alerts coming in and also search the history for possible solutions. The goal is to detect patterns and problems faster, as well as offer an immediate solution.
Now Assist for Virtual Agent
With Now Assist for Virtual Agent, you can make ServiceNow much more suitable as a self-service platform. By implementing an extensive AI Search and Service Catalog the knowledge of ServiceNow chatbots reach new heights in ServiceNow Washington. It allows customers or coworkers to converse with a self-service chatbot that can use all that information to help the user. The AI will be grounded with the AI Search and Service catalog and generate answers based on that data.
There is also a Virtual Agent Designer, where you can define what questions need to be asked in certain cases. For example, what PC are you working on, what operating system is it running, what impact does the problem have, etc. That way, you can collect a lot of valuable information, and the AI is more likely to find a solution in a knowledge base article. If no solution is present, it allows an agent to come up with a solution more quickly.
In addition, you can use the Virtual Agent Designer to ensure that certain problems are detected more easily and the right solution is also executed. Sometimes, multiple solutions are possible, but only one has the best result. You can keep control with the designer to steer towards the best solution. In the end, the user will still solve its problem via self-service. You can also create Workflows that the AI will execute as a solution.
Creative language support
Where many vendors find it challenging to support multiple languages, especially with generative AI, ServiceNow opts for a creative solution. Local language models are not always as good as the English models. If you ask an LLM a question in Dutch or German, it may not always be answered in the right way. At ServiceNow, they do work on LLMs for specific languages, so support for more languages is coming, but it has developed Dynamic Translation in the meantime. With Dynamic Translation, ServiceNow Washington offers support for many more languages. What it does is translate the question asked into English, pass that English question to an LLM, and then translate the answer back to the original language, for example Dutch or German, and send it to the user.
New solutions in ServiceNow Washington
ServiceNow has also added several new solutions in the Washington release that will enrich the platform. Some of those solutions are also a little more independent of AI. One of the solutions that stood out for us is Workflow Studio.
Workflow Studio
Workflow Studio is a solution where users can build workflows from start to finish. For this, they can use generative AI. They explain in plain text what kind of workflow they want to build, and the AI goes to work for them and shows the result.
Workflow Studio leverages integrations with Flow Designer, Automate Engine, Process Automation Designer and Decision Builder and shows workflows that might use all of these solutions in one screen. In any case, it makes building Workflows a lot easier.
ServiceNow Platform Analytics
Another solution that ServiceNow is presenting in Washington is Platform Analytics. A secure and easy way to get reports and analytics insights from all the data that resides within the Now platform.
One of the features that jumps out is that you can apply live filters to charts and tables, and they update instantly. This makes ServiceNow a bit more competitive with existing BI vendors. In itself, this is not surprising because there is more and more data in the Now platform, and as a company, you want to learn lessons from that or base decisions on it.
Common Service Data Model
That brings us directly to the next product we want to discuss. The Common Service Data Model (CSDM), they also use that acronym a lot in presentations, so be warned. What ServiceNow offers with CSDM is a customer data platform (CDP), but with a different moniker. Organizations can store all their data in it, including data from other solutions and services. Through automations, other data sources can be linked to the Common Service Data Model so that they are also available within ServiceNow.
A solution such as Platform Analytics can then make use of that data as well. So you can get a full overview of all the customer data, also data that lives in third party solutions.
Sales and Order Management
For organizations looking to streamline their Sales and Order management, there is now also a turnkey solution on the Now platform. With the new Sales and Order Management, ServiceNow aims to provide a standard solution for front, middle and back office employees to work with. Every team should have access to all the data at any time, and, for example, a customer service agent can still upsell even after the order has been delivered.
ServiceNow has more new solutions in Washington
ServiceNow Washington has more new solutions, we won’t go into all of them by detail. For example, AIOps Experience is a tool that should enable operations to solve problems faster. It can look for anomalies in your logs, analyse alerts and also search in the history to find possible solutions, or even what is the root cause of recurring alerts.
ServiceNow also presents Operational Technology (OT) Knowledge Management, which is an application that allows people who are actually on the floor in a factory or industrial environment to easily look for solutions to problems. If something goes wrong during a production process, this solution should be able to provide a solution quickly.
Finally, there is Security Posture Control (SPC), which should allow organizations to get better insights in the gaps in their cybersecurity. It should also detect infrastructure that poses a high risk, such as through combinations of certain software solutions. This solution is primarily an extension for existing ITOM Visibility and Service Graph customers.
ServiceNow shows a lot in Washington, but we’re curious to see the details
We’ve already seen quite a bit of the new ServiceNow Washington release. However, we are also still curious to see how they will facilitate certain things. For example, they state that many organizations have high demands regarding how their data is handled, and there are strict rules on this in Europe as well. How ServiceNow will respond to this is not yet entirely clear. They didn’t reveal much about this. We will certainly go into this in more detail soon.
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