Quebec Features for Store Developers

[Pradeep Sharma]

When Quebec release is around the corner, it’s time for us to learn together about the new features, enhancements, and APIs that will help those of you who would like to develop an application to list on the store or OEM. I'm very excited and want to share with you about the followings.

Last week we opened up Early Access for Technology Partners to get their hands on Quebec, running it through its paces and preparing to submit their apps for certification

In this post, we'll provide an overview of all the significant features and improvements that Technology Partners will want to be aware of, whether you are building apps for the ServiceNow Store or OEM. The TPP technical team is also working on doing deep dives into many of these areas, so stay tuned.

New Features and Major Enhancements

Process Optimization
Process Optimization is a new application in the Quebec release. Process Optimization application helps analysts and process owners to understand the effectiveness of their business processes by using automated business process flows.

UI Builder
UI Builder is a new application in the Quebec release. UI Builder is a WYSIWYG web user interface builder. UI Builder enables developers to build new pages or customize existing pages for web-based workspace and portal experiences using ServiceNow®Now® Experience Components and custom web components.

Al Search
AI Search is a new application in the Quebec release. AI Search application provides a modern consumer-grade search engine for ServiceNow® Service Portal, ServiceNow® Now Mobile, and ServiceNow® Virtual Agent. Intelligent query features enable users to quickly and effortlessly find the answers they need. 

Platform Encryption and Key Management Framework
Platform Encryption is a new application in the Quebec release. Platform Encryption is enabled by the Key Management Framework (KMF), which lets you protect data in your instance with encryption, access control, key life cycle management, and key protection.

Localization Framework
Localization Framework is a new application in the Quebec release. Localization Framework application enables users to localize artifacts quickly and seamlessly and supports different modes of translation for localizing the content

Operational Resilience
Operational Resilience is a new application in the Quebec release. Operational Resilience application enables an organization to continue to provide business services in the face of adverse operational events, such as fire, pandemic, weather, hacking, and so forth.

Health Log Analytics
This is a new application ITOM Health application in the Quebec release. Health Log Analytics application predicts IT issues before they impact users. The application helps you solve issues faster by ingesting, analyzing, and correlating machine-generated log data in real time. When Health Log Analytics detects a deviation from a normal pattern, it alerts you of a possible business-impacting issue.

Instance Scan
Instance Scan is a new application in the Quebec release. Instance Scan engine is used to interrogate your instance for configurations that indicate health issues and identify opportunities to address best practices.

Workforce Optimization for Customer Service
Workforce Optimization for Customer Service is a new application in the Quebec release. Workforce Optimization for Customer Service enables managers, supervisors, team leads, and agents to improve the quality and efficiency of service teams and helps customer service managers to streamline the workflows for large volumes of work. Workforce Optimization for Customer Service provides channel management, shift scheduling, team performance reporting, and coaching opportunities to help managers optimize the workforce.

Universal Request
Universal Request is a new application in the Quebec release that delivers a comprehensive set of features to support cross-departmental Enterprise Service Management (ESM) or Global Business Services (GBS) service delivery models..

ServiceNow Mobile
Too many to name them all, but Advanced text search capability, Mobile card builder, Native knowledge are a few of the new features in addition to enhancements like Expanded Mobile Studio copy functionality, Pull-to-refresh capability for charts and much more. If you have an existing mobile capability or think your app will benefit from one then you should look at how ServiceNow Mobile could accelerate your rollout.

Flow Designer / Integration Hub
Flow Designer continues to grow in capability and Quebec sees many new capabilities including:

• Apply more textual, logical, and mathematical transformations to data pills with new transform functions
• Create tasks for a Record Producer Catalog Item with the Record Producer action
• Create your own local flow variablesGet Catalog Variables action
• Get help directly in the Flow Designer help panel
• Take a tour to get familiar with Flow Designer
• Manage access to Flow Designer features from a single UI page
• Set change request approval rules with the Apply Change Policy action
• View subflow execution details

IntegrationHub too has added capabilities with the addition of:

• Access connection and credential details with the Get Connection Info step
• Build custom SQL queries and filter data with the JDBC step
• Install multiple applications in a batch
• Sync process flows among multiple instances with Remote Process Sync
• Trigger a flow from a REST API
• Transfer files using the SFTP step
• Select MID Server in the IntegrationHub steps
• Get variables in a variable set

Automated Testing Framework
Added support for submit a modal form in the Form category test steps, ATF respects read-only roles in the Record Insert, Record Update, and Implement an alternative way to identify your component by using the sn-atf-id attribute.

Virtual Agent
Added support for Guided setup for Virtual Agent and Live Agent, Integration with AI Search, Custom Greetings and Setup module, New platform topic blocks, Integration with Flow Designer and IntegrationHub, Actionable notifications, Incident Auto-Resolution, Channel Integrations module, HTML sanitization, Secure attachments in custom chat integrations, Conversational Integration with WhatsApp (powered by Twilio) and Conversational Integration with LINE.

Service Portal
Configure the ServiceNow AI Search application for Service Portal so that portal users can take advantage of intelligent query features and quickly find the answers they need, Visualize metrics and interactions to better understand the Service Portal user experience and identify how to improve it and Enable Personal Identity Verification (PIV) or Common Access Card (CAC) certificate-based authentication so that your portal users can log in using their PIV/CAC cards has been added in the Quebec release.

Service Catalog
Service Catalog received a lot of attention in the Quebec release with enhancements like Enhancements for variables, Enhancements for a multi-row variable set (MRVS), Filters for record producer questions in reports, Localization Framework support for a catalog item, AI search configuration in Service Catalog and Create or edit a catalog item (catalog item or record producer type) using a visual and guided experience along with specified restrictions.

Authentication
With respect to authentication, Enables you to create policies that are based on a criteria-like role, IP address, or group. These policies give you more control over the login process. Adaptive authentication uses an authentication flow for users and APIs that is based on the policy conditions that you specify, Use PIV or CAC cards to log in to the Now Platform, Enable mutual Transport Layer Security (TLS) authentication so that your clients can securely interact with ServiceNow REST APIs. and Allow only the specified authentication methods for the ServiceNow REST API resources and Table APIs so that usage of less secure authentication methods is restricted has been added in the Quebec release.

Scripting and App Dev Enhancements

New Scoped APIs - GlideExcelParser, GlideSession, KMFCryptoOperation are a few of the new scoped APIs and methods included in the platform.

Script Tracer and debugging scripts - The Script Tracer can help you filter your debugging search to quickly narrow down script problems. You can identify lines of scripts in the Glide record that have undergone change during execution. Finding those specific lines of scripts rather than doing a wide search helps save time and improves productivity.

Manage customizations to store applications- You can manage your company's customizations for applications that belong to other organizations. You can't change the actual applications that belong to other organizations (purchased from the Store or provided in the ServiceNow base system). But you can create and manage your company's customizations for these store applications via the ServiceNow Application Repository.

Batch App Installs-  Install or update all applications that are part of a ServiceNow product from your ServiceNow instance at a time.

Advanced Work Assignment - AWA now supports View messaging-related metrics that were added to the Manager Workspace dashboard and a new dashboard under Advanced Work Assignment, View a work item's event history, such as when the item was queued and when it was assigned, As an agent, use Assign to Me to assign unassigned, active chat conversations to yourself and Assign work items to agents that are based on the time available in their shifts by using Advanced Work Assignment.

Reporting - Generate a report by entering a query instead of going through the full Report Designer menu, Use business calendars, Build context-sensitive and easily readable reports with more formatting options in the Report Designer and Use function fields in reports to perform database functions, such as arithmetic functions, coalesce, concatenation, and length.

Other

• Removed features and products in Quebec
• New Field Types
• Changes to plugins in the Quebec release

Release Notes by Product

I've covered Platform and Application Development release notes in this article, but if your app has a dependency or adjacency to a ServiceNow product, you should read through that product's Quebec release notes. I've listed those here by product:

• IT Business Management release notes
• Customer Service Management release notes
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance release notes
• HR Service Delivery release notes
• IT Operations Management release notes
• IT Service Management release notes
• Performance Analytics and Reporting release notes
• Security Operations release notes
• Software Asset Management release notes

Feel free to bookmark this post or mark it helpful, and if you think I've missed something, please let me know so I can get it added.

Good luck and happy developing!