At Knowledge17, we got to talk to ServiceNow product management regarding the big new features expected for the Jakarta release of ServiceNow Express.
We’ve taken this information, and overlayed it with screenshots and resources found on the Enterprise version of the product to provide insight into upcoming Jakarta features for ServiceNow Express.
I. Access Control Rules
Access Controls are the enterprise grade security mechanism in instances. Today, you’re probably familiar with editing the access controls of a field or table using the ‘Dictionary’ record, and adding roles to the Create, Read, Write, or Delete options. There were two key limitations here: 1) access could only be role based, and 2) access could only be restricted by column or table, and not by row. This old dictionary method will be replaced by access controls.
Access Controls allow for more granular security definitions that include restrictions at the row level – this means you can limit the incident table based on the assignment group, or limit end users to seeing only their companies incidents as opposed to just their own.
To learn more about the concept of access controls, see these resources:
II. Mid Server for LDAP
Although we haven’t seen any screenshots yet, we’ve been told that there is a new Mid Server wizard, which will aid in deploying a mid server to be used for SCCM, Discovery, or, LDAP. It will most likely resemble the existing discovery quick start wizard:
Support for Mid Server use for LDAP is new, and will allow customers to connect to LDAP without opening any inbound connection into their firewall.
III. Change Management Conflict Detection
An enterprise feature coming to Express is Change Management conflict detection. Change management offers the ability to define blackout windows (when changes should not occur), as well as maintenance windows (when changes should occur). This information is combined with existing change information for a given CI to determine if there is a conflict between either multiple changes, or a change and a maintenance/blackout window.
IV. Miscellaneous Enterprise Features
We were told a number of existing features in Enterprise had been simplified and brought into Express in a ‘script free’ manner. We will see how these features behave if and when they do get included in the Express platform. Until then, here’s information gathered from the Enterprise side!
- Create Request UI Action – The ability to right click and incident, and automatically select a Create Request option. This takes a user to the catalog and links the incident to the created request.
- List Controls – Ability to fix a query, add/remove buttons on lists, edit cell editing, etc. This is useful to enforce a query where an ACL is also present, to prevent the ‘Security Constraints’ message from appearing. Also import for adding/removing the ‘Edit’ option on related lists.
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/istanbul-servicenow-platform/page/administer/list-administration/task/t_ConfigureListControls.html - Related Incidents Macro – The ability to see a users currently opened incidents, prior to submitting the current incident
Other features mentioned included additional system properties, alongside a redesigned system property page that would be easier to navigate.
We look forward to an exciting release of ServiceNow Express! Comment your favorite feature below!
