What’s new in the Tokyo release for Workplace Service Delivery

[ServiceNow]

by Jordan Waechter, Senior Product Marketing Manager  

Organizations are continuing to reimagine the workplace and allocation of space in the new era of work to support rapid changes in the world of work. One thing is for sure, we know that where and how work gets done has changed inevitably. In the Tokyo release, learn how innovations in ServiceNow® Workplace Service Delivery (WSD) is helping customers own the employee experience in the workplace, all while solving workplace challenges, such as tracking the lifecycle of space and planning for optimizations.  

In previous years we used to join into the workplace for our 9 to 5, but now that has become a narrative of the past. The workplace has shifted from a place of habit to a place of purpose – a team offsite, a collaboration meeting, or all-hands. With the Tokyo release, WSD enhances its abilities to provide a multi-channel, mobile-enabled solution for employees and the workplace that can also be connected across other departmental solutions such as IT, HR, and Legal.    

Three core challenges we aimed to address with the Tokyo release of WSD.  

1. Offices are shifting from a place of habit to a place of reason, how do we support evolution?
2. If hybrid work is here to stay, what can we do to foster easy collaboration?
3. Since the workplace is being redefined, where can we optimize the use of space? 

Launch of Workplace Indoor Mapping 

With the Tokyo release, we are thrilled to bring forward fully native mapping capabilities that are exclusively available in the WSD solution. This is the result of an acquisition ServiceNow made last September and successfully launched into the market during the May Quarterly Store Release for WSD. 

With the launch of Workplace Indoor Mapping, it includes access to a new Map Studio for map admins that allows them to create and manage indoor mapping experiences for their workplace. This includes things like the ability to import floor plans and designate points of interest, create directions for the wayfinding capabilities, and more. It highlights another way ServiceNow continues investing in product innovations that support both the employees and administrative tasks handled by workplace leads. 

 

Workplace Reservation Management enhancements 

Employees creating reservations are looking to easily collaborate with their colleagues, whether they are coming into the workplace for a team event or have colleagues joining the meeting remotely.​​ Organizations must make the process seamless and limit frustration. 

Enhancements to Workplace Reservation Management enable hybrid meetings with easy integrations for Zoom and Teams and allow employees to access recordings within the WSD solution once the meeting concludes. Employees can also set spaces as their favorites to quickly access based on their preferences, which adds a more individualized touch to their experience. Lastly, to help ensure that a meeting is never missed, notifications serve as reminders for employees via text and email, as well as the ability to add visitors and attendees with ease to reservation invites. 

 
 

Workplace Service Delivery for mobile enhancements 

In the past, as employees and guests are in the office, finding and reserving shared resources could be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. 

Enhancements for mobile include the ability to locate and navigate to other colleagues using native wayfinding, and even set spaces as your favorites to quickly reserve, based on the preferences we discussed earlier. Through the mobile experience, employees will enjoy smart solutions such as pre-filled reservation values, and push notifications to help ensure they never miss a meeting invite, or upcoming reservation reminder again. 

 

Workplace Calendar Synchronization enhancements 

As customers implement solutions for the workplace, we know that it is crucial that our Workplace Reservation Management and Workplace Calendar Synchronization applications stay in lockstep to deliver capabilities for our customers. Customers will need the ability to sync their workplace reservations seamlessly with enterprise calendar providers such as Microsoft Outlook. 

New capabilities will allow an organization to synchronize their spaces with multiple instances of the same calendar provider. This is especially useful when there is more than one of the same calendar environments across the organization. In addition, it will allow important previous reservations to imported to the calendar provider, which is especially useful for customers who did not have the Workplace Calendar Synchronization application implemented at the time they set up Workplace Reservation Management. Workplace administrators will also be able to indicate how reservations should appear on the calendar, such as busy or free for employees.  

 
 

Workplace Space Management enhancements 

While workplace teams have a new light on them for effectively managing their real estate, enhancements in Workplace Space Management now allow space planners to track and manage space lifecycles by capturing status and the activation or retirement dates of individual spaces.  

Based on the space status, administrators can indicate how a space can be used, such as flexibly or permanently. Lastly, it will allow tracking of location status changes and the space hierarchy will automatically inherit those changes to execute space needs accurately and effectively throughout the workplace. 

 

Key takeaways 

With the move toward hybrid work, employees need the workplace as a place of purpose more than ever to drive collaboration, while workplace leaders need to make the best use of their real estate. All the challenges accelerate the need for digital transformation.  Workplace teams have been put in the spotlight to effectively manage and plan space, capacity, and continue to shift the use of their space. 

That is why WSD was introduced to market, which includes the Safe Workplace capabilities, but further enables organizations to support flexible work environments while solving for their space and real estate needs – including the planning of space, measuring usage, connecting employees with workplace services, and providing easy access to reservations or navigation needs. 

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