ServiceDesk Plus pre-release notification

Maintenance for tasks

• Standalone tasks are now supported in Maintenance schedules, alongside requests and changes. Routine activities such as inspections, cleaning, and compliance checks can now be automated and managed from a single place, without having to create these tasks manually each time.

• Advanced scheduling options let you set tasks to repeat on specific dates each month, or on a relative day such as the first Sunday of each month.
• Date and time fields in Maintenances, including Scheduled Start Time and Scheduled End Time, accept duration values in days, hours, and minutes. Whenever a task, request, or change is created from a Maintenance, these values are computed by adding the configured duration to the creation time.

• Use Generate Now button next to the maintenance tasks in the list view to create a task from a maintenance on demand, outside the configured schedule.

• A new Tasks From Maintenance view is available in the tasks list view to display all tasks generated from a maintenance.

• Maintenance field is now included in the task list view.

• Control technician access to the task maintenance using the newly created four roles: CreateTaskMaintenances, ViewTaskMaintenances, ModifyTaskMaintenances, and DeleteTaskMaintenances.

• Task maintenance activity including additions, edits, deletions, schedule changes, and the success or failure of each task generation is recorded in the History tab.

• Configure a custom ID prefix and starting number for task maintenances from the Task Maintenance section under Maintenance ID Settings in Setup > Customization > Maintenance Management > Configuration.

• Custom reports can now be generated for task maintenances. Select Task Maintenances from the Maintenance section in the Module dropdown when creating a new custom report.

Renew Contract with the Same Name

• You can now renew a contract with the same name without adding the Renewed suffix to the contract name.
• You cannot use an already existing contract name. Duplicate names will throw errors.
• After renewal, the list view shows only the latest version of the active contract.
• You can access previous contract versions, along with their complete details and related history, from the Renewals tab in the latest contract.

• Use the All Contracts (Including Renewals) filter in the list view to see all contracts, regardless of status or renewal.

Advanced Date Filter in Contract List View

• You can use the advanced date filter in the contract list view to filter contracts by Active From, Active Till, and Created On dates.

Track Contract Expiry with $DaysToExpire Variable

• You can use the $DaysToExpire variable in contract notification rules to show the days remaining before contract expiry.
• You can view this value in contract email notifications and in the right pane of the contract details page to identify upcoming expirations.
  • For Active or Yet to be Active contracts, the remaining duration appears in days, months, or years.
  • For Indefinite contracts, the value appears as Never Expires.
  • If the contract expires today, the value appears as 0.
  • If the contract is Expired or Canceled, the value appears as -.
  

Problem Closure Rule Enhancements

Problem Closure Rules now support mandatory fields and enhanced validation during problem closure.

• The following fields are now available under Mandatory Fields in Problem Closure Rules.
  • Description fields
  • Group
  • Reported By
  • CIs Involved
• The optional rule, All approval levels should be approved, now includes an additional option, All approval levels should be completed, in Problem closure rules and Workflow manual transitions.

• Problem closure rules now supports problem closure code and closure comments, which can be mandated.
• When closing a problem, associated incidents can now be moved to any configured completed status (except Canceled).

Closure Rule Violation Handling

• During problem closure, all mandatory fields in Life Cycle, Templates, and Closure Rules will now be displayed on the problem details page.

• When closing a problem, pending mandatory rules appear in a pop-up with links to the relevant tabs.

• On status change, mandatory fields configured through Life Cycle, Workflow, and Closure Rules will be mandated in the Problem add/edit form.

Problem Form Rules

• The Status field is now supported in the Field Change event for the new problem form.

Configuration Changes

• Problem Management Settings in Advanced Portal Settings is now moved to Setup > Customization > Problem Management > Configurations.

• Trigger Approval Notifications in Problem Management Settings has been moved to Setup > General Settings > Problem Approval Settings.

Other Problem Enhancements

• Problem statuses are now grouped under Pending and Completed.
• The Description and Attachment fields can now be mandated in Problem Workflow and Life Cycle.
• Tasks are now included in the problem print preview.
• A new canned widget, Closed Problems by Closure Code, has been added to the Problem dashboard to help visualize and analyze problem closure trends based on closure codes.

Problem Workflow Enhancement

In Problem workflow, IF and Wait For conditions now support User and Technician multi-lookup fields.

Revamped System Notification Email Templates

System notification email templates used for mail processing errors, portal inactivity, deletion reminders, and more have been redesigned with improved UI, styling, and layout for better clarity and readability.

Microsoft Teams - Conversational Zia Support

Conversational interactions are now supported for the ServiceDesk Plus Cloud bot in Microsoft Teams, in addition to Zia action commands.

Workflow Assist Enhancements

• Workflow Assist is now available in all editions.
• Zia (Zoho-hosted LLM) now supports attachments and allows users to generate workflows directly from attached images.
• Users can now use Workflow Assist to generate structured business executive summaries for saved workflows in a predefined enterprise-ready format. This capability enables users to understand a workflow’s purpose, business impact, operational flow, and governance details without a complete workflow configuration review.

Wait for Condition Enhancements in Workflows

• Wait for Condition configuration can now be used for event-driven execution in workflows. That is, workflows can now wait for selected events, including all associated subentities, and then resume execution when the defined conditions are met.
• Event-Based Waiting:
  • You can configure Applies To to define the target workflow, such as changes in the parent record or associated subentity events like Tasks, Approval Levels or Approvals, Notes, user email responses, and Worklogs.
  • You can define the required operations such as Created, Edited, and Deleted.
• Evaluation Control Options: The Evaluation Option section is now available for associated subentity events.
  • Skip if already executed (default): Evaluates the condition only once and prevents repeated execution.
  • Always execute: Evaluates the condition each time the workflow reaches this node.
• Supported modules: Requests, Changes, Releases, and Problems.

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.