Create apps and workflows four times faster with ServiceNow® App Engine

Introduction
The best opportunities come for those who can innovate the
fastest. Today, companies must innovate to maximize efficiencies
while continuing to look at new ways to grow without ballooning
costs. In the face of a potent combination of forces—
macroeconomic shifts, increased demand for apps, and a
simultaneous shortage of skilled developers—businesses need to
maximize their dollars, talent, and time.
But continuous innovation isn’t easy. Creating new applications
and automating processes is still a cumbersome activity requiring
scarce software development skills and resources. As a result, IT
backlogs are ballooning. And with IT unable to keep pace,
shadow IT is rampant. This leads to an unmanaged sprawl of siloed
applications that magnify risk, increase technical debt, and sap
employee productivity and morale.
Here’s the question: how do you eliminate the complexity of
traditional application development and accelerate delivery?
How do you break down silos to create a unified digital
environment where everything works together? And how do you
engage line-of-business resources to scale development, turning
digital transformation into a team sport while avoiding the dangers
of shadow IT?
Get the speed you need with ServiceNow® App Engine
With App Engine’s low-code development and configuration
approach, anyone can build powerful apps fast. App Engine
removes the complexity with proven out-of-the-box capabilities
that deliver consumer-grade experiences, optimize processes, and
simplify 3rd-party integration. And by leveraging built-in
collaboration tools, delegated development, and role-based
access, you can empower citizen developers while ensuring IT
visibility and providing non-intrusive IT support.
Because App Engine is part of the Now Platform, developers can
easily access core capabilities such as self-service catalogs,
workflows, mobile apps, chatbots, machine learning, analytics,
reporting, and more. This creates a connected development and
collaboration environment where everything is shared—data,
experiences, and processes—allowing you to move from tactical
point applications to an enterprise-wide digital strategy. And with
ServiceNow non-stop cloud infrastructure, you lower risk with a
robust, reliable, and secure environment that scales to millions of
users.
While App Engine’s low-code tools and pre-built components turn
your entire business into a high productivity engine for digital
transformation, pro coders aren’t left behind. App Engine gives pro
developers direct programmatic access to the Now Platform when
they need it and includes advanced development tools that boost
productivity.
Accelerate innovation
Develop apps fast with low-code
tools that reduce development
costs and increase time to value.
Scale development across your
business
Empower developers of all skill sets
while providing non-intrusive
guardrails for what is developed
and released.
Eliminate app sprawl and shadow
IT
Deploy a scalable, reliable, and
secure platform where every line
of business can easily build their
own apps within a native
governance framework.
Give users an experience they
love
Create a consistent, consumereasy experience that
turbocharges productivity and
user satisfaction. Deliver responsive
services anytime and anywhere
on any device.
Shift from point apps to digital
strategy
Create a connected environment
where data, processes, and
experiences are shared, unlocking
synergies, insights, and value
across your entire business.
Leverage the power of the Now
Platform
Easily access ServiceNow’s rich set
of core capabilities, including selfservice, workflows, mobile,
chatbots, user interfaces, machine
learning, analytics, reporting, and
much more. Quickly build reusable
components that you can share
across applications, creating
consistency and eliminating
duplicate effort.
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And pro coders can still leverage the power of App Engine’s low-code tools and pre-built
components, so they spend their time developing high-value business functionality instead of
recreating application infrastructure and existing capabilities.
Any developer, any app, one platform
Want to know more? Let’s take a deeper look at what App Engine can do for your organization.
Accelerate and scale low-code development
With App Engine Studio, App Engine’s low-code development environment, anyone can quickly
build high-quality, low-code apps. It’s the perfect way to innovate quickly, delight users, and
scale development with citizen developers. Simply choose an app template, fill in a few
parameters, and press the “continue” button. App Engine Studio builds the app automatically,
complete with data, experiences, automation, and security. You can also easily modify
template-generated apps with little or no code, or create completely new apps from scratch.
App Engine Studio comes with prebuilt app templates for a range of widely applicable use
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cases, including document approvals, event registration, inventory tracking, time-off requests,
case management, request management, team contracts, and more.
Create your data foundation quickly and easily
App Engine Studio app templates come with default data tables—everything they need to
deliver baseline application functionality. Users can easily edit these tables or add new tables
using an intuitive Table Builder. This includes adding and deleting columns, changing column
types, names, and display labels, and setting default values. You can also create tables by
importing existing spreadsheets and PDFs—making it simple to extract fields and automate
existing manual workflows within a few clicks. And with App Engine Studio, Table Builder
integrates seamlessly with Flow Designer. This means you can build new apps from table to forms
to flows with a few clicks in a complete table-driven environment.
Deliver great experiences out of the box
Experiences are role-based user interfaces that allow end users to interact with your app. Using
App Engine Studio, you can easily add experiences to your app by following a few simple steps.
For example, you can create a basic portal just by specifying the portal name and description,
along with the URL and roles that can access the portal. You can also tailor these experiences
using App Engine tools such as UI Builder and Mobile App Builder, all of which can be launched
in context from App Engine Studio or can be used as standalone development tools. We’ll be
talking about UI Builder and Mobile Studio in more detail later in this document.
App Engine Studio supports several distinct experience types, including the following:
• Configurable Workspaces provide agents, case managers, help desk professionals, and
managers with a unified interface to help answer end-user questions and resolve end-user
problems.
• Workspace Builder is a no-code tool to manage dashboards, build lists, and customize
record pages—all in one place.
• Portals are sites where users can find information, submit requests, and complete other
business tasks. Portals created in App Engine Studio include multiple pages by default,
including landing, login, article, catalog, request tracking, search, and settings pages.
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• Catalog items let users request an item or service.
• Mobile experiences allow users to access apps from a native ServiceNow mobile app.
Note that App Engine Studio app templates automatically create a set of default experiences
out-of-the-box that you can adapt to your specific business needs, accelerating time to value.
Automate your apps with out-of-the-box workflow templates
App Engine Studio puts the power of ServiceNow digital workflows at your fingertips. By
automating your workflows, you streamline the user experience, increase productivity, track
progress, and strengthen your business processes. It’s so simple that anyone can do it. Simply
choose from a range of flow templates for common automation activities—such as requesting
approval—and let the wizard guide you through configuring the workflow in a matter of minutes.
App Engine Studio app templates also include flows, providing workflow automation out of the
box.
Want to adapt template-generated workflows to your needs? Launch ServiceNow® Flow
Designer in context from App Engine Studio to edit the workflow or create a brand-new
workflow from scratch. We’ll talk more about Flow Designer later.
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Govern at scale with App Engine Management Center
Low-code app development is now the leverage point to improve how work gets done. But to
scale this low-code effort, governance is critical. That’s why ServiceNow® App Engine places
governance front and center with turnkey low-code governance on a single platform. App
Engine’s low-code application platform (LCAP) and tools make it easier than ever to scale,
manage, and safeguard app development, enterprisewide.
Empower developers of all skill levels while maintaining oversight
With App Engine Studio, IT can establish guardrails within the development environment for
effective governance. By leveraging built-in collaboration tools, shareable app templates, and
role-based access, you can empower citizen developers while ensuring application security and
best practices. With clear guidance and access control, developers across the organization can
develop high-quality apps within pre-established guidelines. The newly streamlined experience
in also allows developers to manage dashboards, build lists, and customize record pages—all in
one place with no code. We’ll talk more about these features in the governance section.
Streamline low-code DevOps with a repeatable, standards-based approach
to app delivery
Successfully growing your low-code practice requires a sound governance framework. From
determining who will build apps and entry criteria, to prioritizing requests and implementing
testing, app development can seem complicated. But App Engine’s native governance
capabilities make it easy, helping you seamlessly scale app development while minimizing risk.
Consider a standard low-code project. From the start, App Engine’s low-code building blocks
make many of the initial technical choices to configure the app—automating routine tasks to
reduce the risk of errors. Then, throughout the development process, governance tools guide
the user on best next steps while checking their work to ensure it meets quality standards. App
Engine infuses automated quality control throughout the app lifecycle, with additional built-in
abilities for automated testing, scanning, and source control that serve as a final checkpoint
before deployment—ensuring efficient delivery while protecting the platform.
Ensure application quality and safety with technical development guardrails
As app creation and delivery scale beyond IT, a mismanaged low-code approach can lead to
app sprawl and shadow IT. Allowing separate business units to develop and launch custom apps
without enterprise standards can create data silos, overlapping functionality, and operational
inefficiencies.
App Engine brings consistency to DevOps with native support for app dev teams to set up
enterprisewide development and governing standards. From Instance Scan to Automated
Testing Frameworks and Delegated Development, teams have complete visibility and oversight
to ensure app quality, while established guardrails protect against risk—driving speed and
innovation across the enterprise.
Manage end-to-end development and deployment
App Engine Management Center (AEMC) empowers organizations with the tools they need to
scale their low-code development. Submit app ideas, invite others to build together, and hand
them off to IT for tests and deployments—all in a streamlined workspace environment. IT can
establish guardrails within the development environment for effective governance and
enterprise-class support.
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App Engine Management Center brings together many key capabilities to drive an easy and
seamless low-code DevOps experience including:
• App intake workflow: Review and approve or reject new application requests directly in
AEMC. Before approving, admins can leverage App Intake User Provisioning to
automatically add the user to the AES User Group. This makes it easy to manage users
and roles, especially as employees change departments or companies. Admins can also
customize the app intake catalog item with the right questions before providing a user
access to AES.
• Collaboration workflow: Control which individuals can collaborate on which
application—maintaining clear oversight of access depending on a user’s assigned role.
Admins can also create specific Collaboration Descriptors—meaning each collaborator
is permitted the right level of access in each app.
• Deployment workflow: Review and approve or reject Deployment requests directly in
AEMC and manage those requests through the pipeline all the way to production. As an
admin, you can also review the App Manifest, ATF, and Instance Scan results.
• Pipeline monitoring: Easily visualize each pipeline in AEMC, drilling into specific pipelines
or environments to see Deployment requests that require attention from the AES admin.
• Application Usage: Gain insights into the usage of your custom apps in production to
proactively reduce risk, prioritize upgrades, and identify candidates for depreciation.
• Application and Developer Visibility: As an admin, you can view all custom apps in
development and production, as well as any developer with an AES user role or
delegated development role. AEMC allows you to drill down into specific apps or
developers, eliminating the need to log into development to review apps or users.
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Improve application security
With Application Scoping, developers can protect an app, its files, and its data—so one app
cannot access the data or code of another app without permission. With a private scope that
uniquely identifies each app, developers have complete control to configure which parts of
their app can be acted on by other apps.
Easily define who has access to what
Maintain governance over developer privileges, app resources, and data access with
Collaboration powered by Delegated Development. Specify user and group development
permissions, so you can keep projects moving and empower the business, all while minimizing
risk.
Expand DevOps success
Streamline app development and deployment operations with Source Control using a
continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) toolset. Developers can use their
favorite source control system to manage changes to an application. Teams can collaborate
and easily manage application version control to deploy apps faster.
Drive deployment productivity
Streamline application deployment using the App Engine Pipelines and Deployments plugin.
Pipelines automate the propagation and installation of your apps from one instance to another.
Pipelines are powered by the ServiceNow CI/CD spoke, which enables you to automate
processes, such as publishing apps to the application repository, installing them on target
instances, and running Automated Test Framework (ATF) tests and instance scans. You can
configure any number of pipelines with any number of instances to support everything from the
“straight to production” app to the “mission-critical” ones requiring iteration through multiple
pre-production environments.
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Ensure application quality
Complete application testing and
upgrades faster with Automated Test
Framework (ATF). Prior to app
deployments, IT can easily build test
scripts and automate these tests with
immediate visibility into test results.
Tests can then be used to enforce
governance and compliance
policies to safeguard enterprise
standards. With real-time feedback
and automation of manual, resourceintensive app testing tasks, you’re
able to reduce development risk and
remediate custom issues with ease,
all while confidently upholding
platform integrity.
Maintain application health
Enforce application best practices and improve the health of your apps with Instance Scan.
Detailed data and in- depth analyses allow you to measure the performance, manageability,
and usability of your apps—ensuring the correct guardrails are in place and adjusting when
necessary. This streamlines your development processes and helps you avoid future
configuration issues.
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A powerful integrated development environment from lowcode to pro-code
With Studio IDE, pro-coders have access to ServiceNow’s full range of pro-developer tools in
addition to AES—you have the option to choose how you and your team develop. In Studio IDE,
you can open and edit apps created with App Engine Studio and Mobile Studio. This allows you
to leverage the simplicity and speed of low code development, and then apply customizations
where needed using the advanced capabilities in Studio IDE. The result? You develop apps
faster, save critical development resources, and enable shared development models across
citizen developers and pro coders. Studio IDE also supports delegated development, allowing
you to delegate specific types of development—for example, forms—to specific citizen
developers.
From low-code to pro-code
ServiceNow® Studio IDE gives professional developers a unified, streamlined development
environment to code, debug, and publish apps. With Studio IDE, developers can manage all
their source files in one place, switch between app versions, and promote applications to
production with a single click. It also includes powerful source control capabilities, including
integrating with leading source code repositories.
Easily create or import apps
Creating a new app is as simple as specifying the app name and a few parameters. Studio IDE
automatically generates the app context and scope, giving you an instant framework where
you can add your application files. You can also import and customize existing apps, including
out-of-the-box ServiceNow products and Store apps1, as well as custom global and scoped
apps that you have already developed.
Create, edit, and debug all your files in one place
Studio IDE provides comprehensive support for ServiceNow development artifacts, including
tables, forms and lists, business rules and UI actions, menus and navigation modules, access
controls, and reports. Simply choose the type of file you want from the left-hand accordion
menu, and Studio IDE automatically creates the corresponding application file and guides you
1 Store apps can only be customized if they are tagged as customizable by the app publisher.
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through configuration and scripting. There’s also a powerful script debugger where you can step
through your code, inspect variables, and set breakpoints. And switching from file to file has
never been easier, with a structured application explorer and built-in search tools.
Powerful source code management
Studio IDE integrates out-of-the-box with Git repositories, providing rich source code
management for version control, including branching. You can easily switch between
application versions for bug fixes and enhancements, and you can commit changes with just a
few clicks without ever leaving your development environment. And connecting to a new Git
repository is quick and easy—just create an empty repository, give Studio IDE the URL, username,
and password, and Studio IDE automatically populates the repository for you.
Out-of-the-box DevOps pipeline integration
Studio IDE provides out-of-the-box integrations with Azure Pipelines, Jenkins, GitLab, and GitHub
Actions, as well as APIs to connect to other CI/CD pipelines.
Publish in seconds with confidence
With Studio IDE, you can promote apps to production with a single click. And, if you have
appropriate permissions, you can also publish apps directly to the ServiceNow Store. And, if you
need to make changes after publishing, you can convert a store application back into
development without having to duplicate your work.
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Reimagine every process as a digital workflow
ServiceNow Flow Designer lets you automate and integrate any business process as a digital
workflow across departments, systems, and people. Its intuitive graphical tools make it easy for
both pro-code developers and low-code business analysts to create workflows, leveraging
prebuilt components and — building their own reusable components.
Build flows fast with codeless automation
Flow Designer gives you an intuitive graphical environment that dramatically simplifies workflow
creation. Simply start by defining a trigger—such as a record change, service catalog request,
or incoming email—and then add flow logic and actions to create your workflow. Flow Designer
comes with a wide range of out-of-the-box actions, including actions to handle emails, submit
service catalog requests, update records, generate notifications, send SMS messages, and
more.
With Flow Designer, you can easily automate both simple and complex workflows. It supports
conditional execution—including waiting for conditions to be met—bulk processing of record
updates, subflows, and parallel execution, giving you the power to automate anything. And
with its intuitive design environment, anyone can understand your workflows, making it simple for
process owners to validate.
Accelerate development with reusable out-of-the-box components
Flow Designer lets you create reusable components. This allows you to build up a library of
standard, reliable processes you can incorporate in all your flows, rather than spending
unnecessary time recreating the same subflow again. It’s also a great way to empower citizen
developers, shielding them from the complexity of advanced workflow logic. These reusable
components include both custom actions—such as updating multiple tables or executing a
script—and subflows.
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Handle complex data with ease
Rather than forcing you to navigate complicated data structures, Flow Designer allows you to
easily drag and drop data directly into your flows. Each time you add an action to your flow,
Flow Designer automatically creates a data element (data pill) that contains the action’s
outputs and then maintains that pill for the duration of the flow. You can then reuse this data in
your flow simply by dragging and dropping the data pill onto an action, subflow, or flow logic
condition.
Seamlessly connect your apps with workflow spokes
Want to expose the capabilities of your app to other apps within the same ServiceNow
instance? Workflow spokes provide an easy way to do this. Spokes are collections of subflows
and actions that other apps can invoke, giving them access to services in your app. Spokes
allow subject matter experts to create easy-to-use interfaces while shielding other apps from the
underlying implementation. Many off-the-shelf ServiceNow solutions come with spokes, including
ITSM, Customer Service Management, Field Service, Predictive Intelligence, and more. For
example, to create an incident from your app, simply trigger the Create Incident flow in the ITSM
spoke. Some ServiceNow Store apps also include spokes, simplifying integration with these apps
as well.
Role-based execution and multi-tenant support
Flow Designer gives you complete control over who can trigger flows and what data your flows
can access, including fine-grained control over who can save, test, and publish flows. A flow
can run as a system administrator or in the context of the user who triggered its execution. For
more granularity, assign a role to the flow and the Now Platform enforces the same role-based
controls as if the actions were being performed by an end user with that specific role. For
example, assign the Read Only role for team members who need to see and review flows,
subflows and actions, but not edit them. Flow Designer also supports domain separation,
allowing each of the tenants on your ServiceNow instance to have their own flows that aren’t
shared with other tenants, which is ideal for MSPs and large enterprises.
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Develop and test in a unified workspace
You can test your flows directly in Flow Designer before you publish them. Step through flows,
examine data, and validate actions—such as sending notifications—using the same intuitive
tools you use to develop flows. You can also create automated tests for your flows using the
ServiceNow® Automated Test Framework, allowing you to easily retest your flows after upgrades
and other development activities.
Automate and connect anything to ServiceNow
Automation Engine empowers ServiceNow platform owners and Automation leaders to
accelerate automation and connect any critical system (modern, legacy, document, and
more) to ServiceNow for streamlined, cross-enterprise workflows. Automation Engine enables you
to integrate modern applications using APIs with Integration Hub, automate repetitive tasks with
RPA Hub, and digitize offline document data with Document Intelligence – all on a single
platform.
Connect in minutes with out-of-the-box Integration Hub spokes
Integration Hub2 comes with more than 175 out-of-the-box spokes for IT vendors and service
providers, including Microsoft Active Directory, SAP, Jira, DocuSign, Oracle, Amazon, Google,
Dropbox, Adobe, Slack, and many more. Just like other spokes, you can quickly and seamlessly
integrate these spokes into your workflows using Flow Designer, allowing you to integrate with
third-party systems without leaving your development environment or learning new skills.
Quickly build custom integrations with external systems using simple, intuitive tools
Once you activate Integration Hub, it automatically adds integration steps into Flow Designer,
allowing you to build new integrations simply by creating new Flow Designer actions. These
actions enable you to build parameterized JSON and XML payloads, send REST and SOAP
requests to external systems, and parse incoming data—including parsing complex incoming
XML data
and mapping it to Flow Designer data pills without having to write scripts. You can also handle
2 May require a separate license
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inbound requests from external systems by binding flows to the ServiceNow REST API, which
creates data pills that you can process in Flow Designer using no-code graphical tools or scripts.
Integrate with your IT network to automate remediation flows and other actions
In addition to integrating with external systems, Integration Hub can also integrate with systems,
applications, and services in your IT network via the ServiceNow Management, Information, and
Discovery (MID) server. This allows you to easily automate remediation and other actions—such
as resetting a server or adding a user to an ACL—using Flow Designer. In addition to JSON, XML,
REST, and SOAP, these MID Server actions also support JDBC, SSH, and PowerShell.
Connect legacy systems to ServiceNow and automate repetitive, UI-driven actions
The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Hub allows you to orchestrate digital robots that execute
repetitive actions otherwise taken by humans. Within RPA Hub, you can create, monitor,
manage, and deploy attended and unattended robots for task automation—all from one
centralized place. RPA Desktop Design Studio for RPA Hub gives you a seamless environment to
design robot processes which can be triggered in Flow Designer. You can also leverage out-ofthe-box components, including actions, connectors, templates, computer vision, optical
character recognition (OCR), and desktop in desktop.
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Accelerate document processing with AI-powered data extraction
Document Intelligence is an intuitive and flexible application for dynamic businesses with highly
variable document processing needs that change over time. Document Intelligence extends
beyond simple OCR, using AI to identify, understand, and extract text and data from
documents. This enables you to accurately extract information to automate document
processing, even when the documents have varied text, formatting, and templates. You can
define what information you want to extract from your documents and teach AI models to
extract that information through the interface. With an AI-first design fueled by user-driven
continual learning, the application improves with your feedback, making it faster in extracting
data from your documents and eventually enabling full automation if desired.
Build stunning web experiences
With UI Builder, you can easily create personalized workspaces and portals for your users using
an out-of-the-box library of over 100 UI components. Leverage state-of-the-art WYSIWYG tools to
build pages in minutes while still retaining full control with powerful coding tools.
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Lay out pages without writing a line of code
Start with a reusable page template or easily create your own page layout by adding
containers to your page. Make your page as simple or complex as you like by applying layouts
to containers, nesting containers within containers, and creating tabbed containers. Then dragand-drop prebuilt UI components into your containers to add functionality such as buttons,
labels, lists, forms, data visualizations, and
more. Easily connect to server-side and
external data resources.
UI Builder makes it easy to bring data into
your page by binding components to
data resources. Simply choose the data
source you need from a hierarchical list
or add your own data source—such as a
specific query on a table. You can bind
to server-side data resources such as a
record or user lookups, with UI Builder
automatically transforming the data for
use with your component. You can also
access external data by binding it to a
REST API.
Create, access, and update client-side data
UI Builder also allows you to handle local data resources. For example, if you’re creating an
employee signup page, you can create a local data resource containing employee records
and then expose that data to components on the page so that employees can sign up using
their own information. For more advanced data manipulation requirements, you can also bind
components to client scripts—for instance, to increment a date on a page.
A comprehensive event framework
Drive client-side actions and workflows by binding event handlers to events on components,
data resources, or even your complete webpage. Different components come with specific
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events related to their function. For example, a button component only has a “button clicked”
event, while other components have many events.
Events can be used for a wide range of actions and workflows, including executing client-side
scripts. For example, events can be used to link a button to another webpage, reload data
resources, display modal dialogs—for instance, to ask the user to confirm before a record is
deleted—and much more. And because components can also maintain configurable client
state information, they can also be used for stateful actions such as toggling colors or
sequencing user input.
Deliver personalized, role-based experiences
UI Builder lets you create multiple page variants and tie these to user roles. For example, you can
create one page variant for agents, and another for managers of agents. Both variants are
accessed using the same URL, with the selected variant determined by a configured set of
audiences. You can also add other conditions to refine which variant is displayed—for instance,
based on encoded query parameters attached to the URL.
Your webpage, your style
UI Builder comes with a fully featured WYSIWYG style editor that lets you edit CSS properties at
the component, container, and page level. You can instantly preview style changes on your
page, making it easy to tune the appearance. You can also define reusable themes and apply
them to add brand colors and other standard visual stylings.
The power of code when you need it
Using UI Builder’s powerful graphical design environment and out-of-the-box components, you
can easily create rich web experiences. But if you need to further customize your web pages, UI
Builder also includes a rich-text editor that supports CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, and JSON, giving
you total control over your webpage appearance and functionality.
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Engage users anywhere and on any device
Help your users be more productive and get work done on the go with mobile apps that work
seamlessly with the Now Platform. With ServiceNow® Mobile App Builder, anyone—including
business analysts, solution architects, and non-technical staff—can build native iOS and Android
mobile apps without writing a single line of code or needing an army of developers.
Build personalized, consumer-grade mobile experiences that delight your users
Instantly create an app, configure the navigation bar, and add applet3 launchers to give your
users access to all the mobile tools and information they need. Quickly build applets by
configuring out-of-the-box templates, including
lists, forms, employee directories, maps, charts,
and more. Then connect your applets to data
sources in just a few steps. And it’s just as easy
to link your applets together to create intuitive
navigation flows—all it takes is a few
parameters.
And with Mobile App Builder, you can do even
more. Create grouped lists and embed lists into
forms. Highlight list items based on their status.
Give your users AI-powered search capabilities.
Send push notifications and campaign
messages. Enable voice search, or let users
search by taking a picture. Use smart buttons
to interact with other apps on the mobile
device, such as phone or email. Leverage
ServiceNow data to display asset locations on
maps or show field staff where to go for their
next job. It’s all part of how ServiceNow helps
you create great experiences that deliver
outstanding business results.
Accelerate development
With Mobile App Builder’s no-code environment, developers of all skill levels can easily configure
and build ServiceNow mobile apps in a familiar, intuitive environment. The Mobile App Builder
interface provides detailed guidance every step of the way, with configuration forms and
wizards that make development easy. Mobile App Builder gives you the power to build the most
complex mobile native apps, while making app development so simple that anyone can do it.
This means that you can scale development across your entire business, empowering business
analysts and other citizen developers to create mobile apps for their lines of business.
3 Applets are configurable components of a mobile app containing one or more screens
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Leverage device hardware capabilities
Mobile App Builder gives you comprehensive access to device hardware capabilities, so that
you can simplify work for your users. Easily identify equipment and other assets by scanning
barcodes and QR codes. Take photos and automatically attach them to ServiceNow records.
Use GPS information to find the nearest resources or navigate between jobs. And easily
configure swipe actions to simplify and streamline your app experience.
Keep your users connected even when there’s no mobile coverage
Mobile App Builder supports offline read and write, including automatic resynchronization when
a user reconnects. Offline data is securely encrypted on the user’s device. And you have full
control over offline behavior, including selecting the specific applets you want to work offline,
which fields should be displayed or hidden, and what actions users can perform.
Add branding to reflect your organizational identity
With Mobile App Builder and Mobile Publishing4, you can request implementation of your
company’s visual identity, and ServiceNow will build, maintain, and distribute a custom branded
app via your preferred method.
4 Mobile Publishing may require a separate license
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Let your business work smarter and faster with Now
Intelligence
With Now Intelligence, we’ve embedded AI and analytics directly into the Now Platform,
helping everyone in your business to work smarter and make better business decisions. And with
App Engine, you can leverage the full power of Now Intelligence in your apps, including
chatbots, intelligent work routing, contextual recommendations, AI Search, performance
management, and more.
Create intelligent workflows with Predictive Intelligence
Help your business work smarter by incorporating ServiceNow® Predictive Intelligence into your
apps. Predictive Intelligence is patented artificial intelligence (AI) technology that lets you
automate repetitive decisions, provide relevant contextual content, and uncover hidden
insights in real-time. With Predictive Intelligence, you can automatically classify work and route it
to the right people, push relevant content and recommendations to users so they solve issues
faster, uncover new opportunities to automate and optimize your workflows, and more.
Predictive Intelligence uses machine learning to continuously analyze your operational data,
identifying patterns and similarities. It then uses these to make predictions and
recommendations. Think of it as the ultimate virtual assistant, integrating seamlessly with
ServiceNow workflows to eliminate time-wasting manual work and surface the information your
users need when and where they need it.
Automatically get work to the right place
With the Predictive Intelligence classification framework—one of four machine learning
frameworks that power Predictive Intelligence—you can automatically route work to the right
team. Train Predictive Intelligence using your historical data, and it learns how to accurately
categorize and route future work. You help your business reduce manual work and respond
faster, saving time and money. And Predictive Intelligence’s classification capabilities aren’t
limited to routing work. You can predict the value of any field in a record from other fields
provided that a correlation exists. For example, you can prioritize work based on its description,
or automatically assess suspicious emails to see if they pose a threat.
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Empower users with smart recommendations
Predictive Intelligence also lets you push relevant content to your users in context. With the
Predictive Intelligence similarity framework, you can automatically surface historical data and
knowledge base articles to identify useful information based on its similarity to a current task. For
example, this is how Agent Assist autonomously pushes similar historical incidents and pertinent
knowledge base articles to service desk agents when they are working to resolve an incident. By
incorporating smart recommendations into your apps, you help your users benefit from the
cumulative experience of their organization, making work faster and more accurate.
Predict the future
Use Predictive Intelligence to forecast future status and performance based on historical data.
With the Predictive Intelligence regression framework, you can predict future numerical values
based on historical numerical data. For example, you can estimate how long it will take to
complete a task, predict a future workload size, or forecast SLA compliance based on historical
trends.
Uncover critical issues and opportunities for improvement
Predictive Intelligence lets you quickly identify and respond to critical issues. Using the cluster
analysis, you can highlight groups of similar records to uncover and act on systemic problems—
for example, repeated safety issues associated with specific types of equipment, or potential
major incidents based on multiple real-time user reports. You can also dynamically segment or
group your operational data to identify opportunities for automation, such as high-volume user
requests that are candidates for ServiceNow workflows or Virtual Agent conversations. And
because cluster analysis uses unsupervised machine learning, it’s constantly finding and
surfacing new patterns as your operational data evolves, unlike static analysis tools.
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Deliver and refine AI quickly without special skills
Although Predictive Intelligence is innovative AI, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist (or a
data scientist) to use it. It’s easy to configure and even easier to use. For example, to create and
train a classification model, you just need to build a collection of words and phrases (corpus)
that the model uses to look for textual similarity, choose the table field you want to predict, and
the fields used for prediction, and submit the model for training. After training, you can then use
the prediction model in the app you are building.
Easily incorporate predictions into your apps
Predictive Intelligence comes with out-of-the-box APIs and spokes, so you can integrate
predictions directly into your apps and workflows with minimal effort.
Deliver instant service with Virtual Agent
With Virtual Agent, you can create intelligent chatbots, giving
customers and employees instant answers while automatically handing
off more complex inquiries to live agents. And because these chatbots
run natively on the Now Platform, they can automate the resolution of
routine issues and requests, reducing costs and offloading agents, so
they remain focused on higher-value support activities.
Powerful Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
Virtual Agent uses advanced NLU to understand what people are
saying. It has a vocabulary of over 3 million words—about 100 times as
much as the average human—including underlying meanings,
synonyms, and similarities. You can extend this vocabulary to add
specific terms used in your organization, such as the names of systems
or departments.
Using NLU Workbench, you can harness this vocabulary to let Virtual
Agent understand what users are saying. Simply provide an intent such
as BookConferenceRoom and provide examples of different user
utterances—for example, “I need a conference room tomorrow.”
There’s no need to understand the underlying NLU technology, and you don’t have to provide
every variation. If the user says it a different way, Virtual Agent is smart enough to figure it out.
You can also use NLU Workbench to get a unified view of NLU models and relationships across
your instance.
Virtual Agent also gives you a choice of NLU providers. While ServiceNow NLU is optimized to
help you get the most out of Virtual Agent, Virtual Agent comes with out-of-the-box integrations
with IBM Watson and Microsoft LUIS.
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Create complete conversations
Virtual Agent isn’t limited to handling individual user utterances. With Virtual Agent Designer, you
can design topics to guide your users through complete dialog flows. And just like NLU
Workbench, there’s no need to understand the underlying technology. Just use drag-and-drop
tools to create a conversation flow, and your job is done.
Turn words into action
Virtual Agent isn’t just a good listener. It does stuff. Need to get a password reset link from
another system or update a distribution list? Or automate a complete fulfillment workflow for
ordering construction materials? Virtual Agent can do that. You can connect Virtual Agent to
your existing ServiceNow workflows and IntegrationHub with just a few clicks, which means it can
do just about anything you normally do with ServiceNow.
Seamless live-agent handoff
When Virtual Agent doesn’t have the answer, it hands off seamlessly to a live agent, creating a
streamlined end-to-end conversational experience. Agents get all the context they need for a
flawless handover, including the complete VA conversation and pertinent information about the
user, so there’s no need to start from the beginning. You can also use Predictive Intelligence to
route the conversation to the right agent. Your agents save time, and you eliminate customer
frustration, improving satisfaction and increasing adoption.
Multichannel support
Meet your users wherever they are. Virtual Agent is self-service on overdrive anytime and
anywhere—on the familiar ServiceNow web interface, ServiceNow mobile apps on Android and
iOS, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and other leading collaboration
platforms.
Analyze and improve workflow performance
ServiceNow® Performance Analytics gives your users clarity where it matters most. Monitor
workflow performance trends in real-time to detect service bottlenecks before they happen,
reallocate service resources to meet current and predicted demand, identify areas for
improvement, and accelerate results by aligning service delivery with your company’s goals.
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Align KPIs with business objectives
Performance Analytics’ KPI Composer
gives you and your business partners a
structured environment to capture
business goals, identify critical success
factors, and define measurements that
show actual business performance. For
example, start with a broad business goal
such as Customer Experience, break this
down into critical success factors such as
maintaining a 90% CSAT score, and then
define measurements that support the
goal —e.g. average CSAT score and
percentage of CSAT surveys completed.
Then use KPI Composer to link these
measurements to actual indicators and reports, creating a complete Performance Analytics
roadmap to achieve the tangible business goal. You can even capture detailed instructions for
new indicators and reports that you want your development team to create.
Easily create indicators and reports
Use intuitive forms and wizards to define your indicators and bind them to data sources. You can
create indicators from individual metrics or complex formulas, create filter conditions — for
example, which records to include when calculating the indicator — set the indicator
frequency, and more. And creating and automating reports is equally easy, with dozens of
report types ranging from simple line reports to dials, geographic maps, heat maps, and pivot
tables. You can also use ServiceNow AI-powered Natural Language Query (NLQ) capability to
create reports and analyze data using plain-language requests, avoid the need to build
conditions or search through lists and tables.
See your performance in real-time
Because Performance Analytics runs natively on the Now Platform, it has instant access to
operational data, giving your business partners real-time visibility. Unlike standalone analytics
tools, there’s no need to wait hours — or even days — until data is exported to an external data
warehouse.
Cut through the noise
KPIs typically show a normal level of variation over time, creating noise. How do you cut through
this noise and see what matters? With KPI Signals, you can. KPI Signal alerts you when there is a
significant change in process behavior, using statistical analysis to identify important anomalies.
This means you focus on real business issues, rather than wasting time chasing statistically
insignificant changes. Think of it as active noise cancellation for KIPs.
Understand the future, not just the past
Performance Analytics includes powerful forecasting capabilities that predict future
performance based on historical trends. This allows process and business owners to proactively
address emerging issues — such as lack of resources, SLA non-compliance, or failure to achieve
customer satisfaction targets – before they become crises.
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Everything at-a-glance with powerful dashboards
Combine multiple reports and performance trends into role-based dashboards that give
different audiences such as agents, team managers, process owners, and senior management
the targeted information they need to make more informed business decisions.
Make KPIs actionable by drilling into the details
With Analytics Center, your users can look beyond the headline indicators and understand why
things are happening and what they need to do about it. They can break down indicators by
segment—for instance by request type or region—examine detailed trends, compare different
segments, and even drill down to specific records to get insights into individual interactions.
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Deliver consumer-grade search experiences
Go beyond simple keyword searches. ServiceNow gives your employees, partners, and
customers the answers they need with an AI-fueled search experience that delivers personalized
information and continuously optimizes search results. It leverages the combined power of NLU
and machine learning to identify the user’s intent and provide highly relevant results that users
can act on right in their search window.
Semantics not just keywords
Legacy keyword searches simply look for words or phrases. AI Search is different. It understands
the user’s intent by looking for contextual clues in the user’s search query. And it also considers
factors such as the user’s location, department, and language, delivering highly personalized
results that empower users with the precise information they need. This eliminates user frustration
and allows your business partners to deflect more queries that would otherwise reach their
fulfillment team.
Self-learning
AI Search keeps on getting better and better the more you search. It uses machine learning to
automatically tune search relevancy, predicting the best answers based on users’ search
behavior.
Actionable results
AI search doesn’t just return information. It also connects users with other useful resources based
on their query. For example, if a user searches for another employee, AI Search shows them the
employee’s business card and provides links to the employee’s profile and org chart. Once
again, this streamlines the search experience and increases deflection rates.
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The cumulative knowledge of your business at your user’s fingertips
Because AI Search runs natively on the Now Platform, it has full access to all your organizational
data, roles, knowledge articles, service catalog, and more, so it instantly delivers accurate,
relevant data (guarded by role-based access) that reflects your specific business. And if you
create a new custom app with App Engine, you can easily add its data to AI Search as well.
Available anytime and anywhere
You can easily embed AI Search into ServiceNow Service Portal and Virtual Agent, delivering the
answers your users need on any device.
Let’s recap
Digital transformation is accelerating, but IT organizations are struggling to keep up. Traditional
development is still a slow and cumbersome process, and skilled developers are in short supply.
As a result, we’re seeing huge IT backlogs and a resurgence of shadow IT.
With App Engine, you change the game. Its low-code approach lets anyone build powerful
apps fast, while pro coders still get the advanced development tools when they need them.
With App Engine, you can:
• Accelerate and scale low-code development with App Engine Studio
• Govern at scale with App Engine Management Center
• Empower pro coders with Studio IDE
• Reimagine every process as a digital workflow with Flow Designer
• Automate and connect anything to ServiceNow
• Build stunning web experiences with UI Builder
• Engage users anywhere and on any device with Mobile Studio
• Natively integrate ServiceNow with anything with IntegrationHub
• Intelligently automate workflows with Predictive Intelligence
• Create intelligent chatbots with Virtual Agent
• Analyze and improve workflow performance with Performance Analytics
• Deliver consumer-grade search experiences with AI Search
And with App Engine, all these capabilities work seamlessly together, creating a unified
development experience that delivers better business outcomes faster.
That’s the power of the Now Platform.