Next Experience theme for Now Mobile

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Next Experience theme for Now Mobile

    The Next Experience theme for Now Mobile, introduced in the Yokohama release, delivers a modern, intuitive, and personalized user experience. It enhances productivity, engagement, and insight delivery across the ServiceNow AI Platform. This theme ensures accessibility, consistency, and a unified design across both the web (MESP portal) and Now Mobile applications.

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    Key Features

    • New layouts, screens, and card designs improve accessibility and ease of use.
    • Consistent experience between web and mobile through the updated MESP portal theme.
    • Enable the theme by setting glide.ui.polaris.experience to true, which applies new color variables for UI elements.
    • Enhanced search and discovery capabilities for content and people.
    • Improved accessibility with updated input form screens replacing UI parameters.
    • Content sections are converted to record sections to display items as cards in mobile view.
    • MESP portal records can now be edited and customized with themes for a seamless experience across native mobile and webviews.

    Upgrade Considerations

    AI Search

    From the Utah release, AI Search becomes the default search engine on Now Mobile. Existing customers retain their current search engine post-upgrade, managed via system properties and glide fix scripts.

    MESP (Webviews)

    • Next Experience is the new default theme on MESP starting with Utah.
    • Unbranded Now Mobile apps with Next Experience enabled will automatically apply the new theme on MESP portal records.
    • Branded apps or those without the Next Experience option enabled require manual theme update or do not apply the new theme.
    • Manual updates to MESP records might be necessary when upgrading from earlier releases such as Tokyo to Vancouver.

    Now Mobile Native Applications

    • Apps compatible with Utah receive Next Experience automatically on upgrade.
    • For apps from earlier releases (San Diego, Tokyo), Next Experience changes may require manual uptake or reversion using provided glide fix scripts.
    • Specific fix scripts are available to revert or uptake Next Experience changes for key applications including Employee Center, Employee Profile, Content Publishing, and Search Configurations.

    Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers

    By enabling Next Experience, customers can expect a more accessible and consistent user interface across mobile and web platforms, enhancing user engagement and productivity. Upgrade processes require careful attention to application compatibility and may involve running fix scripts to ensure the theme is properly applied or reverted. Administrators can customize the MESP portal with unified themes to maintain brand consistency across devices.

    Next Experience delivers a next generation, intuitive, personalized experience to drive productivity, improve engagement, and surface insights across the ServiceNow AI Platform.

    You can configure Next Experience on Now Mobile.
    • Provide a better accessible Next Experience on Now Mobile.
    • Offer consistent experiences across web and Now Mobile.
    • Provide a unified design experience across applications.

    Summary of enhancements

    The following list provides a quick summary of the improvements as part of Next Experience.
    • Use the new layout, screens, and card designs for accessibility and intuitive experience.
    • Provide a consistent experience on web and mobile with the updated MESP portal theme that aligns with the next experience theme.
    • Set the value of glide.ui.polaris.experience to true to enable the new color variables. A fallback color hex code is used when the new experience is not enabled.
    • Use the color variables for UI rules, card templates, and icons.
    • Enhance the search and discovery of the content and people.
    • Improve accessibility with the new input form screens for functions instead of UI parameters.
    • Convert the Content section to the Record section (sys_sg_item_section) to enable the display of each item as a card (mobile view)​.
    • Make the MESP portal record editable. Admin can now configure and apply the custom theme for MESP portal to provide a unified experience across native mobile and MESP.

    Enable AI Search upgrade considerations

    From Utah, AI Search is the default search engine on Now Mobile.

    For existing customers, when you upgrade to Utah, you continue to use your existing search engine for Now Mobile as it was before the upgrade.
    • Glide fix runs before the plugin upgrade where the current search engine is stored in a system property sn_me_search.search_engine.
    • After plugin upgrade, another glide fix runs to set the value of search engine to sn_me_search.search_engine property value, provided this value is not empty.

    MESP (Webviews) upgrade considerations

    From Utah, Next Experience is the new theme on the MESP. For the existing customers, when you upgrade to Utah, the theme adoption works in the following manner:
    • When you have not branded the Now Mobile app and enable the Next Experience option, the new theme applies automatically on the MESP portal record.
    • When you have not branded the Now Mobile app and do not turn on the Next Experience option, the new theme is not applicable on the MESP portal record.
    • When you have branded the Now Mobile app; irrespective of the turning on or off the Next Experience option, the new theme is not applicable on the MESP portal record.
      Table 1. MESP (Webviews) upgrade scenario descriptions
      Upgrade scenario Description
      If you are upgrading from Tokyo to Vancouver, when the glide.ui.next_experience.opt_out and the glide.ui.polaris.experience are set to true Update the MESP record manually to use the Next Experience theme.
      If you are upgrading from Tokyo to Vancouver, when the glide.ui.next_experience.opt_out and the glide.ui.polaris.experience are set to false Update the MESP record manually to use the Next Experience theme.

    Now Mobile native upgrade considerations

    Here are the Now Mobile upgrade considerations for various Employee Center Applications. When you make changes at the mapping level, the latest changes are not available out-of-the-box.
    • Apps compatible with Utah: Now Mobile, Webviews for mobile, Search configurations for mobile, and Tasks for mobile.
    • Apps compatible with Utah, San Diego, and Tokyo family releases: Employee Center, Employee Center Core, Employee Profile, and Content Publishing.
    Table 2. Now Mobile native upgrade considerations table
    Upgrade scenario Description
    For apps compatible with Utah When you upgrade to Utah, Next Experience is installed without any additional steps.
    For apps compatible with Utah San Diego and Tokyo, with Next Experience changes installed and upgraded to Utah For pre-Utah, Next Experience changes are not applied.
    • Use the glide fix to automatically revert Next Experience changes.
    • After the instance is upgraded to Utah, you can manually run the uptake scripts for each app to uptake Next Experience changes.
    For apps compatible with Utah San Diego and Tokyo, without Next Experience changes installed and upgraded to Utah When you upgrade to Utah, Next Experience is installed without any additional steps.
    Run the following fix scripts manually by setting the runManually=true to revert Next Experience changes for each application.
    Table 3. Next Experience revert fix script description table
    Fix script Application
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - Cont Pub Content Publishing
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EC Employee Center
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EC Core Employee Center Core
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - EP Employee Profile
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - Now Mobile Now Mobile
    Mobile Revert Next Exp - NowMobileSearch Search Configurations for mobile

    Run the following fix scripts manually by setting the runManually=true to uptake Next Experience changes for each application.

    Table 4. Next Experience uptake fix script descriptions table
    Fix script Application
    Mobile Next Exp - Cont Pub Content Publishing
    Mobile Next Exp - EC Employee Center
    Mobile Next Exp - EC Core Employee Center Core
    Mobile Next Exp - EP Employee Profile