ITOM Health release notes

The ServiceNow® ITOM Health product includes the Event Management, Agent Client Collector, Health Log Analytics, and Service Reliability Management applications. With ITOM Health, you can track and maintain the health of the services in your organization. ITOM Health was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

ITOM Health highlights for the Xanadu release

Agent Client Collector highlights:

• Configure the agent log level from the instance, without needing to access the acc.yml configuration file.
• Ensure secure agent connections by adding a self-signed certificate.
• Use expanded Linux and Windows checks. Health Log Analytics highlights:
• Enhance your system with the latest updates: Security fixes; Filebeat, Elasticsearch, and Microsoft Azure Event Hubs data input updates; Java JDK 17 update and support, and dependency upgrades.

Important: Agent Client Collector is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

Important information for upgrading ITOM Health to Xanadu

Enhance your application service mapping by installing the App Service Extension app from the ServiceNow® Store.

New in the Xanadu release

Load the allow list only from the configuration file

Enhance your security by loading the allow list from the configuration file and ignoring the allow-list parameters.

Configure the agent log level from the instance

Configure the agent log level directly from the ServiceNow® instance, without needing to access the acc.yml configuration file.

Ensure secure agent connections

Ensure that your agent connections are secure by adding a self-signed certificate to your operating system's truststore. Adding a certificate to the truststore verifies that the certificate is authentic.

Use the new application Service Reliability Management

Use the Service Reliability Management application to respond, collaborate, track, and self-remediate when working on alerts and incidents.

Deprecations

The following dashboards have been deprecated:

• Event Management scorecards
• Event Management insights
• Event Management Overview
• Health Log Analytics Overview

Service Management Dashboard is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer activated on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support knowledge base.

Activation information

ITOM Health is available with activation of the Event Management plugin (com.glideapp.itom.snac). You must purchase a more comprehensive ITOM Health package, ITOM Predictive AIOps, to enable working with Health Log Analytics. For details, see Event Management setup.

Related ServiceNow applications and features

ITOM Visibility

The ITOM Visibility product consists of Discovery, Service Mapping, Certificate Inventory and Management, Service Graph Connectors, CMDB 360, and Firewall Audits and Reporting . Discovery and Service Mapping provide a unified, connected view of your entire IT network and the services that it supports.

ITOM Optimization

ITOM Optimization contains the Cloud Provisioning and Governance feature. By using this feature, you can provision a private and public cloud infrastructure and services to achieve consistent management and cost visibility.

Event Management release notes

The ServiceNow® Event Management application helps you to identify health issues across the datacenter on a single management console. Event Management provides alert aggregation for discovered services, application services, and automated alert groups. Event Management was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

Event Management highlights for the Xanadu release

• Visualize the chain of events that caused an issue by viewing an alert group timeline in Express List. 
• Understand the connection between the alerts by using Alert Assist's AI-driven technical analysis on alert groups.
• Use the enhanced service map for alert impact visualization in Service Operations Workspace and Express List.
• Select all alerts in Express List to perform bulk actions.
• Remove alerts from an alerts group in Express List.
• Hide closed alerts in Express List.
• View data on Impacted Services in the preview panel in Express List.
• Create an incident with an AI-generated summary from alerts in Express List.

See Event Management for more information.

New in the Xanadu release

Customize the default order of the alert correlation algorithm

Configure the alert correlation algorithm sequence by customizing it according to your needs.

Create team-based alert management rules

Assign alert management rules to specific assignment groups so that only those alerts that are assigned to the specified group are executed.

Create tag based alert clustering definitions by teams

Create tag clusters only for alerts that are assigned to an alert group by assigning tag-based alert clusters to specific groups.

Restrict alert groups across alert assignment groups

Improve the accuracy and relevance of the alert correlation by grouping alerts according to a diverse set of requirements.

Scale out for alert group creation

Ensure efficiency when running a job during high-alert traffic by scaling out the alert grouping job.

View unified service map and the impact paths in Service Operations Workspace

Explore the updated service map in the Service Operations Workspace, designed to focus on the path that was affected by an alert to help you quickly assess its impact on a service. The map displays all configuration items (CIs) for services with up to 60 CIs, regardless of alert status. For services with over 60 CIs that have alerts, it shows the path of the most severe, most recent alert. You can also investigate an even broader view of the service topology. Access the service map directly from Service Operations Workspace, or through the preview panel or an impacted service in Express List.

Perform bulk actions on alerts in Express List

Perform an action on up to 1,000 alerts in the Active alerts list simultaneously.

Remove alerts from an alerts group in Express List

Remove secondary alerts from an alert group directly from the Express List pane or from the preview panel.

 

Procedure

1. Navigate to Workspaces > Service Operations Workspace
2. From the navigation bar, select the Express List icon ()
3. From the express list:
   1. In the active alerts list, select the chevron icon (>) at the beginning of one or more alert group rows to display the alerts contained in the group.
   2. Select one or more secondary alerts.
   3. From the Close drop-down list at the top right of the list, select Remove from group.
4. From the preview panel for a group of alerts:
   1. In the Alerts in group tab, select an alert tile.
   2. Select the more actions icon.
   3. Select Remove from group.

Hide closed alerts on the preview panel and in Link View in Express List

View only the open alerts on the preview panel and in Link View in Express List by toggling to hide the closed alerts.

By default, the Alerts tab and Timeline view show only the open alerts. The closed alerts are hidden. Link View shows the attributes of both open and closed alerts. 

Procedure

1. Navigate to Workspaces > Service Operations Workspace.
2. From the navigation bar, select the Express List icon.
3. In the active alerts list, select an alert group. The preview panel shows the default display:
   1. The Alerts tab and Timeline view show only the open alerts. The closed alerts are hidden.
   2. Link View shows the attributes of both open and closed alerts.
4. On the relevant tab, change the display.
5. On the preview panel, Alerts tab:
   1. Show both the open and the closed alerts by switching the Hide closed alerts toggle to the closed (off) position.

6. In Link View:
   1. Show only the attributes of open alerts while hiding those of closed alerts by switching the Hide attributes of closed alerts toggle to the open (on) position.

View data on impacted services on the preview panel in Express List

View information about Impacted Services on the preview panel and in Link View in Express List and open the Service Map and Metric Explorer directly from the panel.

Create an incident with Now Assist in Express List

Generate incidents from alerts in Express List with a summary created by genAI that includes details on configuration items and impacted services.

Procedure

1. Navigate to Workspaces > Service Operations Workspace.
2. Select the Express list icon in the left navigation bar.
3. Create an incident from a selected alert.
   1. In the Express List pane, select the alert.
   2. From the Close drop-down list, under Remediation actions, select Create Incident with Now Assist.

An incident with a human-readable, AI-generated description is created from the selected alert and a confirmation message is displayed.

Changed in this release

Alert page performance enhancements

Benefit from the enhanced load time of the alert forms and service dashboard.

Calculate impact during loop dependency

Support for circular (loop) dependency between configuration items in the impact tree is enabled.

Automated alert groups perform tag-based alert clustering

Tag-based alert group correlation is performed as part of automated alert groups.

Removed in this release

The Event Management Mobile application is no longer available.

Deprecations

The following dashboards have been deprecated:

• Event Management scorecards
• Event Management Insights
• Event Management Overview
• Health Log Analytics Overview

The Service Management dashboard is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer activated on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process article (KB0867184) in the Now Support knowledge base.

Activation information

Event Management is available with activation of the Event Management plugin (com.glideapp.itom.snac). For details, see Request Event Management.

Related ServiceNow applications and features

Metric Explorer

ServiceNow® Agent Workspace for Metric Intelligence provides a central interface that enables you to view the health of a CI associated with

an alert. Health details for a CI include various metric charts with control bounds and aggregations for single score charts.

Health Log Analytics release notes

The ServiceNow® Health Log Analytics application helps you predict IT issues before they impact users 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 issue. Health Log Analytics was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

Health Log Analytics highlights for the Xanadu release

Enjoy a significantly faster log streaming rate with the Lighting gRPC client for MID Server communication with the ServiceNow instance.

See Health Log Analytics for more information.

Important: Health Log Analytics is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

New in the Xanadu release

Enjoy a significantly faster log streaming rate with the Lighting gRPC client for MID Server communication with the ServiceNow instance

Increase log streaming speeds to Health Log Analytics by up to six times through the Lightning gRPC client, which enhances MID Server communication with your ServiceNow instance. Note that the Lightning gRPC client requires manual configuration to activate.

Activation information

Install Health Log Analytics by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes..

Localization information

The current available languages for Health Log Analytics are US English, UK English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. The default language is US English.

Agent Client Collector release notes

The ServiceNow® Agent Client Collector application is a tool that enables you to monitor the service availability, performance, and infrastructure of your system. Agent Client Collector was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

Agent Client Collector highlights for the Xanadu release

• Configure the agent log level from the instance without needing to access the acc.yml configuration file.
• Ensure secure agent connections by adding a self-signed certificate.
• Use expanded Linux and Windows checks.
• Upgrade the Cloud Native Operations for Visibility Informer from the ServiceNow instance.
• Control Informer execution parameters from the Instance.
• Store Instance credentials in the Microsoft Azure Vault when Informer uses Azure Kubernetes Engine (AKS).
• Enable Informer to connect to the instance using OAuth2.0 authorization.

See Agent Client Collector for more information.

Important: Agent Client Collector is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

New in the Xanadu release

Load the allow list only from a configuration file

Enhance system security by loading the allow list from the file that is specified in the allow-list parameter of the configuration file while

ignoring the allow lists that are bundled with the plugins. You can specify which checks are to be run in the indicated allow list, while ignoring the allow lists that are bundled with the agent plugins.

Configure agent log level from the instance

Configure the agent log level from the ServiceNow instance, without accessing the acc.yml configuration file.

Ensure secure agent connections

Ensure that your agent connections are secure by adding a self-signed certificate to your operating system's truststore. Adding a certificate to the truststore verifies that the certificate is authentic.

Update existing assets

Update your Agent Client Collector (ACC) plugins to the latest version by removing your existing plugins before reinstalling.

Use expanded Linux and Windows checks

Enable enhanced check functionality by using the expanded Linux and Windows checks that come with the system by default.

Upgrade CNO for Visibility Informers remotely

Starting in version 3.6.3, upgrade Informer pods in Kubernetes clusters remotely from the ServiceNow Instance to avoid dependence on your Kubernetes admin.

Override Informer parameters from the Instance

Starting in version 3.6.3, control CNO for Visibility Informer execution parameters from the ServiceNow Instance to avoid dependence on your Kubernetes admin.

Store Instance credentials in Microsoft Azure Vault when Informer uses Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Starting in version 3.6.3, if your organization uses AKS, you can store the secret in the Microsoft Azure Vault. The Informer then pulls the

ServiceNow credentials for accessing your instance from the Azure Vault.

Enable Informer to connect to the instance using OAuth2.0 authorization

Starting in version 3.6.3, the Informer can use OAuth2.0 authorization to connect to the ServiceNow instance for enhanced security.

Activation information

Agent Client Collector is available with activation of the Agent Client Collector Framework plugin (sn_agent) and the Agent Client Collector Monitoring plugin (sn_itmon) in an instance on which Event Management is installed.

Service Reliability Management release notes

The ServiceNow® Service Reliability Management (SRM) application helps your organization to respond, collaborate, track, and self- remediate when working on alerts and incidents. Service Reliability Management is a new application in the Xanadu release.