Table of Contents:

• Curated Experiences
• Search Configurations
• Content Recommendations

Curated Experiences

1. What is the Curated Experiences feature?

Curated Experiences is a term used to describe a set of functionalities available with Employee Center that makes content discovery easy and employee-centric. The functionalities included are:

• * Dynamic topic pages (including unified browse)
  
  • Mega Menu navigation (part of Employee Center header)
    
  • Popular topics widget on home page

Curated Experiences require customers to enable a unified taxonomy for all their employee-facing content (including catalog items, knowledge articles, campaigns, and topics). The unified taxonomy then drives the experiences across the functionalities listed above. See details below:

• * Dynamic topic pages are automatically populated with content that is tagged against the topic in the unified content taxonomy.
  
  • Mega Menu is created on the Employee Center header so users can easily browse topics three levels down, avoiding multiple clicks.
    
  • Popular topics are identified based on the popularity of the content tagged within them.

Refer to Curated Experiences in Employee Center product documentation to learn more.

1. What is unified taxonomy?

Unified taxonomy (also called Content taxonomy) is a collection of hierarchical topics that brings together different content types — requests, articles, quick links, employee communications — across departments into a single employee-centric taxonomy.

The following is an example tree structure:

IT (Root topic) > Hardware (sub-topic) > computer (sub-topic) > Lenovo ThinkPad (catalog item i.e. content)

There are three pieces to the unified taxonomy:

1. 1. Content taxonomy (data model): This provides the data model or the framework against which the content is mapped. Essentially it is the top three levels of the topic (for example IT > Hardware > Printers)
   
   1. Content authoring (taxonomy management): This provides content managers and contributors the ability to tag content against the taxonomy and manage the taxonomy.
      
   2. Taxonomy mapping for employee content (actual content mapped to the taxonomy): This provides the mapping of the out-of-the-box content shipped by IT, HRSD, and Legal into the content taxonomy.

Unified taxonomy is the foundation for the Curated Experiences feature.

Refer to Unified taxonomy for Employee Center product documentation to learn more.

Unified browse is the ability for users to browse the content of different kinds (Service Catalog and knowledge) in one view on the topic pages. In the past, users had to go to a separate page to look for Service Catalog vs knowledge content. Unified browse eliminates the need to do so. See below for a screenshot of a topic page showing unified browse:

Refer to Dynamic Topic Pages in product documentation to learn more.

1. What content types can be tagged to the unified taxonomy?

Customers can tag the following content items to the taxonomy:

• * Catalog Items (can be tagged individually or bulk tagged as a catalog category)
  
  • Knowledge articles (can be tagged individually or bulk tagged as a knowledge base category)
    
  • Employee Communications (videos, campaigns, announcements) – available with Employee Center Pro
    
  • Applications – available with Employee Center Pro, as of the San Diego release
• What happens to the Service Catalog and knowledge level categories? Are they still needed?

There are two key roles that the Catalog and knowledge-level categories played before the Quebec release:

1. 1. Made it easier for the users to discover/find content
   
   1. Made it easier to manage the content within the Catalog and knowledge base with user criteria applied directly to the categories.

Unified taxonomy solves the first role by enabling effective content discovery using employee-centric terminology. However, the Catalog and knowledge level categories are still needed and helpful in managing the content, especially in terms of applying user criteria and content ownership.

1. Can we apply user criteria to define the availability of a given topic within the taxonomy?

The availability of topics is dependent on the content within them. Admins can apply user criteria to define which content is available to any given user. If the user does not have access to any of the content tagged within the topic, that topic will not appear in the navigation (or Popular topics) for that user.

1. Can we use Employee Center without unified taxonomy?

Yes. However, you do lose the benefits of Curated Experiences such as unified browse. We recommend building at least a couple of topics and then thoughtfully adding more to build your full unified taxonomy. This approach will help you provide a unified experience for priority topics while providing an example that you can learn from as you plan and extend your unified taxonomy.

1. Do we need to have enterprise services defined to use the unified taxonomy?

No. Unified taxonomy is based on how employees look for or categorize the support services offered to them. Taxonomy is just the presentation layer for the employees, it does not affect how content is managed in the knowledge base or service catalog applications.

1. How is the curated experiences feature different between Employee Center and Employee Center Pro?

Curated Experiences is available for both Employee Center and Employee Center Pro. The main difference is access to different content types. For example, Employee Center Pro users can access schedule actionable communications to appear on topic pages. They can also tag applications to topics.

1. What applications/plugins are needed to activate the Curated Experiences feature?

There are separate applications for the unified taxonomy:

Application	Purpose	Visibility and Availability
Content Taxonomy	This will provide the data model (topic hierarchy for IT/HR/Workspace Service Delivery (WSD) /Procurement Service Management (PSM)/Legal Service Delivery (LSD)) and taxonomy management (content authoring) capabilities for the unified taxonomy.	This is not a Store app and is delivered via the Rome family release. All customers have access to this.
Employee Experience Taxonomy _(_sn_ect)	This provides the out-of-the-box mapping of the ITSM, ITAM, and ITBM demo content with the content taxonomy (the topic hierarchy).	This is available via ServiceNow Store. It gets automatically downloaded with Employee Center, Employee Center Pro, or the Now Mobile applications from Store.
HR Taxonomy (com.sn_hr_emp_taxonomy)	This provides the out-of-the-box mapping of the HRSD demo content with the content taxonomy (the topic hierarchy).	Requires HRSD license and the below plugins: Human Resources Scoped App: Core (com.sn_hr_core) and Employee Center (sn_ex_sp)

Note for additional details on the Curated Experiences feature, watch Employee Center Academy: Curated Experiences session.

Search Configurations

1. What configuration options are available for tweaking the search experience on Employee Center?

There are multiple options available both from Zing and AI Search. See below for the options on AI Search.

To learn more, watch the Employee Center Academy on Search Configurations.

1. Can we use Zing search on Employee Center?

Yes, Employee Center will automatically default to Zing search when AI search is not turned on.

1. What is Enterprise and External Search?

Enterprise Search and External Search are conceptual terms used to describe the ability to search for content residing outside of ServiceNow (for example policy documents in SharePoint) and making it available as part of the search results on ServiceNow.

1. What is the SharePoint Online Search connector? Who is it available for?

The SharePoint Online Search Connector is our prebuilt integration with SharePoint Online. It allows employees to search SharePoint content within their ServiceNow employee experience, finding answers wherever they are located.

IMPORTANT: This feature requires Employee Center Pro license.

Also, currently, only public SharePoint sites and content are supported. Customers need to ensure they only index company public content into the ServiceNow environment.

1. Do we have search connectors built for Google Suite and other document repositories?

Yes, we have additional search connectors built by our partner Raytion. Refer to their public website for more information.

Content Recommendations

1. What Employee Center widgets are associated with Content Recommendation?

There are two widgets on the Employee Center that can associate with Content Recommendation:

1. 1. ‘Recommended for you’: This widget highlights the most relevant catalog items and knowledge articles for the employee
   
   1. ‘Popular topics’: This widget highlights the most popular topics on the Employee Center home page.
2. What’s the difference between the old “Relevant for you” widget, available before the Rome release, and the new “Recommended for you” widget available with Employee Center?

With the Employee center release in Rome, the “relevant for you” widget was enhanced to the “recommended for you” widget. Below are the changes made:

Behavioral change: Old widget shows 3 Catalog items and 3 Knowledge items with their headers. Now there is no separation between knowledge and Catalog. The old widget could only show Catalog items or knowledge articles based on the popularity of the items. The new widget can use an ML algorithm-based Employee Profile or HR Profile to show popular content accessed by users in similar profile.

Visual change: Old widget has only one visual representation of items in the list view while showing only the title. The new widget has a card view with carousal (title, description, image(catalog item)) and a simple list view of only titles.