HCL BigFix Service Management Release Notes v27

We are excited to announce the launch of HCL BigFix Service Management v27, a major release packed with innovations across user experience, AI-powered service management, knowledge management, and platform flexibility. With 16 languages supported, a new Model Context Protocol (MCP) Integration Gateway, expanded discovery coverage, and deep enhancements across every ITSM module, this release delivers meaningful improvements for service desk teams, administrators, and end users alike. Here’s a closer look at what’s new in this release:

AI-Powered Service Management (AISM)

MCP Integration Gateway: Leverage Model Context Protocol (MCP) to expose BigFix Service Management capabilities to any AI agent or large language model (LLM) through a standardized, vendor-agnostic integration layer for advanced agentic AI workflows.
Conversational Assistant via MCP: Perform ITSM actions such as creating tickets, updating records, acting on approvals, searching knowledge, everything through natural language in the embedded assistant, with all actions executed securely via MCP and fully logged for audit.
MCP - Incident, Change, Problem, and Service Request Operations: Create, retrieve, and update incidents, changes, problems, and service requests through standardized MCP tool calls, including comments, attachments, related configuration items (CIs), and related work items.
MCP - Task Management: Create, update, add or retrieve comments, and fetch attached files on task records via MCP, enabling AI agents to manage task lifecycles without direct UI interaction.
MCP - Approval Workflow: View, approve, reject, or refer back approvals directly through the MCP layer, accelerating approval cycles without requiring navigation to separate screens.
MCP - CMDB Access: Look up and update configuration items, view and retrieve CI-to-CI relationships, link assets to work items, retrieve and post comments, and fetch attached files via MCP tools.
MCP - Knowledge Management: Search, create, update, and relate knowledge articles to work items via MCP, with support for minimum-input article creation, related article retrieval, and full attribute-based access.
MCP - Foundation and Service Catalog: Look up user profiles, active users, and group details, and browse service catalog offerings with direct request links, all accessible via MCP tools.

User Experience and UI Enhancements

Self-Service Portal

Revamped Self-Service Portal: Reimagined self-service portal with conversational search, quick actions, personalized dashboard widgets, and intuitive navigation further elevates the modern experience.
Default List View for Service Catalog:App admins can configure List View as the default landing view for the Service Catalogue at company level, replacing the default Grid View for organizations that prefer hierarchical category browsing.
Hide Star Rating from Service Offerings: App admins can hide star ratings from the offering grid view, offering details page, and Ratings and Reviews section at company level.
Admin and User Preferences for Catalogue Page: Admins can configure default catalogue page display settings for all users via Save for Everyone, while individual users can personalize their own view, with admin-defined defaults applying to users who have not saved personal preferences.
Default Incident Service for 'Report an Issue': A default Incident type service offering can be designated per company, ensuring the 'Report an Issue' tile on the consumer homepage always opens the correct incident form without any additional configuration.
Smart Duplicate Detection: Proactively alerts users during ticket submission when an open request or incident already exists for the same offering and requestor, preventing redundant tickets at the point of creation.
Historical Request Identification: Surfaces a requestor's full incident and fulfillment ticket history on support pages, giving fulfillers complete context on the user's prior requests before acting on a new one.
Reopen and Cancel Tickets from My Requests: End users can cancel open incidents and requests, or reopen tickets, directly from the My Requests page without requiring support team intervention.
Delete Attachments from My Requests: Requestors can delete attachments they have added from the My Requests page, removing the need for administrator involvement.
Show Summary Column on My Requests: A Summary column now appears on the My Requests page alongside Service/CI Name, giving end users clearer visibility into their open requests at a glance.

Login and Access

Simplified Login Experience: Enhanced authentication experience with intelligent session management, where SSO users are auto redirected to their identity provider (IdP) on email entry and local users proceed directly to password entry without re-entering their email.
Side door Access for Administrators: A formalized side door URL provides administrators and IT operations reliable local login access even when SSO is enforced, replacing ad-hoc bypass workarounds with a standardized mechanism.

Interaction Management

Interaction Management: Consolidate all customer communications across phone, chat, virtual agent, and other channels into unified interaction tickets for complete service desk visibility.
Create Incidents and Service Requests from Interactions: Agents can initiate a new incident or service request directly from an interaction record, reusing contextual data to eliminate re-entry and accelerate downstream ticket creation.
Interaction Module Character Limits: Description and Summary fields in the interaction module now support 5000 and 500 characters respectively, aligning with standardized limits across work item modules.

Work Item Board

List Personalization and Saved Filters: Empower admins and support users with comprehensive work item view personalization including configurable columns and saved filters for instant access to relevant tickets.
Advanced Search Attributes in Data Grid Lists: Additional attributes are now available in Advanced Search across all new data grid list views, enabling more precise ticket filtering.
Default Filters for All Work Item Board Menus: Default filters are now applied across all Work Item Board module menus, ensuring support users land on focused, relevant ticket views without manual filtering.
Filters Retained Across Work Item Board Navigation: Advanced Search and column filters applied on the Work Item Board are retained when navigating to other pages, persisting for up to 4 hours of active use.
Groups Column Multiselect and Typeahead: The Assignment Group column across all work item modules now supports multiselect and typeahead search for faster group-based filtering.
Associated Company Groups Visible in Work Item Board Filters: Groups from associated companies are now visible alongside self-company groups in Work Item Board group column filters across all modules.
Through Field Column in Incident Work Item Board: The Reported Through field is now available as a column across all Incident tabs on the Work Item Board for channel-based filtering at a glance.
VIP User Indicator: Users marked as VIP in foundation are visually flagged on incident, fulfillment, and interaction forms and list views, enabling fulfillers to immediately identify and prioritize high-value requestors.

Navigation and Accessibility

16 Languages Supported: Deliver localized service management experiences across global teams with support for 16 languages.
Keyboard Shortcuts Enhancements: Expanded keyboard shortcuts with platform-correct prefixes (Ctrl on Windows, Control on macOS) and a full shortcut reference accessible from My Profile.
Branded Notification Borders and Footers: System notifications automatically inherit the primary brand colour from Brand Management for borders and footers, ensuring consistent organizational identity.
Rename ‘Consumer’ to ‘Requested For’: The field label ‘Consumer’ is standardized to ‘Requested For’ across Incident forms and all end-user and fulfiller-facing UI pages.
Dark Mode: A high-contrast dark mode interface is now available as a modern visual alternative for users who prefer low-light working environments.
About Section in Footer: An ‘About HCL BigFix Service Management’ section has been added to the product footer for quick product and version reference.
Updated Favicon: Browser tab favicon updated to reflect the HCL BigFix Service Management brand identity.

Knowledge Management

ITIL Knowledge Management: Introduce structured ITIL-aligned knowledge base capabilities enabling standardized knowledge capture and sharing across the organization.
Knowledge Landing Page: A dedicated Knowledge Center hub with prominent search, hierarchical category browsing, article type and language filters, multiple sort options, and one-click filter reset for faster self-service knowledge discovery.
Public Knowledge Base and Article Access: Admins can mark knowledge bases (KB) and articles as public independently, with a KB-level toggle that marks all articles public by default while still allowing individual article-level overrides.
Anonymous User Access to Public Articles: Unauthenticated users can browse public articles on the Knowledge Landing Page and Article View page without logging in, with actions such as rating, flagging, and commenting remaining restricted to logged-in users.
Login Prompt on Knowledge Pages: A Login button is displayed on the Knowledge Landing Page and Article View page for anonymous users, with return URL persistence so users are redirected back to the article they were viewing after authentication.
Scheduled Publish and Auto-Publish: Authors can set a future publication date; the system automatically transitions articles to Published state at the configured time without manual intervention.
Scheduled Expiry and Auto-Retirement: Define expiry dates on articles to automatically retire time-sensitive content, with proactive email notifications to authors at 30, 15, and 7 days before expiry.
Article-to-Article Relationships: Link related knowledge articles to create contextual content pathways, improving discoverability across prerequisite, complementary, or alternative content.
Knowledge Article to Change Relationship: Directly link knowledge articles to Change records, creating clear traceability between implementation documentation and the changes they support.
Knowledge Article to CI Relationship: Link Knowledge Articles directly to Configuration Items in the configuration management database (CMDB) so relevant guides and best practices surface in context whenever a CI is impacted.
Knowledge Article Feedback: Capture star ratings, helpful/not helpful signals, flagging for incorrect content, and knowledge gap reports — routed automatically to Knowledge Owner groups via feedback tasks.
Hierarchical Display Categories: Define a multi-level category taxonomy for knowledge bases, organized by product lines, service areas, or organizational functions for intuitive content discovery.
In-Article Anchoring and Section Linking: Authors can create named anchors within articles and hyperlink directly to specific sections, enabling precise navigation in long-form procedural documents.
Display Categories on Article Pages: Display categories assigned to an article are now visible below the article title on both the Knowledge Landing Page and the Article View page, improving content discoverability.
Attachments Visible on Article View Page: Files attached to a knowledge article are now displayed in a dedicated section on the article view page, allowing readers to download supporting materials directly.
Knowledge Articles Open in New Tab: Knowledge articles accessed from the Work Item Board, Service Board, and incident pages now open in a new browser tab, preserving agent workflow context.
Knowledge Article Retirement: Formally retire outdated articles through a governed workflow, removing them from active user-facing views while preserving historical records.
E-bonding for Knowledge Articles: Enable bi-directional knowledge article synchronization with external systems to keep distributed knowledge bases consistent across integrated platforms.
Comments on Knowledge Articles: Users can add, edit, and pin comments on published articles, with pinned comments appearing at the top. Knowledge Managers and Owners can manage pins, and all comments are ordered by most recent.
Friendly URLs for Knowledge Pages: The Knowledge Landing Page and Article View page now use human-readable URLs with tenant alias and article title slug, replacing backend IDs for cleaner navigation and bookmarking.

Incident Management

Swarming Collaboration: Create dedicated collaboration spaces across channels with real-time conversations, summarization, bi-directional comment sync, and automatic archival, where AI auto-recommends resolution groups and members for critical and high priority incidents based on historical patterns to accelerate incident resolution
Incident Templates: Save and apply pre-defined incident field combinations as reusable templates during ticket creation, with role-based ownership and group-level sharing for consistent, faster data entry.
Global Incident Flag: Tag incidents as Global Incidents to identify organization-wide service disruptions, with list view filtering and reporting support built in.
Auto-Resolve Related Incidents on Problem Closure: Automatically set all open related incidents to Fixed and copy the problem’s closure notes to their Resolution Notes when a problem is closed as ‘Closed – Implemented’.
Parent-Child Assignment Group Synchronization: Automatically propagate Assignment Group and Assignee changes from a parent incident to all open child incidents, reducing manual reassignment overhead.
Editable Custom Attributes Post-Closure: Configure which custom attributes remain editable after terminal status, enabling post-closure data capture for compliance or quality management without reopening the ticket.
Configurable 'Reported Through' Field: Define company-specific values for the incident ‘Reported Through’ channel field with visibility controls to hide unused options per tenant.
Add New User from Incident Form: Create a new user profile directly from the Requested For or Caller field on the Incident form, eliminating navigation to separate admin screens during urgent ticket logging.
Retain Assignment Group on Mandatory Field Updates: Assignment Group is no longer cleared when users update mandatory fields on Incident, Problem, and Change forms — it persists until explicitly removed.
Copy Incident Enhancements: Copied incidents now inherit the 'Reported Through' value and Assignment Group from the original, ensuring channel attribution and ownership continuity.
Requestor Location Across All Modules: A unified Requestor Location attribute is now available across incident, problem, change, fulfillment, and task modules, auto-populated from the requestor’s profile and CI data for alert-based incidents.
Duplicate Ticket Prevention from Email Auto-Replies: The Email-to-Ticket flow detects and suppresses out-of-office and automated reply to emails, preventing duplicate ticket creation from notification feedback loops.
Email-to-Ticket (E2T) Reply Handling: Replies to system-generated ticket emails are now identified via watermark and routed to update the existing ticket rather than creating a new one, preventing duplicate ticket creation across all E2T-configured mailboxes.
Mandatory 'Caused by Change' and 'Caused by Service Request' Fields: Company-configurable radio button fields on the Incident form require agents to confirm whether the incident was caused by a Change or Service Request before moving to Fixed, with mandatory linkage to the relevant record enforced when the answer is 'Yes'.
Updated Impacted CI Reflected in Related CIs: When the Impacted CI field on an Incident is updated after initial creation, the new CI is now also captured in the Related CIs section, correcting the prior behavior where only the first selection was recorded.
Configurable Incident Priority Levels: Administrators can configure the number of priority levels displayed on the Incident form, example 3, 4, or 5 values, enabling organizations with non-standard prioritization schemes to align the product with their operational model.
Impacted CI Quick View Enhancements: The CI quick view panel on the Incident form now shows Location and Assigned To alongside existing CI details, with a hyperlinked CI Name to open the full CI record in a new tab.
Impacted CI Search Enhancements: The Impacted CI field on the Incident form now supports search by CI Name, CI ID, Serial Number, and Assigned To, in addition to existing search options.
Cross-Customer Ticket Isolation: Tickets belonging to one customer can no longer be related as Parent, Child, or Peer Of to tickets of another customer, enforcing strict tenant boundary rules across all modules.
HTML and Special Character Handling via eBonding: HTML tags and special characters received through eBonding in Summary, Description, comments, and work notes are now handled correctly, preventing data corruption in integrated environments.
Attachments Passed via Outbound APIs on Ticket Creation: Attachments added during ticket creation are now included in outbound API payloads, ensuring integrated external systems receive complete ticket data from submission.

Request Fulfillment

Priority Enablement for Service Requests: Impact and Urgency fields can be configured on Service Request smart forms; the system auto-calculates Priority using a configurable matrix for better prioritization and service level agreement (SLA) alignment.
Summary in All Fulfillment Notifications: A Summary template variable has been added across all fulfillment email notifications, surfacing key request details to approvers, fulfillers, and requestors from submission through closure.
Configurable Auto-Closure Policy: Define company-specific auto-closure windows in hours for Incident and Fulfillment tickets independently, controlling when unresponded tickets are automatically closed after reaching Fixed or Fulfilled status.
Urgency, Impact, and Priority Visibility Control: Administrators can control visibility of Urgency, Impact, and Priority fields on Fulfillment records in the Work Item Board for organizations that do not use priority-based fulfillment workflows.
Fulfillment Through Field Set to Phone from Interaction: When a fulfillment ticket is created from an Interaction, the Through field is automatically set to ‘Phone’ to correctly reflect the originating channel.
Populate Foundation User Data onto Catalog Questions: User data fields from Foundation (designation, department, L1, L2, and other profile attributes) can now be auto populated onto PI questions in the Service Catalog, reducing manual data entry.

Change Management

Change Calendar with Maintenance and Freeze Windows: Visualize and manage scheduled maintenance windows and change freeze periods to ensure controlled deployment timing.
Maintenance and Freeze Window Warnings on RFC: Intelligent validation of planned change dates against configured maintenance and freeze windows for selected CIs displays clear warnings when conflicts are detected.
Configurable 'Reason for Change' Field: The 'Reason for Change' field values are now company-configurable menu lists, enabling alignment with ITIL frameworks or organizational terminology per tenant.
Create New CI Directly from Change: Change Managers and Change Users can create a new CI from the Create Change page without separate CMDB access, with the new CI immediately available in the Impacted CI field.
Configurable Multi-CI Approval Visibility: A company-level property controls whether the ‘Approval on Multi CI’ checkbox is visible on the Change form, keeping the UI focused for organizations that do not use multi-CI approvals.
Tenant-Specific Risk Assessment and Change Type Visibility: Administrators can hide specific Risk Assessment Methodology options and Change Type values per tenant, presenting only the options relevant to their governance model.
Sequenced Drop-Down Answers in Risk Assessment: Drop-down answers in the customized Change Risk Assessment Questionnaire now appear in a predefined logical sequence across all change records.
Rename Test Result to Test Plan: The Change Plans section field label has been updated from ‘Test Result’ to ‘Test Plan’ to accurately reflect its intent during the change planning phase.
Change Plan Character Limit Increase: Character limit for Change plan fields (Implementation Plan, Backout Plan, and others) increased from 2000 to 5000 characters.
Change Form Summary and Description Character Limit Increase: The character limit for Summary field on the Change form has been increased from 500 to 1000 characters and the Description field from 5000 to 20,000 characters, supported end-to-end across UI, API, eBonding, and notifications.
Mandatory Related Ticket Before Change Submission: Company admins can enforce a policy requiring Normal, Emergency, and Latent changes to have at least one related work item before submission for review, with a configurable error message displayed when the condition is not met.
Change Implementation Task Governance: Support users are restricted from progressing implementation tasks before the scheduled change start date, with implementation task dates auto populated from the Change scheduled dates and user modifications validated within the change window.
Test Task Dates Auto Copied from Change Form: When Testing Required is enabled on a Change, planned start and end dates from the testing window are automatically copied to all default test tasks, with validation preventing dates outside the testing window.
Prevent Attachment Deletion After Change Approval: Once a Change ticket reaches Under Review status, all existing attachments are locked and delete controls are removed from the UI and blocked at the API level across all roles.
Change Plans and Related Records Outbound to External ITSM: Validation, test, backout, and implementation plan details along with related work items and CIs from Change tickets are now included in outbound payloads to external ITSM systems, ensuring complete change data flows through integrations.
Reviewer Scoped to Support Group in Change Tasks: When assigning a reviewer to an implementation change task, only members of the relevant support group are shown, reducing assignment errors and enforcing change governance.

Problem Management

Auto-Propagate Problem Resolutions: Automatically apply proven problem fixes to related incidents for faster closure and reduced manual effort.
RCA and Attachments on Problem Approval Page: Approvers can review full root cause analysis (RCA) details and supporting attachments directly on the Problem Approval page, enabling faster and better-informed decisions.
RCA Section Field Rearrangement: Fields in the RCA section on the problem record have been reorganized for a more logical investigation flow.
Auto-Create Problem on P1/P2 Incident Resolution: A company-configurable setting automatically opens a Problem ticket when a P1 or P2 incident is resolved, inheriting key incident details, with the auto-created problem visible in the incident's Related Work Items section and activity comments.

Task Management

Task Comment Notifications with Visual Highlights: External comments added to tasks now automatically notify the requestor by email and are visually highlighted, ensuring users never miss updates without checking My Requests.
Editable Task Template Name: The Summary field of Task Templates and Task Plans can now be edited after creation, eliminating the need to recreate entire plans to correct names or reflect scope changes.
Task Template Name Character Limit Increased: The character limit for Task Template names has been increased to 100 characters to accommodate more descriptive template naming.
Ad-hoc Task Creation Flash Confirmation: An immediate pop-up confirmation message on success or failure is displayed after creating an ad-hoc task from any work item.
Task Email Notifications at All Lifecycle Events: Email notifications for Task module events now fire at all lifecycle stages including Draft status, consistent with other modules.
Task Form and Template Consistency Fixes: Inconsistencies between the Task form and Task Template form have been resolved for a standardized field layout and behaviour across both views.

SLA Management

Multi-Event SLA with Flexible Work Schedule Windows: Define multiple exclusion windows within SLA work schedules with flexible time unit specifications, enabling split shifts, lunch hour exclusions, and complex operational patterns for precise service level management.
Assignee as SLA Configuration Attribute: The ‘Assignee’ field with an ‘is not empty’ operator is now available for Incident, Problem, Fulfillment, and Task SLAs, enabling Response SLA clocks to start only after active assignment.
Source Attribute for Problem SLAs: Define distinct SLA commitments for problem records based on detection source, enabling differentiated response targets for proactive vs. reactive vs. vendor-reported problems.
Default Inactive Status on SLA Target Definition: New SLA Target Definitions are created Inactive by default, preventing premature activation of partially configured definitions before deliberate enablement.
SLA View Accessible via Direct Link: SLA View and Calendar pages for all applicable modules can now be opened in a new or same tab via a direct link, enabling bookmarking and dashboard integration.
Resolution SLA and Response SLA Columns: Resolution SLA and Response SLA columns are now available in work item list views, giving teams direct SLA status visibility without navigating to the SLA board.
Urgency and Impact as SLA Attributes: Urgency and Impact fields are now available as Start, Stop, and Pause conditions when defining SLAs for Incident and Fulfillment modules, enabling OLA configurations that go beyond Priority alone.
SLA on Priority for Fulfillment and isVIP for Incident: Priority is now a configurable SLA attribute for Fulfillment tickets and isVIP is available for Incident SLAs, enabling differentiated service commitments for high-priority requests and VIP users.
Configurable SLA Milestone Threshold and Recipients: Administrators can set and edit numeric threshold percentages for SLA milestone events, with an expanded recipients list including a new Assignee's Second Level Manager option.
Max Allowed Milestone Events per Company: A new company-level admin setting caps the number of SLA milestone events that can be created per SLA, with an error displayed when the limit is reached.
Work Schedule Timezone Sorting and Typeahead: The timezone dropdown in SLA Work Schedule configuration is now sorted by UTC offset with typeahead search, and labels display country/city alongside the offset for faster and accurate timezone selection.

Work Item Management

Work Item Field Standardization: Summary and Description fields standardized across Incident, Problem, Change, Task, and Fulfillment with consistent character limits (500 and 5000 respectively), minimum display heights, and rich text editor support.
Causal Relationship Types Across Work Items: Add causal relationship types (Causes, Mitigates, Implements, Resolves, Duplicate of, and more) when linking work items, enabling precise dependency and impact modelling across all modules.
Related Work Items Captured in Comments: Linking and unlinking work items across all modules is automatically recorded in activity comments for complete relationship history and audit traceability.
Work Item Hyperlinks in All Email Notifications: Work item numbers in all email notifications are now clickable hyperlinks, enabling one-click navigation from the notification to the relevant ticket.
Approval Hyperlinks on My Approvals Page: Change ID numbers on the My Approvals page are now hyperlinked for one-click navigation to the associated change record.
My Approvals Visible to All Service Consumers: The My Approvals section is now visible to all Service Consumer users regardless of explicit Approver role assignment, reducing confusion when ad-hoc approvals are assigned.
Enable .eml File Attachments: Support for .eml file extension enables users to attach forwarded emails directly to work items across all modules.
Display Upload Date and Order for Attachments: Attachments are now displayed newest-to-oldest with upload date and time visible, enabling quick identification of the most recent supporting documentation.
Bi-Directional Comment Sync with External Systems: Comment synchronization between BigFix Service Management and integrated external collaboration systems now operates bi-directionally, keeping ticket commentary consistent across platforms.
Module-Specific Operational Categorization: Operational Categories in Incident, Problem, and Change now support independent configuration at four depth levels (0–3) per module, aligning categorization with each workflow’s taxonomy requirements.
Notify Function Body Character Limit Increased to 20,000: The Body field in the Notify function across all work item modules now supports up to 20,000 characters with rich text, up from 1,000, enabling more detailed communications directly from tickets.
Support Group Info Icon: An info icon on the Support Group field across all modules opens a panel showing Group Email, Description, Manager names and email IDs, and Member details, with a link to the full group record.
Watcher Search Enhancements: Users can now search for watchers by email, username, and employee number in addition to full name, with additional user details such as email and company shown in search results to aid correct user selection.

Asset / CI Management

Exception Console: Review and manage CMDB data from multiple discovery sources in a centralized staging area before accepting or rejecting updates, combining automation with human oversight for high-quality configuration data.
Expanded Infrastructure and Cloud Discovery Coverage: Extend agentless discovery across UNIX servers (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris), VMware environments, enterprise storage (EMC, NetApp), databases (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL), and cloud containers (AWS EKS, Azure, GCP GKE).
Discovery APIs for CMDB Integration: Leverage APIs for agentless discovery to enable automated CMDB population and updates from external asset and infrastructure data sources.
Flexible Asset Status Transitions: Configure custom asset lifecycle state transitions that align with your organization’s specific management processes.
Out-of-the-Box Causal and Entity Relationships: A comprehensive seeded set of relationship types and entity-to-entity mappings across modules provides a ready-to-use relationship model for impact analysis, dependency modelling, and cross-module navigation.
Notes and Comments for CI Records: Add descriptive notes and comments to CI records in CMDB with rich text support for better asset context documentation.
CI Name Label Standardization: The ‘Name’ attribute label in the Asset/Config Board list view and CI form has been updated to ‘CI Name’ for consistent terminology.
Business Owner, Technical Owner, and Other Users on My Assets: Business Owner, Technical Owner, and Other Users field details are now displayed on the ‘Assigned to Me’ tab of the My Assets/CIs section on the consumer homepage.
Email Notification on Asset Assignment: Email notifications are automatically sent to the Assigned To user and Other Users whenever an asset is assigned to them.
Assigned To Column in Asset/Config Board List View: The Assigned To field is now available as a configurable column in the Asset/Config Board list view via UI Builder.
Restrict Duplicate CI Creation on Null Serial Number: The system now prevents creation of duplicate CI records when Serial Number is passed as null, enforcing CMDB data quality during discovery and bulk imports.
CMDB Data Template Accepts Email for User Fields: CMDB bulk upload templates now accept email addresses for user-related fields in addition to username, simplifying imports where email is the primary user identifier.
API for Outbound CI Custom Attribute Updates: A new API enables custom attribute updates on CI records to be pushed outbound to integrated external systems, keeping downstream platforms in sync with CMDB.
Reconciliation Data Push Support: Reconciliation now supports inbound data push in addition to the existing pull-only model, enabling more flexible and real-time CMDB reconciliation.
Location Field Enhancements on CI Form and User Records: Location fields on CI records in Asset/Config Board and on User records in Foundation now display comprehensive context identifiers to prevent ambiguous location selection.
CI Search by Comma-Separated Input: When relating a CI to a work item, users can search using multiple comma-separated values for Serial Number, CI Name, Hostname, and Asset/CI Code simultaneously, with up to 25 values supported per search.
Relate Contract Records from CI Form: Contract records can now be related directly from the CI form in a dedicated Related Contracts section, with search by Contract Number, Name, and Type and a hyperlinked Contract ID opening the contract in a new tab.
Service Location Mapping: Define and manage service location relationships in the Asset Config Board, mapping serviced and serving locations with relationship type, service contacts, priority, and effective dates for structured location-based service coverage.

Catalog Management

Multi-Currency Support for Service Catalog: Catalog Managers can define pricing for services and components in multiple currencies, with automatic display in the end user’s preferred currency for localized, accurate service ordering.
Service Board Short Description UI Enhancements: UI enhancements to the short description field in the Service Board improve how product details are displayed on the offering details page.
CI Pricing on Service Board: Price data configured on CI records in CMDB is now surfaced on the Service Board when a user selects a CI while raising a service request, giving both end users and support staff visibility of asset pricing at the point of ordering.
Preserve Dependent Question Mapping on Parent Question Edit: When a new response value is added to a parent question on a service offering, existing dependent questions retain their parent-value mapping, eliminating the need to manually retag dependent questions after every parent update.
Service Offering Publish and Expiry Dates with Notifications: Catalog Managers can set Publish and Expiry dates on service offerings with configurable auto-transition to Published or Suspended state and scheduled reminder notifications at defined frequencies.

Analytics and Reporting

Hyperlinks in Reports and Dashboards: Dynamic hyperlinks can now be embedded in analytics reports, enabling direct navigation from dashboard visualizations to underlying records for Incidents, Problems, Changes, Fulfillment, Tasks, CIs, and Knowledge articles.
Company-Specific Reports and Dashboards: Reports and dashboards are now company-isolated by default with role-based access and visibility controls, enabling multi-tenant report governance.
SLA Dashboard: A new dedicated SLA Dashboard provides performance visibility across modules including a Task SLA tab, giving operations teams a unified view of service level compliance.
Survey Tracking for All Modules: Enable and configure survey feedback for Interaction, Problem, and Change modules on a company-specific basis, extending satisfaction measurement beyond Incident and Fulfillment.
Survey Rating and Comments Report: A new report captures survey ratings and comments across all modules, enabling service quality trend analysis based on actual user feedback.
Requestor Location in All Module Reports: Requestor Location is now available as a reportable column across Incident, Problem, Fulfillment, and Change reports for location-based service analytics.
Resolution Notes and Type of Fix in Incident Reports: Resolution Notes is now available as a column and Type of Fix as a filter in Incident reports, enabling deeper resolution quality analysis.
Date Filter in Fulfillment PI Response Tab: A date filter has been added to the PI Response tab in the Fulfillment report for time-scoped analysis of question response data.
Time Range Filter for External Attributes in Reports: A Time Range filter is now available on the External Attributes tab across all module reports.
Report Export Formatting Fix: Reports downloaded via the export option now retain proper formatting and column alignment, resolving the issue where exported data appeared jumbled.
Assignment Group History Report: A new report provides full traceability of Assignment Group ownership changes across ticket lifecycles for audit and performance analysis.
Interaction Module Reports: New reports for the Interaction module provide visibility into service desk conversation volumes, channel distribution, and agent performance.
Scheduled Report Delivery: Administrators with dedicated analytics instances can schedule reports to be automatically delivered to single or multiple recipients, with dashboard reports sent as images, tabular reports as CSV, configurable email body, and To/CC recipient management.
Report Sequence Starting from 1: Row sequencing in exported reports now starts from 1 instead of 0, correcting the display inconsistency in extracted analytics reports.

Notifications and Surveys

Survey Pending Count Across All Modules: The My Surveys icon in the header now shows the total count of pending surveys across all work item types including Change, Interaction, and Problem tickets.
Configurable Survey Response Timing: Administrators can configure survey reminder frequency and reminder count per tenant for Incident and Fulfillment, with the system automatically calculating the total survey window and stopping reminders on ticket auto-closure.
Reopen Ticket from Survey Feedback Email: Users can reopen a ticket directly from a survey feedback email without logging into the product.
Survey via Email UX Improvements: The end-to-end experience for submitting survey responses via email has been refined for clarity and ease of submission.
Multilingual Survey Emails: Survey response emails are now sent in the user’s configured language preference, enabling multilingual satisfaction feedback without requiring product login.
Notification to Asset Owners on Assignment: Email notifications are automatically sent to Assigned To users and Other Users when an asset is assigned to them.
Hyperlink in Pending Approval Notifications: Pending approval notification emails now include a direct hyperlink to the approval record for one-click navigation.
Survey Restricted to 'Requested For' User Only: Survey emails are now sent exclusively to the 'Requested For' user across Incident, Fulfillment, Change, Problem, and Interaction modules, with watchers excluded from survey To/CC fields.
Rejection Notification to Assignment Group on Fulfillment: A new notification event triggers an email to the Assignment Group whenever a Fulfillment request is rejected, keeping support teams informed without manual follow-up.
External Notification Flag for Watchers: A new External Notification checkbox on watcher records controls whether a watcher receives requester-facing or fulfiller-facing notifications, with CC recipients added via Email-to-Ticket defaulting to External Notification enabled.
Standard Notification Template Variables Across All Modules: A standardized set of work item variables including Ticket Number, Requestor, CI Name, Serial Number, Assignment Group, Status, and Resolution Notes is now available across all notification templates for both email subject and body.
Notify Subject Line Format: When using the Notify option on a ticket, the email subject line now leads with the subject name followed by the ticket number, replacing the previous ticket-number-first format, configurable at service offering level.

Administration Enhancements

Custom User Roles: Define granular permission sets tailored to your organization’s unique operational structure and business requirements, with configurable menu access, UI form permissions, and data-level authorization rules.li
Business Function Segregation: Records across modules are now created, categorized, and routed within defined business functions such as IT, HR, Finance, and Facilities. Business Function is mandatory on record creation, auto suggested from the associated Support Group or Service Offering, locked post-submission, and carried across all integrations including eBonding and MCP.
Centralized Authorization Service: A new Authorization Service replaces hardcoded, decentralized access controls with a configurable role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) engine, enforcing a 360-degree security model across user, request, and record context simultaneously.
Authorization Rules Configuration Interface: A dedicated interface allows Authorization Admins to create and manage data-level access policies governing which records users can view, modify, or delete based on contextual attributes.
Authorization Rule Override for Privileged Roles: Super Admins can create instance-level rule overrides and Admins can create company-specific overrides, with a new "Is Anything" wildcard operator ensuring high-privilege roles bypass data restrictions applied by lower roles they simultaneously hold.
Country, State, and City Management in Foundation: Administrators can create and manage Country, State, and City records directly in Foundation via dedicated list and form views, with Country Code as a mandatory field and associated records visible in right-panel lists.
Scheduled Jobs Configuration Interface: Administrators can view, manage, and create automated scheduled jobs from a new Scheduled Jobs menu in Administration, with ad-hoc ‘Run Now’ capability and company-specific job isolation.
Configurable User Types: Define company-specific User Type classifications (Contractor, Vendor, External Consultant, etc.) to replace or extend platform defaults per organization.
New Service Account User Type: A dedicated Service Account user type distinguishes machine-to-machine integrations from human users, with automatic CI-based location population for alert-generated incidents.
Default Template User Role on Provisioning: The Template User role is now assigned automatically on user profile creation, granting immediate template access without manual administrator intervention.
Enhanced Location Picker: Location search dropdowns now display comprehensive context (Name | Type | Country | State | City) to eliminate ambiguous selection, with full details accessible via an info icon post-selection.
SCIM Auto-Provisioning for Organizations and Departments: System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) user creation flows now automatically generate missing Organization and Department records, eliminating synchronization failures from incomplete organizational hierarchy data.
Company-Scoped Data Uniqueness: Uniqueness constraints for Employee Number, Location, Organization, Department, and Cost Center names are now enforced at company level rather than instance level, enabling managed service providers and multi-tenant deployments to use identical naming independently.
Configurable Group Reassignment Reason and History Tracking: Enable or disable Group Reassignment Reason and Comments fields per tenant, configure company-specific reason values, and view full reassignment history with hop count tracking for complete ownership traceability.
Increased Attachment Size Limit: Default maximum attachment size increased from 5 MB to 10 MB per file, with configurable tenant-level limits up to 20 MB.
Department and Group Name Character Limit Increases: Department name limit increased from 150 to 250 characters, and Group name limit increased to 75 characters for complex organizational naming conventions.
Default Notification Time zone Configuration: Administrators can set a preferred time zone for all default system notifications at the company or instance level, replacing GMT as a fixed default.
Master Notification Switch: Users can enable or disable all notifications via a master switch in My Profile, providing individual control over notification volume.
Custom Attributes Parent Visibility: A new Parent column on the Custom Attributes List View identifies parent attributes for Checklist and Composite members, with search-by-parent capability.
Parent Visibility for Catalog Dependent Questions: Catalog Managers can now see the parent question label and response value when editing multiple dependent questions with the same label, resolving configuration ambiguity.
Mailbox Configuration Field Limit Increases: Character limits for Whitelisted Domains, Always Process Exception, and Never Process Exception fields in mailbox configuration have been significantly increased for enterprise-scale domain lists.
Domino Mailbox Vendor Support via POP3: A new Domino vendor option in mailbox configuration extends email-to-ticket integration support to organizations running HCL Domino mail infrastructure.
Operator Additions in Rules Engine: New operators added to the Rules configuration interface expand the conditions available for building business logic automation.
Prevent Duplicate Rule Names: The Rules UI now prevents duplicate rule names during creation and editing, enforcing naming uniqueness across business logic configurations.
User Info Panel with Extended Location Details: Clicking the info icon on the Consumer and Caller fields now displays the user’s city, country, state, and zip code for richer requestor context on ticket forms.
Scheduled Ticket Creation: Automatically generate tickets based on scheduled events, supporting proactive issue management and eliminating manual ticket creation for recurring operational activities.
Custom Attribute Label Length Increased to 250 Characters: The character limit for custom attribute labels has been increased from 45 to 250 characters across all modules, with tooltip support and truncation handling ensuring long labels render cleanly on work item pages.
Data Dictionary Access Restricted for Rules Admin and Administrator: Rules Admin and Administrator roles now have view-only access to the Data Dictionary, with only Super Admin retaining creating and editing rights for Type of Object and Type of Attribute records.
Add to Watcher Control on Email-to-Ticket Mailbox: A tenant-level dropdown in Email-to-Ticket mailbox configuration controls whether CC recipients are automatically added as watchers when a ticket is created via email.