ServiceNow Zurich Release: Key Features That Will Transform Your IT Operations

The ServiceNow Zurich release is now available to all users, introducing new features and capabilities aimed at improving how users interact with the platform. 

In this article, we’ll highlight the key capabilities added in the Zurich upgrade.

What Is the Zurich Release?

The Zurich release is ServiceNow’s latest platform update, released in Q4 2025. It is the last iteration of the current, alphabetical naming system which sees each release named after a global city. 

In 2026, and starting with “ServiceNow Australia” new ServiceNow releases will be named after countries.

It is also another iteration of ServiceNow’s AI capabilities, with future releases also expected to double down on CEO Bill McDermott’s vision of providing an “AI platform for business transformation.”

What’s New In the ServiceNow Zurich Release?

Continuing a trend established in other recent ServiceNow releases, Zurich introduces several updates across ServiceNow’s AI Platform, focusing on simplifying application development, improving workflow automation, expanding process visibility, and strengthening data governance.

New AI Enhancements and Capabilities

As with other recent ServiceNow releases, much of Zurich’s focus is on adding new, and improving existing AI and AISM capabilities.

Build Agent and Vibe Coding

The Build Agent allows users to create ServiceNow applications from natural language prompts (“vibe coding”). It can generate full-stack applications, including logic and interfaces, while showing each step of the process in real time.

Users can refine and adjust the results through conversational feedback, which makes it easier to iteratively improve or extend existing applications without starting from scratch.

AI Agent Fabric

The AI Agent Fabric enables ServiceNow AI agents to connect with external data sources and systems to support better cross-platform automation and more integrated use of AI across different technologies.

While a welcome improvement for some, many organizations do not want their use of AI to be limited to the models available to the platform.

Similarly, many organizations don’t want to train AI models on only the data that is either generated by, and/or brought into ServiceNow.

They instead prefer to replicate data out of ServiceNow, and into an external repository where it can be combined with data from other sources and more easily integrated with a range of enterprise solutions and AI models.

Agentic Playbooks

Agentic playbooks represent ServiceNow’s attempt to introduce greater degrees of automation into the platform.

They take the concept of a traditional playbook—a structured sequence of automated steps based on predefined business rules and processes—and embed AI into the framework to further reduce the need for manual intervention. 

Application Development

As well as the ability to build and iterate upon existing apps via vibe coding, Zurich also provides the following updates to application development on the platform:

Developer Sandboxes

Developer Sandboxes is a new ServiceNow application, introduced in the Zurich release. It provides isolated environments that allow teams to test, experiment, and perform quality assurance without affecting production or shared development instances.

It comes equipped with a dashboard that lets users view the total, available, and allocated sandboxes in your instance, as well as useful info related to status, data utilization, and the sandbox’s owner.

ServiceNow Studio Enhancements

ServiceNow Studio now includes better visibility and access to AI-related components. Developers can browse and use AI building blocks directly within the Studio taxonomy, making it easier to incorporate AI agents and other intelligent features into new or existing applications.

These updates also streamline prototyping and improve integration with other elements of the ServiceNow AI ecosystem.

UI / UX Enhancements in the ServiceNow Zurich Release

The Zurich release includes several updates to the user interface and experience, focused on improving usability, accessibility, performance, and consistency across the platform.

Next Experience UI & Coral Theme

Zurich introduces Coral as the default theme for new portal, web, and mobile experiences with Next Experiences or Core UI enabled. Coral also introduces a new dark theme, giving users more flexibility in how they experience the interface.

Page Loading Behavior

Lazy loading is now enabled by default for Workspace pages, improving page performance by loading content only when needed. Users can control how pages are loaded via lazy load preferences.

Accessibility & Alert Behavior

A new accessibility preference lets users keep alerts and notifications on screen until manually dismissed, preventing important messages from disappearing automatically.

The Now Assist menu can be displayed in either standard or wide view, reducing scrolling and improving readability.

Reporting & Analytics

Zurich introduces a range of improvements that make managing and interacting with data and analytics more intuitive and consistent across the platform.

Improved List Component

The updated List element replaces List – Simple and offers a richer, more flexible experience. It now supports pagination, CSV export (including from dashboards), and alternative grouping options. This aligns the List configuration experience with other visualization components for a more unified design.

While this will be a welcome change for organizations content with reporting within ServiceNow, it does not bring ServiceNow’s reporting and analytics offerings up to par with best-in-class analytics and business intelligence solutions.

It also does not address the inherent limitations of the platform’s native capabilities for working with data such as performance degradation and export limits. 

• Learn more about connecting ServiceNow to best-in-class analytics and business intelligence solutions.

Enhanced User Experience Analytics Navigation and Filtering

New navigation options allow users to drill down directly from visualizations to individual application overview pages within User Experience Analytics.

The Go to data view chart interaction now defaults to these overviews, simplifying data exploration.

In addition, analysts can filter data using both default and custom properties, making it easier to isolate and analyze the most relevant user experience metrics.

Platform Analytics Migration Center and Depreciating ServiceNow Reporting

While ServiceNow Reporting will remain available through the Australia release (planned for 2026), the legacy feature is being gradually phased out. 

Initially, ServiceNow announced that all responsive dashboards, reports, Performance Analytics (PA) widgets, and interactive filters would be automatically migrated from ServiceNow Reporting to Platform Analytics upon upgrading to the Zurich release. 

Since then, ServiceNow has walked this back, stating users are safe from forced migration through the Australia release. 

With Zurich, ServiceNow provide the Platform Analytics Migration Center to support self-service migration for users that are ready to make the jump. 

Of course, many users already opt for replicating ServiceNow data externally to offload reporting and analytics to best-in-class solutions, sparing ServiceNow the performance hit and improving insight in the process. 

Security and Privacy Improvements: AI & Platform Security

Zurich delivers major updates to platform-level security and data protection, giving administrators stronger visibility, governance, and control across the ServiceNow AI Platform.

Machine Identity Console and Access Control

Zurich introduces the Machine Identity Console, providing centralized visibility into all inbound integration accounts and their configurations. Admins can identify high-risk connections—such as those using basic authentication or inactive for long periods—and take immediate corrective action. 

A new Machine Identity Access Control model enables precise permissions for machine integrations, letting admins define which specific REST or SOAP endpoints or tables each integration can access, reducing over-privileged API use and tightening governance.

That said, organizations that have concerns about API’s security vulnerabilities may wish to explore integration and replication approaches that avoid API.

Admin MFA Policy

Platform administrators can now enforce FIDO2-based multi-factor authentication exclusively for admin accounts, strengthening protection for the highest-privilege users while allowing flexibility for standard users.

Scripting Governance

A new Scripting Governance tool introduces a deny-by-default approach to scripting permissions, preventing unauthorized or risky scripts from executing and improving overall platform resilience.

Security Tasks and Central Oversight

The Security Center now includes Security Tasks, providing a single place to monitor, prioritize, and assign security-related actions across the platform. This enhancement simplifies coordination and ensures that remediation work is visible and trackable.

Security and Privacy Improvements: ServiceNow Vault and Domain Separation

Zurich expands the capabilities of ServiceNow Vault and Domain Separation, enabling deeper data protection, stronger encryption control, and simplified compliance management.

Vault Console and Now Assist for Vault

The new Vault Console centralizes data protection workflows with guided discovery, classification, and risk recommendations.

Integrated Now Assist for Vault brings generative AI to simplify configuration—creating custom regex patterns from plain language, scheduling and summarizing data discovery jobs, and showing who has access to encryption keys, all within a single interface.

Encryption Enhancements

For customers requiring advanced data-at-rest protection, ServiceNow Vault’s Platform Encryption offers comprehensive coverage by encrypting both full storage volumes and individual database fields.

In the Zurich release, encryption-backed access control has been enhanced with row-level conditions, enabling administrators to assign different encryption keys based on specific data contexts.

This added granularity allows, for example, sensitive HR records to be encrypted with separate keys from general case data—delivering stronger security, finer compliance control, and greater flexibility in how encryption policies are applied.

Improved Data Discovery

The system now detects sensitive data within .xls, .xlsx, and .csv files and supports model-based (NER) detection during scheduled jobs. These features make it easier to locate and manage sensitive information across structured and unstructured data.

Domain Separation: Delete by Domain

A key governance improvement, delete by domain lets domain admins securely remove customer-specific data within a domain-separated instance.

This targeted deletion supports data lifecycle management, reduces storage usage, and helps maintain compliance with privacy and data retention policies—all while preserving isolation between domains.

Protect Your Data During Upgrade with Perspectium

For IT teams planning to upgrade to ServiceNow’s Zurich release, ensuring data integrity and minimizing disruptions during the upgrade process is essential. 

Here’s how Perspectium solutions simplify the process and ensure a smooth upgrade, especially when dealing with large-scale, complex environments.

Snapshot: Fast Backups, Fast Recovery

One of the most crucial aspects of any upgrade is the ability to recover quickly from any unexpected issues. While ServiceNow provide a back up solution by default, its scope and capabilities are limited.

It does not let users define—or even view—their own backup schedule or create backups on-demand.

Full backups are limited to once a week. This means that organizations have little influence over the amount of delta data created between backups.

Further, should there be any issues, restoration requires that users open a support ticket with ServiceNow. The process involves several rounds of communication before the restoration even begins, and during the restoration, the instance will become unavailable, further compounding disruption. 

With Snapshot, users have full control over the backup schedule, are able to create backups on-demand, and can restore on their own terms, without any instance downtime.

This minimizes the potential for disruption, allowing organizations to create backups immediately before making significant updates and upgrade with greater confidence. 

Data Archive for ServiceNow: Archive Off-platform

Upgrading between ServiceNow releases can be slowed down by years of accumulated operational data—tickets, logs, and records that inflate database size and complicate testing.

A critical limitation of ServiceNow’s own archiving solution is that it is limited to moving data from production tables, to archive tables—both of which exist within the platform. 

Off-platform archiving with Data Archive for ServiceNow helps organizations reduce instance bloat by moving historical data to secure external storage, freeing the live environment for a faster, more predictable upgrade.

By keeping only active data in-platform, organizations not only shorten upgrade windows but also maintain compliance with data retention and privacy regulations.

Archived records remain securely stored and easily retrievable when needed, ensuring regulatory coverage without burdening production performance.

This approach simplifies upgrade preparation, reduces downtime risk, and gives teams the confidence to focus on validating new functionality rather than managing legacy data.

DataSync: Simplifying Data Replication and Minimizing Risks

DataSync replicates ServiceNow data into an external repository of your choice, in real-time and in bulk.

Unlike traditional, API and ETL-based approaches to integration, DataSync is capable of one-to-many data replication without any additional strain on ServiceNow, and without needing to configure multiple point-to-point integrations.

This is possible because Perspectium is installed and operates natively—within your ServiceNow instance—and utilizes push technology to replicate ServiceNow data within a message bus.

It’s the Perspectium message bus that is then connected to one or many targets downstream, meaning it can distribute the data across your environment with no additional burden on ServiceNow’s system resources or performance. 

By consolidating multiple ServiceNow integrations into one, Perspectium not only improves ServiceNow performance and integration throughput, but also makes upgrading ServiceNow (and maintenance of the platform more broadly) far more simple.

This is because organizations don’t have a web of point to point integrations that must be tested, and often reconfigured to remain operational through new ServiceNow releases.

Want to talk to us about your plans to upgrade ServiceNow? Contact us today.