Overview

Next Experience provider notifications have been available since the Utah release, yet many admins still don't know how to use them. This article explains how they work through a real-life example: release notes. Some organisations still announce releases with banner announcements and could benefit from a quieter notification under the bell instead. This only applies to internal users.

 

How it is usually done

This is what many instances look like on release day: a banner announcement at the top of the page saying a new release is live, with a link to the release notes. It is visible, yes, but it is also always there.

Let's see how we can achieve the same result, without the noise, using a Next Experience provider notification.

Finding provider notifications

The first thing we must do is type "provider" in the navigator filter and go to "System Notification > Provider > Notifications". 

 

 

 

Don't confuse this module with "System Notification > Email > Notifications". Provider notifications are the framework behind the bell, and they can deliver the same notification through several channels.

 

This takes us to the list of provider notifications. Bear in mind the records you see may vary depending on the plugins and applications installed on your instance. In my case, there are notifications such as "Delegation notification" or "Scale Factor Change Notification", some triggered by an event and some by a record change.

 

 

Click on "New" to create our own.

 

Creating the notification: when to send

On the new form, we enter the following values:

• Name:"New Release".
• Category:  Categories group notifications so users can manage their preferences more easily. In our case we have created a custom one called "Release Management"
• Importance:"FYI", as this is information, not something the user has to act on.
• Urgency: how quickly the notification should be delivered. You can choose "Immediate" if you want users to see it straight away, ,"Soon" if a small delay is acceptable or "Async" if you are not in a hurry to display it.

Under the "When to send" tab, we select "Event" as the trigger and a new custom event called "new.release" as the event , on the "Knowledge [kb_knowledge]" table. We will see later how this event gets fired. The alternative, "Record Change", sends it whenever a record matching the conditions changes.

 

Given the event doesn't exist yet, register it first in "System Policy > Events > Registry" against the "kb_knowledge" table.

 

Who will receive it

The "Who will receive" tab offers the usual options: specific users, recipients listed in fields of the record, the person who triggered the notification, and recipients passed in the event's parm1 or parm2.

 

 

None of these fit our example. We want every internal user to know about it. So we leave this tab empty and save the form.

 

As the blue message at the top of the form says, the related lists only load once the record is saved. After saving, you will also see a red error saying no content is associated with the notification. We will fix it next.

To target a dynamic audience, scroll down to the "Additional Recipients" related list and click on "New".

 

 

Here we select "User [sys_user]" as the recipient table and add a dynamic condition: "Roles" is "snc_internal". The form immediately tells us how many records match, in my case 636 users.

 

 

Using "snc_internal" is a deliberate choice. It is the role that identifies internal users, which are precisely the users who have access to the bell. If your release only affects a specific audience, you could narrow the condition further, for instance by department or group.

 

Adding the Next Experience content

Go to the "Contents" related list and click on "New Provider Content".

 

 

ServiceNow asks what type of content we want to create. The same notification can be delivered through several channels: Portal, Virtual Agent (Chat or Messaging), Workspace or Next Experience, among others. For the bell, we choose "Next Experience".

 

 

In the Next Experience content form, we fill in:

• Name:"New Release".
• Notification and Table: populated automatically from the notification.
• Message heading:"${short_description}". This takes the short description of the knowledge article, so the heading changes with every release without touching the notification. The idea is that the KB shows the Release number on its short description.
• Message:"A new release is available! Check out the release notes here".

 

The "Select variables" panel on the right lets you add any field of the table to the heading or the message.

One word of caution: if a notification has both a Next Experience and a Workspace content provider, users may get the notification twice. Keep only the Next Experience one if the bell is what you're after.

 

Demo time

The notification is ready, but something has to fire the "new.release" event. In our example, release notes are knowledge articles in the "IT" knowledge base under the "Release Notes" category. So the moment such an article is published, users should be notified.

 

A simple way to do this is an "after" business rule on the "kb_knowledge" table, running on insert and update, with the condition "Workflow changes to Published" and "Category is Release Notes":

 

A flow with the "Fire Event" action works too.

Now we publish our release notes article, KB0010003, with the short description "Major Release - 2026.10".

 

 

A few seconds later, a toast message appears at the top-right corner with the article's short description as the heading and our message underneath. Notice the "1" on top of the bell.

 

 

If the user missed it or closed it, the notification is still there under the bell, in the Notifications menu, until they clear it.

 

 

Compare this to the banner announcement shown atop. Users are informed, the information is one click away, and nobody had to remember to remove anything once the release was old news.

 

If the user clicks on the notification, they will be redirected to the Knowledge Base Article containing the release notes so they can see them there if they are interested.

 

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