Policy and Compliance Management release notes

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Policy and Compliance Management release notes Yokohama

    The ServiceNow® Policy and Compliance Management application centralizes the creation and management of policies, standards, and internal controls cross-mapped to external regulations and benchmarks. The Yokohama release introduces key enhancements to improve compliance visibility, collaboration, data access, and performance.

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    Key Features

    • Entity-Level Compliance Scoring: View comprehensive compliance scores rolled up through entity hierarchies, combining child entities’ scores with the parent entity’s direct controls.
    • Duplicate Citation Elimination: When downloading UCF content, duplicate citations linked to authority documents can be identified, with one citation retained as active and duplicates marked inactive; control objectives and source IDs are updated accordingly.
    • Policy Collaboration and Redlining: Integrate with Microsoft SharePoint to revise policies periodically and enable policy owners and reviewers to collaborate using policy authoring and redlining features.
    • Improved Compliance Workspace Performance: Removal of the Issues widget from the landing page accelerates workspace responsiveness, with issue details still accessible via the Issues Overview section.
    • Entity-Based Access Controls: Provides granular data access control by allowing administrators to assign user or group permissions to entity-related records for controls, attestations, and policy exception mappings.
    • Control Objectives Deduplication with Generative AI: Automatically recommends similar control objectives for review; users can retain, dismiss, or merge duplicates, consolidating related records like policies and risk statements to maintain comprehensive information.

    Important Changes

    • Some Now Assist skills are enabled by default for new installations and certain upgrades starting with Yokohama Patch 11.
    • Now Assist usage measurement now uses a 365-day burn-down model resetting at the contract anniversary (effective Yokohama Patch 5).
    • The GRC DevOps Accelerator is deprecated and no longer supported or available for new activations.

    Activation and Requirements

    Policy and Compliance Management must be requested and installed via the ServiceNow Store.

    Supported browsers include the latest public release and two prior versions of Google Chrome, Firefox (including ESR), Microsoft Edge Chromium, and Safari 12.0 or later.

    The ServiceNow® Policy and Compliance Management application provides a centralized process for creating and managing policies, standards, and internal control procedures that are cross-mapped to external regulations and benchmarks. Policy and Compliance Management was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.

    Policy and Compliance Management highlights for the Yokohama release

    • View the compliance score at the entity level based on the hierarchy of entities.
    • Eliminate duplicate citations associated with the authority documents when you download UCF content.
    • Revise your policies and update the policy text periodically by integrating with Microsoft SharePoint.
    • Enable policy owners and reviewers to collaborate, review, and redline policies by using policy authoring and the redlining feature.
    • The Issues widget has been removed from the Compliance Workspace landing page to enhance the performance.
    • Enable data access by implementing Entity-Based Access controls.
    • Recommend similar control objectives using generative AI. You can then retain, dismiss, or merge duplicate control objectives.

    See Policy and Compliance Management for more information.

    Important:
    Policy and Compliance Management is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

    New in the Yokohama release

    Calculate compliance score and roll up to entity
    View a comprehensive compliance score at the entity level that includes all the child entities rolled up to the parent entity along with the compliance score of the parent entity's direct controls.
    Elimination of duplicate citations from UCF Shared list download
    Eliminate duplicate citations associated with the authority documents when you download UCF content. You can retain one citation as active and mark the duplicate citations as inactive. Move the control objectives of the duplicate citations to the active citation, and update the duplicate citation records with the Source ID of the active citation.
    Improve compliance workspace performance
    Improved the performance of the compliance workspace by removing the issue widget to ensure a faster and smoother user experience. You can still access issue details from the "Issues Overview" section.
    Entity based access
    Entity based access aims to provide a more granular approach to data access, ensuring that users can only access data through entity-based access. The entity-based access has been enabled for controls, attestations and policy exception to control mappings. Administrators can grant access to an entity's related records by adding users or user groups, or by using entity user fields for entity-based access configuration.
    Deduplication of control objectives
    Using Generative AI, identify and recommend similar control objectives. You can choose to accept a control objective as duplicate, dismiss those that are not similar, or retain a control objective as primary in which details from all other similar control objectives are merged. Additionally, the system automatically copies related records, including policies and risk statements, to ensure comprehensive information is maintained in one location after retiring the accepted control objectives.

    Changed in this release

    Yokohama Patch 11
    Some Now Assist skills are turned on by default
    The new default behavior works as follows:
    • New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills are turned on automatically.
    • Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Yokohama Patch 11): Any previously unconfigured skill is turned on automatically (the skill was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
    Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
    Starting with Yokohama Patch 5, Now Assist usage measurement is transitioning from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model, with usage resetting at the contract anniversary date. For more information, refer to KB KB2704710: Now Assist Usage - Overview & New Measurement Logic.

    Deprecations

    GRC DevOps Accelerator is now deprecated and no longer supported or available for new activation. For details, see the Deprecation process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Activation information

    Install Policy and Compliance Management 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.

    Browser requirements

    GRC: Policy and Compliance Management requires the latest public release and two previous release versions of the following browsers:
    • Google Chrome
    • Firefox and Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR)
    • Microsoft Edge Chromium
    • Safari 12.0 and later versions