FAQs on Getting Started with Employee Center

[Pooja Gupta1]

1. Is Employee Center a new portal in addition to Employee Service Center?

No. Employee Center is an updated version of Employee Service Center (from Quebec and before). We have re-branded, enhanced, and repackaged Employee Service Center into two separate store apps. NOTE: The default extension for Employee Center (both Employee Center and Employee Center Pro) is still /esc.

 

2. What is the impact of the Employee Center launch on existing and new customers?

Below are our guidelines:

• For new customers — All new customers should deploy Employee Center or Employee Center Pro (as per their licenses) from ServiceNow Store. No new customer should deploy Service Portal. Employee Center will provide a much superior employee experience at the onset and will set the foundation for extending the employee portal across the organization and for new use cases in future.

• For existing Employee Service Center customers (from Quebec and before) — They will be automatically upgraded to Employee Center Pro once they upgrade their instance to Rome or beyond. By doing so, their existing implementation will not be impacted. These customers must download the Employee Center Pro app from the Store to get the latest functionality.

• For existing Service Portal customers — These customers will need to migrate to Employee Center to take advantage of the new capabilities and align with ServiceNow’s future investment in rich employee experiences. The effort required to migrate to Employee Center depends on the level of customizations made in their existing portal.

In case of heavy customizations, customers may choose to incorporate specific Employee Center widgets in their existing portal as a bridge toward future Employee Center adoption.  This is not recommended as a standard practice, and some Employee Center capabilities such as Curated Experiences would not be readily incorporated into an existing customized portal. Eventually, all customers on Service Portal should migrate to Employee Center to leverage the latest features. 

3. Is Service Portal (i.e. the /sp portal) deprecated? if not, when should it be used?

No, Service Portal (i.e. the /sp portal) is not currently being deprecated, as many customers remain heavily invested in it. It will eventually become unavailable for new customers to install. The official timeline for this change has not been decided. We recommend that new customers deploy Employee Center or Employee Center Pro from Store. 

The Service Portal application (i.e. the /sp portal) was designed as a demo portal for the Service Portal technical stack. If a customer is creating an employee-facing portal or a service delivery portal, they should always use Employee Center as their starting point even if they want a custom design. There are two reasons for this:

1. Employee Center will give them access to specialized widgets, which they will have to create on their own if they use the Service Portal application.
2. Employee Center will give them a starting point, which is based on rich research and best-practice guidance.

4. What is the difference between Employee Center and Employee Center Pro?

Technically, both Employee Center and Employee Center Pro are the same portal (i.e., /esc). Employee Center Pro simply provides access to additional capabilities and widgets applied to the existing Employee Center.

Organizations that upgrade from Employee Center to Employee Center Pro, do not have to re-design their portal unless their implemented portal is heavily customized.

The following table highlights the key differences between Employee Center and Employee Center Pro.

	Employee Center	Employee Center Pro
Outcome	A modern service delivery portal that is designed for single to multi-departmental service delivery.	An employee destination site that helps drive portal consolidation and intranet modernization.
Key employee use cases	Enables employees to self-serve on services and knowledge, across multiple departments, and: Report issues Request items/services Find service-related answers Complete to-dos/tasks	Enable employees to (in addition to what they already can do with Employee Center standard): Stay informed with actionable communications Access applications in context as they browse the portal Find cross-enterprise answers Engage with peers
License required	None – All customers are entitled.	Requires HRSD Pro or Enterprise.  Can also be licensed separately

For additional details about key capabilities, see the Employee Center Features FAQ and the Employee Center Community home page.

5. Is Rome a requirement to use Employee Center?

Yes, customers need to be at least on Rome to use Employee Center and the capabilities shipped with it. Since Employee Center is a store release, customers must download the current store app to get the latest features.

6. What ServiceNow Store apps are available for Employee Center?

We have launched three Store apps:

Store Application	Purpose	Visibility and Availability
Employee Center	This is the service delivery portal that easily scales from single to multi-department service delivery.	Available for all customers via ServiceNow Store (first released on September 16, 2021, for customers on Rome)
Employee Center Pro	This is a premium app for service delivery, employee engagement, and communication.	Available for HRSD Pro, HRSD Ent, or separately licensed customers via ServiceNow Store (first released on September 16, 2021, for customers on Rome)
Employee Profile	This app is required to use the Unified Employee Profile capability. Once downloaded, both EC and EC pro customers can opt in to create a Unified Employee Profile for their employees.	Available for all customers via ServiceNow store (first release date February 03, 2021)
Employee Center Core	This is a hidden app that provides the core functionality for the two apps above. It is automatically downloaded when a customer downloads either Employee Center or Employee Center Pro.	It is hidden on ServiceNow Store.

7. What is the release cadence for Employee center apps on the ServiceNow store?

Employee Center updates are released every quarter. Please refer to the ServiceNow Store release notes for details.

8. Which versions of Employee Center and Employee Center Pro are available with San Diego family release?

San Diego family release will include the November release versions for Employee Center and Employee Center Pro apps. It will also include additional features associated with the Curated Experiences capability. These additional capabilities are tied with the San Diego Family release so a customer will need to be on the San Diego release to access them. See What’s new in San Diego Release for Employee Center? for additional details.

San Diego customers who want to access the capabilities launched with the February Store release need to download the latest version from the ServiceNow store.

9. Is Employee Center available on Mobile?

Yes, the Now Mobile application will have an accompanying Store release in September which includes Employee Center features. There will be a new Support tab that will provide access to the topic pages on Employee Center, along with Curated Experiences.  The topic pages will load as an embedded web page on the Now Mobile app, which will maintain a similar look and feel as the web experience. This embedded web page is called Mobile Employee Service Portal.

10. Is the upgrade to Employee Center or Employee Center Pro forced with the Rome or San Diego upgrade?

 While Employee Service Center customers will automatically see a name change upon their upgrade to Rome, customers will have to download the Employee Center Pro app from the Store to opt-in and select which capabilities to adopt. For Service Portal customers, it will be a migration and they can choose when to do so. See the for more information.

11. When will Employee Center move to the Next Experience? Or when should we consider using Next Experience over Service Portal?

 There are three things to know about this:

• Next Experience DOES NOT replace Service Portal - The initial launch of the Next Experience in San Diego is focused on improving experiences for service delivery teams—the people who spend most of their working day on the Now Platform.

• Employee Center is our recommended solution for employee portal deployments - Employee Center (built on the Service Portal technology stack) is our recommended solution for portals to keep employees engaged, productive and informed—and to easily request services and resources from any department.

• Employee Center will see ongoing investments for the foreseeable future - We are still defining the approach and time frame for delivering employee portals on Next Experience. We expect to support hybrid deployments—with a mix of Next Experience & Service Portal technology—to enable phased migrations of Employee Center to Next Experience. 

12. Are there any plans to move away from AngularJS?

ServiceNow has its own copy of AngularJS, which we plan to continuously maintain and enhance as required for our Service Portal use cases for as long as we have customers using it. There are no plans to move away from it in the foreseeable future.

Additional FAQs:

FAQs on Employee Center features and functionality
FAQs on Employee Center adoption and customer impact

[jawwadhaq]

excellent article, answered all my questions. Keep it up !!!

[Niclas1]

What is the timeline regarding AngularJS replacement? 

[Sancho Pinto]

We will continue to support and invest in the AngularJS tech stack as long as our customers are using it.  In 2022 you will see us continue to invest and enhance Employee Center.