What’s new in Orlando for Mobile

Tom Pacyk · ‎02-04-2020

We made work life as great as real life by delivering Now Mobile in the New York release, and our teams have been working hard to make those mobile-first experiences even better for you. In Orlando you’ll find new ways to personalize the apps, secure your company data, monitor mobile app adoption, and work faster. Let’s do a quick rundown of the highlights!

Mobile Branding

Since launching our new mobile apps in New York, we’ve heard that many of you want to adjust the look and feel of the apps to better fit your own organization’s brand and theme. So in Orlando we’re launching Mobile Branding, an optional for-charge service that enables you to completely white label and personalize the mobile app experience.

Once you’ve activated the purchase you’ll be able to select your own icon image for each mobile app, which will be shown on the home screen of mobile devices in place of the standard ServiceNow icons. You’ll also have the ability to display a custom splash screen that fills the entire display if the application needs some time to load. Most importantly, you can carry your brand’s visual identity through the entire app by defining the primary and secondary colors used for backgrounds and button actions.

Deliver a personalized experience with Mobile Branding.

Mobile application management

We also heard that you need to protect the sensitive corporate data that lives in each mobile app, so in Orlando we’re introducing our initial support for mobile application management (MAM) policies. It’s simply a reality that your employees’ personal devices are accessing corporate data from anywhere and everywhere, but MAM vendors deliver the controls to protect that company data — even on devices the business doesn’t own.

Policies for Now Mobile, Mobile Agent, and Mobile Onboarding can be managed through the Microsoft Intune or Blackberry Dynamics solutions, enabling you to ensure mobile devices meet certain conditions before allowing access to the apps and company data. Example policies you might enforce are making sure devices meet the corporate PIN or passcode standards, have the latest software updates applied, and have not been jailbroken or rooted.

Copy/paste and attachment sharing can also be restricted to only work within a single app, or configured to only allow transfers between a few trusted enterprise applications. And when access to the apps needs to be revoked, administrators can remotely and securely remove company data without having to wipe or reset the user’s entire device.

Secure company data with mobile application management policies.

Mobile Analytics

It’s not enough to simply launch a mobile initiative and hope it goes well. You need to have visibility into exactly how the mobile apps are being used: which parts are most useful, and which sections might seem confusing, and which areas have low adoption. In Orlando we’re launching Mobile Analytics, so you’ll able to drive meaningful adoption maximize employee productivity as you roll out new mobile apps.

Mobile Analytics delivers the trend information you need to understand how many users are active in each app, where they are connecting from, and the time spent in each part of the app. Heat maps provide visibility into which parts of the apps receive the most taps or scrolls, how users navigate between different screens is captured in a flow diagram, and administrators can even review the steps of entire user session to understand exactly what they were doing.

Drive mobile app adoption and usage.

Mobile dashboards

And starting in Orlando, you’ll be able to create mobile dashboards, so you can manage your business performance from anywhere. Be sure to check out the What’s New in Orlando with Performance Analytics article for additional details about this feature.

Manage business performance from anywhere.

Photo Search

With Photo Search, your users can simply snap a picture of an object using their phone’s camera, and image recognition quickly identifies the object to find matching catalog items, services, and knowledge articles. Employees can use this to save time and quickly kick off any workflow like getting help with a monitor, ordering a new cable, or reporting an issue with a meeting room.

Simplify everyday experiences using Photo Search.

QR and Barcode Multi-Scan

Agents and fulfillers will also have an easier time scanning a large number of items with QR and Barcode Multi-Scan. Agents can now scan groups of codes and review a full list of assets before submitting them in bulk; as opposed to individually scanning, submitting each asset, and waiting for the camera to reopen. They can even scan in multiple codes that belong to a single asset, like in cases where a device has an asset tag and a serial number, or any other identifier that needs to be logged.

Scan multiple items, each with more than one barcode.

Dynamic campaign content

Finally, landing pages have been enhanced with the ability to hide empty sections of content. This is great for customers who want to be able to dynamically insert temporary campaigns or seasonal content into the app without affecting the appearance at other times. It also keeps the landing pages clean and simple for users, by hiding entire sections of tasks and requests if they are empty.

We simply can’t cover everything here so be sure to review the mobile release notes for a full list of new features and changes. Now get movin’ on those Orlando upgrades!

And if you're looking for even more information on how to build great mobile apps, be sure to review our new Best Practices Guide for Building Mobile Apps with ServiceNow, our Mobile Migration Guide, and our Getting Started Guide.

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