ServiceDesk Plus pre-release notification

Webhook Security and DRE Support Enhancements

• Webhook header encryption support is now available to secure sensitive information.
• You can now type $ in the Header Value field to view and select available $ variables for dynamic data mapping.
• For Cloud endpoint types, you can now select a DRE connection link name to execute webhooks securely through DRE.

Project Settings

• You can now configure scheduling and closure behavior for your projects from the new Settings tab in projects and project templates.
• When a project is created from a template, its settings are copied from the template.

Schedule Settings

• Enable strict project management: Prevent milestones and tasks from being scheduled outside the project's defined time range. Any edit that violates this boundary is blocked with an error.
• Auto-schedule child entities: Configure to automatically update the scheduled times of all child entities by the same duration if the scheduled start time of a project or milestone is shifted.
• Aggregate estimated effort: Let the system calculate overall estimated hours for projects and milestones by taking into consideration the values from all tasks.

Closure Settings

• Restrict operations on a completed entity: Prevent editing of completed projects, milestones, and tasks, except for reopening them or performing status updates.
• Auto-close child entities: You can automatically close all child entities when a project or milestone is closed.
• Prevent closure with open child entities: You can restrict closing a project or milestone if any of its child entities are still open.
• Calculate actual time from child entities: Configure to automatically populate actual start time, actual end time, and actual hours for a project or milestone from child entity and worklog data when it is closed. This calculation applies only to the entity being closed.
• Calculate actual cost on closure: Configure to automatically calculate a project's actual cost from the Additional Cost field in tasks and the Total Cost field in worklogs when it is closed. This calculation applies only to the project being closed.
• Clear actual end time on re-open: You can have the actual end time automatically cleared when a completed entity is reopened.

Access to project settings tab

You can control access to project settings using Project Role under Project Management:

• Assign View Settings to let users view the Settings tab inside a project.
• Assign Edit Settings to let users modify project settings.

Centralized View for Your Assets

• Introducing Assets tab, a centralized view of all items allocated to you. It includes all your assets, consumables, software licenses, and loaned assets.

• You can self audit your assets and acknowledge them if not done already.

• You can filter assets by acknowledgment status. Additional filters are available for users assigned as Department Head and Reporting Manager.
  • Reporting managers can view items assigned to their direct reportees by using the My Reportees Assets filter and use subfilters for specific reportees' assets.
  
  • Department head can use the My Department Assets filter to view items of all departments within their scope and use subfilters for specific departments and users.
  
• To view your items,
  • For Technicians: Go to Assets > My Assets.
  
  • For Requesters and Technicians Without Asset Module Permission: Go to the Assets tab in the navigation pane.
  

Asset Executive Dashboards

• You can now enable executive dashboards for Assets. The executive dashboards can be shared with all or specific users/user groups.

Sentiment Analysis Enhancement for Request Description

• Sentiment Analysis now predicts sentiment from request description (initial conversation).
• Technicians can view the predicted sentiment in the request details page of new and updated requests.

Zoho Flow Action Enhancements

• You can now configure Zoho Flow Actions and Action Sequences for the Change module, and use them in change triggers and workflows.

Flexible Notification Options for Outlook Actionable Messages

• Outlook actionable messages now support flexible notification delivery. Admins can send only actionable messages, only email notifications, or both.
• These options can be configured globally for all supported notification templates or customized for specific notifications.

Copy Release

• You can now create a release by copying the details of an existing release. To do this, go to the release details page and click Actions > Copy Release.

• While copying a release, select the required fields and stages to copy, including custom stages and additional fields.

Changes & Problems Enhancements

• The Copy Change and Copy Problem forms are enhanced to improve usability.
  • Copy Change - Bulk selection of stages and fields is now supported. You can also copy stage-based additional fields.
  
  • Copy Problem - Bulk selection of sections and fields is now supported. You can also copy additional fields.
  

Enhancements

New Delegation Settings

• Allow approvers to take actions on approvals they have delegated without revoking their delegation.
• You can do this by enabling the Allow original approver to take action on delegated approvals option under Setup > Automation > Delegation.

• If the original approver acts on the approval before their delegate does, the delegate's approval status is updated to Action taken by Original Approver and the delegate can no longer act on it.

Cloud Telephony Integration

• From the request details page, technicians can now place calls to phone numbers in any phone type additional fields. These calls are logged as notes in the request’s Conversations.

Removal of Site Column from Contract and Purchase List View

• The Sites field is now removed from the column chooser and is no longer displayed in the list view of Purchases and Contracts modules. You can filter purchases and contracts by site using the advanced filter option.

Graph/Table Widgets Enabled for Purchases and Contracts

• Graph and Table widgets are now enabled for Purchases and Contracts dashboards.

Parent Contract ID Column Added to Contract List View

• The Parent Contract ID field is now available in the column chooser of the contract list view to help identify child contracts associated with a parent contract.

Parent Contract Support in Import and Export

• Parent Contract ID and Parent Contract Name can now be used to associate a parent contract during contract import and are now available in the contract export.

Parent Contract Fields Added to Tabular Reports

• Parent Contract ID and Parent Contract Name fields are now added to tabular reports.

Purchase Order to Contract Association

• From the purchase details page, users can now associate an existing or new contract with the purchase order.

Asset and License Association with Contracts

• From the purchase order Received Items tab, users can now associate received assets and software licenses with contracts.

Contract to Purchase Order Association

• From the contract details page, users can now create or associate purchase orders with any vendor through the Purchase Orders tab under Associations.

Permissions to Extension Components

• You can now grant permissions to each component within extensions. These permissions will take effect on components only after you publish and install the corresponding extensions.

Connection Scripts in Extensions

• In extension configurations, two new scripts can be implemented to control connections within extensions in production.

Info Widgets

• A new Info Widget is now available for dashboards.

• In this widget, technicians can enter any content by using the rich text editor (or use plain-text mode), configure access levels, and add it to dashboards.

• Administrators can create and add info widgets to the requester portal home page via code-based portal customization.

Associated Organization Roles

• SDAdmins can now assign and manage organization roles for users from the Users list view.
• To do this, go to Setup > Users & Permissions > Users. Click Associated Org-Roles.

• To assign roles to users, click Associate Role.
• To add/remove role-based entities or delete roles, hover over the role and click

• The Organization Roles UI is enhanced for better usability.

Maintenance Enhancements

Maintenance Management

• A new section Maintenance Management is introduced to manage configurations related to maintenance. You can access it under Setup > Customization.
• Under Maintenance Management, you can configure:
  • ID prefix and starting number for request and change maintenance.
  • Date format for the $current_date variable.
  

Maintenance

• View Key IDs from the list view, template view, calendar view, and details page of request and change maintenances.
• Search maintenance in the list view, template view, calendar view, and global search by using Key IDs.
• In maintenance calendar view, use Table Settings to control the number of records displayed per page.

• Bulk edit request maintenance.
  • Only template-related data can be edited.
  • Schedule data cannot be modified.
  • The maintenance state remains unchanged.
  
• The following variables are now supported in the maintenance subject: $(current_date), $(current_month), and $(current_year).

• These variables are replaced with the current date, month, or year based on the instance time zone when a request or change is created.

Reports

• Generate request, change, and maintenance reports with the Maintenance ID column.

Requests & Changes Modules

• In Requests and Changes, the Maintenance column now displays the maintenance key ID instead of Yes/No.

Project Admin Configuration Role

• Introducing a new ProjectConfig role that allows users to customize project fields, configure templates, triggers, notifications, tasks, custom functions, webhooks, notification rules, types, status, and roles without requiring full SDAdmin privileges.

Predictive AI features in Releases

Introduced AI-powered field predictions for the Release module using Zia.

Release Engineer Prediction suggests the most suitable release engineer based on title, description, site, group, impact, urgency, and priority, streamlining assignments and ensuring faster processes.

Risk Prediction predicts the risk value for releases based on title, description, impact, urgency, priority, release type, and emergency helping in better assessment of the process to follow.

The suggestions are shown both when creating/editing a release in the release add/edit form as well as while spot editing an existing release from the details page.

Both features can be enabled under Setup > Zia > Artificial Intelligence > Predictive Features.

Behavior Changes

Delegation

• In request, change, release, problem, and purchase order approvals,
  • Approval comments is now displayed under the corresponding approver name.
  • After delegation, the delegate information is displayed in a separate row next to the original approver.