Retail release notes
The ServiceNow® retail applications streamline frontline operations and customer experiences. See the following sections for release notes by version.
About Retail
- Enable HQ users and regional managers to create operational store plans involving cases and tasks for multiple stores through a guided, streamlined user experience.
- Schedule and manage recurring tasks such as daily store opening procedures with parent cases for store-level tracking.
- Fulfillment of store case and task for regional managers and store teams through Retail mobile app.
- Let store associates and managers view and act on the Strategic Portfolio Management project work behind a store opening, closing, renovation, or relocation, without leaving the Retail application.
- Let store staff raise, track, and update break-fix and store inquiry cases from their AI assistant using the Retail MCP Server.
- Customer Service Management
- The ServiceNow ® Customer Service Management (CSM) application provides the foundation for the Retail Core application. Leverage the functionality of CSM applications to provide support to customers as well as retail sites.
- Field Service Management
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The ServiceNow ® Field Service Management application aligns with Retail Core by providing capabilities such as work orders for use by each retail location that uses the Retail Core application.
Activation and other requirements
- Activation information
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Install the Retail applications by requesting them from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store 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.
September 2026 store release
Store associates and managers can view and act on the Strategic Portfolio Management project work behind a store opening, closing, renovation, or relocation without leaving Retail.
What's new
- SPM-RO Better Together
- SPM-RO Better Together surfaces Customer Service Management and Strategic Portfolio
Management project data inside Retail. Store personas can browse the store opening, closing, renovation, and
relocation (OCRR) projects for their store, drill into individual project tasks, and assign, take, or
close those tasks.
The experience is available in the Retail Service Portal and in Retail Mobile. It is a consumption layer over the CSM/SPM project tables — Retail adds no tables, roles, or access control rules of its own, and project visibility remains governed by the CSM/SPM access control layer.
- Track Plan dashboard
- Track the progress of a store plan in a single view from the Track Plan
tab of a plan. The plan progress summary shows the percentage of store cases closed and the number of
open, overdue, closed, and all store cases for the selected occurrence, and you can filter the summary by
occurrence. Select a metric to open the matching list of cases.
The hierarchical list view provides a navigation tree of the cases and tasks in a plan, with Open, Overdue, Closed, and All tabs. The tree is plan-type agnostic and adapts to current and future plan types, including the plan types that you configure. The plan progress summary applies to the base-system HQ Communications and Store Audit plan types. Plan types with custom configurations or custom case or task states might require additional configuration.
What's changed
- Template item column for store plan cases
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New cases that are created from a store plan or a store audit plan will populate the Template item column, while the Origin field will no longer be populated for newly created cases.Note:If you have a custom implementation that relies on the Origin field to determine the template item that a case was created from, those use cases will need to be updated accordingly.
Plugin information
- New plugins
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App SPM Retail (com.snc.spm_retail): Enables the SPM-RO Better Together experience. When this plugin is not active, the OCRR project and task surfaces do not appear in the Retail Service Portal or Retail Mobile, and there is no separate setting to turn the feature on or off.
October 2026 store release
Store staff can find their store and devices and raise, track, and update break-fix and store inquiry cases directly from their AI assistant with the new Retail MCP Server.
What's new
- Retail MCP Server
- The Retail MCP Server exposes Retail Service Management capabilities as Model Context Protocol
(MCP) tools, so store staff can work with their AI assistant instead of switching to the portal. The
assistant finds the user's store and its devices, then raises, tracks, and updates break-fix and store
inquiry cases on the user's behalf.
Each tool runs as the calling user and returns only records that the user can already read in the platform. MCP-compatible clients such as ServiceNow Otto, Now Assist, and Claude discover and connect to a single registered server, so future retail tools become available to the assistant without any new server setup. For setup steps, see Set up the Retail MCP Server.