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In this article, I'll walk you through the steps you need to take in order to activate Next Experience on your instance, some considerations you'll need to review and make decisions on when activating Next Experience, as well as some basic configuration that you may want to do when activating Next Experience.
Step 1: Upgrade
The first step to getting Next Experience in your instance is to make sure you've upgraded to the San Diego release or higher. Before you upgrade, make sure you follow your organization's upgrade process and review the release notes for the version you are upgrading to. We have an upgrade planning checklist you can follow for assistance.
If you're a new customer launching on San Diego or higher, then you've already completed this step, congratulations! You can move on to Step 5.
Step 2: Review considerations for activating Next Experience
If you're an upgrade customer, you will notice that the Core UI is still enabled for you by default after upgrading and you will have to enable Next Experience. Before you do this in a sub-production environment, review our product documentation for customizations and features you must take into consideration prior to activation.
If you've customized your instance with modifications such as hard-coding styling, UI Scripts, adjustments to the Core UI Banner Frame, etc. you will want to test and remediate these customizations in a sub-production instance.
If you're using Agent Workspace - now is the time to either begin switching to a configurable workspace prior to activating Next Experience, or creating a plan to do so shortly after so that you can take full advantage of Next Experience. Don't worry, you can still use Agent Workspace with Next Experience turned on, but your users will still be working out of that separate browser tab.
Here are some helpful migration FAQs:
If you're a Connect Chat user - we do have a support article on how to allow subsets of users to remain on Core UI to utilize this functionality. Within this article, you'll see two methods to allow users to remain on Core UI. Some important considerations to note when allowing users either to remain on Core UI or toggle back and forth:
- Support multiple user interfaces - this may be okay for admins and power users, but how does this work for users who are just getting used to navigating ServiceNow, or onboarding new users?
- Training for multiple user interfaces.
- Support both landing pages and dashboards for users toggling. Next Experience UI landing pages do not extend to Core UI - so make sure there's a dashboard the user can use in Core UI.
- Support differences in user preferences locations - we've made some changes in Next Experience, and moved Workspace preferences into the user preferences pane.
- Support workspace behavior in two different interfaces. Workspaces open in a different browser tab in Core UI and do not inherit Next Experience theming, also Workspace preference locations will differ between Core UI and Next Experience.
- Support multiple themes such as Core UI themes and Next Experience themes. Configurable Workspaces uptake the Next Experience theme, but do not uptake the Next Experience theme when it's disabled, so a Workspace theme will look different in Core UI. In addition, themes are not interchangeable between Core UI and Next Experience.
- Support how features work in Next Experience versus in Core UI, i.e. menu navigation enhancements, searching across global search and workspaces, etc.
- Our new Admin Configurable Menus in Tokyo don't extend to Core UI, users will have to favorite the applications and modules they need to work.
- Banner Announcements for Next Experience UI do not extend to Core UI, Core UI users may miss out on important information.
- Core UI users miss out on all of the exciting new features we're working on for Next Experience UI!
Take into consideration the above list of support and documentation for your organization's team to have ownership of by allowing users to switch back and forth between Core UI and Next Experience. We strongly encourage limiting using the toggle/user preference functionality for certain use cases such as users who need to remain on Core UI for features that are not supported in Next Experience yet, or using the user preference method to roll out Next Experience UI to certain groups of users in a phased approach - but we don't suggest either of these methods as solution for users who want the ability to toggle back and forth based on their personal preference.
Step 3: Activate Next Experience in a sub-production instance
If you're at this step you've successfully upgraded, reviewed considerations for activation, and have made the decision to activate, so now comes the easy part:
New in Tokyo: One Click Activation. We've it even easier to turn on Next Experience by clicking a button when you're ready.
If you're a San Diego user, you can activate next experience by navigating to the System Properties table (sys_properties.list) and setting the glide.ui.polaris.experience system property to true.
Turn on Next Experience page in Tokyo
Step 4: Perform normal upgrade and/or regression testing
Now it's time to run through your normal upgrade and/or regression testing for when you activate new features or make changes to products. As mentioned, if you haven't customized your instance with hard-coded styles, UI Scripts, Banner frame customizations, etc. then you won't run into any surprises here. At this point we also suggest checking UI Pages and UI Macros to ensure they are functioning properly.
Wait, aren't UI Pages and UI Macros in Jelly, and Next Experience is a completely different framework? Yes, but Next Experience displays your Classic Environment so you can keep using these features. If you're using jQuery or Angular your UI Pages and UI Macros, be sure to check out KB1116237. Check out our article on Next Experience Architecture and Terminology for more information.
If you're using Automated Test Framework (ATF) - great! You're already a step ahead on performing your testing. The ATF tests you ran previously on your Classic Environment pages will continue to work, nothing has changed here. We even made some tweaks to ATF in the San Diego release where you could test some of the Navigator of Next Experience, specially around testing for modules, check out the product documentation for more information.
To clarify, ATF is not supported for the following:
- Pages built in UI Builder, including pages with lists and form components.
- Configurable Workspaces
- Landing Pages
So you can continue to use Automated Test Framework the same way you did prior to activating Next Experience, and if you're wanting to start using Automated Test Framework to test your Classic Environment lists, forms, etc. there are no drawbacks to starting now.
Step 5: Configure Next Experience with themes and/or landing pages
Landing Pages
This is a choose your own journey step. If you're a new or zBoot San Diego+ customer, you'll have the landing page for Next Experience already available to you. You may want to use this landing page as is, or begin adjusting it to your organization's needs by creating a new variant. Like any new implementation, you'll need to decide which personas you're building for, and what their needs are to tailor the landing page to them.
If you're an upgrade customer, you'll notice your home settings have been retained, so your users can continue to utilize their dashboards as normal while you begin to define your landing page personas and learn UI Builder.
New in Tokyo: Users can select their own start page. So they can use the default landing page, dashboards, the page they are currently on, or where they last logged off from. See our product documentation for more information.
We have a lot of product documentation on how to implement landing pages, the differences in landing pages versus dashboards, and even how to roll out specific landing pages per-user so that you can start a phased approach of moving certain personas over to landing pages. Whether you're a new customer or upgrade customer you can decide if dashboards or landing pages work best for you right after activating Next Experience, then decide the approach on how to roll out landing pages once your requirements have been defined, and your development teams are ready to begin building in UI Builder.
Theming
More than likely you're going to want to brand your instance with your organization's colors. Next Experience is shipped with a default out-of-the-box theme called Polaris. If this color scheme works for you in the meantime, then great, you're ready to move on to Step 6.
If you want to begin branding right away, you can create a theme and choose to override the default theme. We have product documentation on how themes are set up, and great resources on the community on theming fundamentals, how to create your first theme, theme different instances, and even how to replace the Core UI themes.
Step 6: Train your users on the new user interface
The order of this step is really up to your organization, but we do have some helpful tools to get users ready for the user interface, without even having to set up a test environment if you so choose. Our NowLearning team has worked hard to create a brand new Welcome to ServiceNow course that provides users an essential walkthrough of the platform and is specifically geared to instances on Next Experience. The course includes a simulator so users can explore an instance with Next Experience on, and there's a free micro-cert your organization can use to verify where users have taken the training and understand the core fundamentals of navigation and platform usage before you launch Next Experience in Production, or when you're onboarding new employees to the platform.
Step 7: Activate Next Experience in Production
Whether you choose to do this as part of your upgrade, or as a product release aside from the upgrade, follow your organization's process for releasing new features and products into production. Promote any remediations, and configurations such as landing page variants, themes, etc. at this time and follow your organization's procedures for testing features once they have been promoted to production. Be sure to follow your organization's communication strategy for new features so that users are aware of the change once they log back into their instance.
Congratulations and welcome to the Next Experience!
