Note: All the features/enhancements below will be available on Starter and Growth plans on September 17th, 2024 & Pro and Enterprise plans on September 26th, 2024.
Product version: 2024.R09L.01
New Features and Enhancements
Expanded Bulk Update Option for Tickets
Category: IT Service Management
The bulk update option in the ticket list view now supports custom paragraph fields, giving you greater flexibility in managing and updating tickets efficiently.
Improved Due Date Calculation for SLA Breach
Category: IT Service Management
We have refined the due date calculation logic to ensure accurate SLA adherence. When transitioning between "Pending" and "SLA on" states after an SLA breach, we have adjusted the logic to retain the due date, regardless of state transitions. This prevents any unintentional resets to the initial due date at ticket creation, ensuring a more accurate reflection of SLA timeframes.
Audit logs for Service Catalog
Category: IT Service Management
The service catalog will now be captured in the audit log. This includes all creations or modifications of service categories, service items, and fields, ensuring better governance and tracking.
Change List and Calendar View Enhancements
Category: IT Service Management
Change list views have been revamped to enhance flexibility and cater to user preferences:
- Sorting has been extended to additional fields like dropdowns, dates, checkboxes, etc.
- Customize the number of change records displayed per page, ranging from 30 to 100.
- Introduce advanced filters with field type exclusions, association-based filtering, and the option to match all/any conditions.
More details here.
Automated translation for agent replies with Freddy Copilot
Category: IT Service Management
Agents can now respond to tickets in their preferred language, and Freshservice will automatically translate replies into the ticket's original language. This feature ensures smoother communication across global teams and customers.
More details here.
Revamped admin experience for ServiceBot for Slack
Category: IT Service Management
ServiceBot is a channel with essential functions like ticket collaboration, ticket updates, virtual agent support, and on-call management. The new unified admin experience allows users to set up, manage, and customize all these features seamlessly in a single, streamlined flow. To get started, navigate to Admin > Channels > ServiceBot for Slack.
More details here
Improved Workflow Navigation with Pagination
Category: IT Service Management
With the newly added pagination to Workflow Automator, admins can now efficiently search and browse workflows in smaller, manageable sets. This enhancement improves navigation, boosts performance, and eliminates slow load times and endless scrolling when managing multiple workflows.
Audit logs for an account’s primary contact modifications
Category: IT Service Management
Admins can now view audit logs when primary contact details of an account such as first name, last name, email, and phone are added or altered. Changes to account name and invoice email are also displayed in audit logs. This is in addition to audit logs for account domain and account mode.
Modern view for Release module
Category: IT Service Management
The release view is now enhanced to a more modern and scalable experience to improve your service desk experience.
This release will introduce this new view for you to explore for a month. For the next 30 days, you can toggle between the classic view and the modern view.
Once the 30-day period ends, the modern experience will be enabled as the default option for all users.
Key features of the new experience include:
- New features
- A more scalable and accessible framework to work with
- Tweaks to boost the overall experience
- Improved access to applications and properties filter
More details here
Re-run escalation policies if ticket properties change
Category: IT Operations Management
Users can now ensure that escalation policies for on-call management are dynamically re-evaluated whenever any of the ticket fields undergo a change. This enhancement supports a wider range of incident management scenarios, ensuring that notifications remain relevant throughout the ticket lifecycle. It also minimizes the possibility of missed notifications due to escalation policy mismatch.
More details here
Customize email notifications for status updates
Category: IT Operations Management
Admins and status page subscribers can now benefit from enhanced email notifications for status updates:
- Admins can now notify agents using an email template different from that for requesters and subscribers. With this enhancement, agents can be sent additional information about service degradation, helping them resolve associated incidents faster.
- Admins can now include ticket details and properties (including custom properties) as placeholders for all status page incident notifications sent to agents.
- Status page subscribers can now comprehend service status with greater ease with the addition of a new placeholder, ‘Formatted Impacted Services’, to email notifications.
- Status page subscribers can now manage their subscription or unsubscribe from status page notification emails using links placed in all email footers. When users unsubscribe, they are retained in the subscriber list, but stop receiving email notifications for all services.
- Status pages now include an unsubscribe link in the footer section by default. Subscribers can use this link to stop receiving all status page notifications. An unsubscribe confirmation email will be sent to avoid unsubscribing by mistake.
Use Freddy Copilot to generate post-incident report
Category: IT Operations Management
Users who have opted for Freddy Copilot license can now get Freddy AI to generate their post-incident report. Freddy AI will study the incident metadata, including associated alerts, impacted services/assets, attached tasks, timeline, and conversations among agents on relevant collaboration channels, and quickly deliver accurate and detailed post-incident reports. Users will benefit from enhanced precision and efficiency in documenting and analyzing major incidents, empowering organizations to build greater resilience and continuously improve their incident response strategies.
More details here.
Note: This enhancement will be available to customers on Pro and Enterprise plans from September 17, 2024, onwards.
Stay on Top of Contract Usage with the Analytics Module
Category: IT Asset Management
Leverage custom fields in Analytics to track and monitor various contract types like lease, maintenance, and software licenses tailored to your business needs. Analyze contract usage based on key metrics like contract status, users, assets, and source of creation for improved decision-making and optimized contract utilization.
Salesforce SaaS Integration
Category: IT Asset Management
Introducing Salesforce CRM direct integration, which provides precise license usage tracking based on user logins, regardless of the authentication method (SSO, password, etc.).
Key capabilities include:
- Discovery: Comprehensive discovery of all Salesforce users, user license allocations, and organization-level license utilization.
- License Management: Track entitlements, consumption, user licenses, permission set licenses, and feature licenses.
- Usage Monitoring: Monitor login-based usage, ensuring accurate license tracking.
- Orchestration: Automate user deprovisioning and license upgrade/downgrade tasks for improved license management.
More details here.
Note: This functionality will be available from October 15th, 2024
Enhanced Audit Log for Purchase order and software Fields
Category: IT Asset Management
The audit log now provides comprehensive tracking of changes made to purchase orders and software fields in your service desk.
With this enhancement, users gain better control and visibility over procurement and software management processes, ensuring greater accountability and compliance.
Build Custom Objects in Global Settings
Category: Freshservice for Business Teams
Admins will now be able to define custom objects in Global Settings. Global custom objects will be accessible across all workspaces, reducing the need for repetitive setup while still maintaining the flexibility to define workspace-specific custom objects.
Tag users with @mentions for seamless user notifications in Project Tasks
Category: Project Management
Users can now be easily tagged and included in any necessary updates with @mentions. These @mentions will be enabled in the Notes section of Project Tasks. The tagged users will receive email notifications if the ‘Mentioned in note’ setting is enabled under Global settings.
More details here.
Important Updates
Notices for new changes/upgrades/deprecation activities
The following changes will be made effective by Nov 5th, 2024. Ensure that you’re prepared for it.
- Fair Usage Policy (FUP) for Freshservice Analytics
To ensure that all our customers have an uninterrupted, performant, and smooth reporting experience, we are implementing safeguards in some of our analytics capabilities starting Nov 5th, 2024. Please note that there is no immediate impact to your existing reports. You can continue to create and edit reports without any restrictions.
Who will be impacted?
If you have created reports, data exports, or schedules in Freshservice Analytics that violate the Fair Usage Policy, you will be impacted by this change.
What do you need to do?
Ensure all your reports adhere to the FUP before Nov 5th, 2024. Follow in-product instructions displayed starting May 16th, 2024, and resolve FUP violations.
More details here.
- Discontinuation of Legacy Versions of Marketplace Apps
We will discontinue legacy versions of a few Marketplace apps to ensure that you get enhanced and consistent app experiences. To ensure that these apps work as expected without disruptions, you will need to upgrade them by Nov 5th, 2024.
Who will be impacted?
You will be impacted if you are using any of the older versions of these apps.
What do you need to do?
Upgrade to the latest versions of these apps.
More details here.
- Discontinuation of AWS Orchestration App
To ensure that you get both Cloud Discovery and Orchestration capabilities in a single Cloud Management app, the AWS EC2 - Orchestration app will be discontinued on Nov 5th, 2024.
Who will be impacted?
If you use the AWS EC2 - Orchestration app (for cloud asset actions and custom workflows), you will be impacted by this discontinuation.
What do you need to do?
You can install the new AWS Cloud Management app and uninstall the AWS EC2 - Orchestration app.
If you have workflows that use nodes from the Orchestration app, replace them with new nodes from the AWS Cloud Management app.
More details here.
- Deprecation of the current Sandbox version
To ensure you experience the enhanced capabilities of the revamped Sandbox in Freshservice, we will be deprecating the current version of Sandbox by Nov 5th, 2024.
Who will be impacted?
You will be impacted if you have an active Sandbox created using the current version on or before Nov 5th, 2024.
What do you need to do?
If you have an active Sandbox that belongs to the current version, you can destroy or sync it to enable the revamped Sandbox version in your account.
For example, If your account has Sandboxes across three workspaces (Global, IT, and HR), destroy or sync all of them to access the revamped version.
More details here.
Bug Fixes
These were the product defects detected, and they have now been fixed.
- The article views count in the Solutions Overview report (curated report) was inaccurate. This has been fixed.
- In the requester portal, when the user tries to export tickets, the email was being sent without a download link.
