ServiceNow Smart Operations is an application that provides one command center that connects real-time data from IoT devices across physical spaces and analyzes it to help the organization optimize and streamline operations.
It leverages the power of AI, integrating seamlessly with existing organization infrastructure such as cameras, sensors, and other IoT devices which contributes to operational excellence, enriched customer experiences, and increased sales. It also plays a crucial role in securing the site, helping in having a safe and smooth operational environment for both customers and employees.
ServiceNow Smart Operations provides great business value with instant visibility into customer behavior, site safety, and customer insights.
ServiceNow Smart Operations provides significant business value with instant visibility and insights into customer behavior, site safety, and overall customer experience through the following detection capabilities:
- Unexpected dwell time: This feature allows users to automatically identify instances where a visitor spends an unusually long time in a specific area of the site. By leveraging advanced AI algorithms and utilizing real-time data from in-site cameras, it enables timely and effective responses to such scenarios.
- People count: This feature alerts users when the number of visitors in the site exceeds a set threshold. Utilizing camera streams and AI analytics, it provides a vital solution for managing site occupancy effectively and ensuring compliance with safety standards.
- Line crossing: This feature enables users to promptly identify when visitors move in incorrect or restricted directions, such as site entries, exits, or designated areas. Leveraging AI to analyze and flag unusual movement patterns offers a crucial solution for maintaining site safety.
- Queue management: This feature enables users to optimize cashier operations by offering real-time integration with the cashier's operational status. It triggers appropriate workflow by opening cashiers based on the detected situation.
- Area analytics: This feature offers detailed analytics on aspects such as visitors average dwell duration, visit density, and product conversion rate. This capability provides users with invaluable insights, enabling them to optimize product placement and in-site marketing strategies. It addresses the need for data-driven decision-making in retail environments, delivering value by enhancing site performance and customer engagement.
- Sites management: This feature provides operation managers with the tools to efficiently oversee and control multiple site locations from a centralized platform. It allows users to manage camera setups, update configurations across sites, and set site working hours for ordinary days and special days such as events, festivals, anniversaries, etc.
- Edge server management: This feature provides comprehensive tools to manage and maintain edge servers across multiple sites. It allows disabling (blackout), enabling (remove blackout), and deleting edge servers, together with reinstalling retired edge servers within one year before it is permanently deleted. Critical actions such as blacking out or deleting edge servers require higher-level managerial approval to ensure proper oversight. This feature also includes certificate management, enabling administrators to renew edge server certificates which are expired or about to expire, as needed. It further provides the ability to upgrade the software of the edge server to benefit from new features and fixes.
- Devices management: This feature streamlines the process of defining and managing devices, particularly cameras, by minimizing manual input and enhancing automation. This feature also enables the bulk creation of camera records for a site through direct API integration with the edge server, which retrieves essential device information automatically. Additionally, users can upload camera snapshots from the edge server and view all defined monitoring zones on these snapshots. To further enhance usability, this feature allows the users to have a panoramic view of the site map, including all its areas and floors and showing all cameras and monitoring zones at the site location.
- Monitoring zones: This feature allows operation managers to define specific areas within the camera’s field of view that are critical for monitoring. Users can allocate and visually draw these monitoring zones directly on the site map layout, providing a clear and accurate representation of the areas being surveilled. Additionally, users can create specific sets of monitoring zones, particularly for targeted use cases such as queue management.
- Clone configurations: This feature streamlines the process of duplicating existing setup parameters across various sites, devices, or detection capabilities. It enables the users to easily replicate current configurations, creating new records with either identical or modified settings, simplifying the setup of similar environments.
- Third-parties and internal Integrations: It enables seamless connectivity between Smart Operations and various third-party and internal systems. The Point of Sale integration allows the system to pull sales transaction data from the POS system, providing insights into product performance. The Cashier Station integration monitors the status of each cashier station, improving operational oversight. Additionally, the Headset integration connects with site workers' headsets to make real-time announcements regarding emergencies or suggested actions. Internally, the feature includes integration with Task Management, mapping Smart Operations events to task assignments and alerts, ensuring prompt action on critical events.
- Personalized landing page: A role-specific home page tailored for each user persona (central operations manager, regional operations manager, site manager, central IT admin, regional IT admin, and site IT admin) to provide the necessary information for streamlining operations.
- Retail Operations Integration: It connects with Retail Operations to extend Smart Operations AI-generated events by automatically triggering predefined out-of-the-box workflows.
- CSM/FSM Integration: A feature that links with CSM and FSM for case creation and implementing an already designed sub-flow. When an event is generated, a scheduled job processes each event and converts it into a case or work order as specified in the detection capability rule configurations.
- Camera field of view change detection: AI-Driven detection for changes that occur in the camera's field of view, which requires a configuration update.
- Shopping time calculation: Calculates individual and overall shopping time in the store based on entry and exit transactions.
- Alarm rules v2.0: Triggers based on store worker availability, closing cashier, blink, and future info (for example, open cashier in 20 minutes).
- Dynamic configuration and logic for detection capabilities: Provides different rules based on the number of opened cash registers and date/time.
- Proactive queue management: Analyzes based on future calculated situations (shopping time, entry & exit counts) with dynamic thresholds and alarm rules.
- QM analytics dashboard: Tracks store performance, waiting time, number of customers per cash register, divided into queue zones, using waiting time and area counting metadata.
- Bug Fixes and Enhancements
- Events Page fixes:
- The event record structure has been updated to represent parent-child event relationships more accurately
- Introduces validation checks during event creation to enforce the use of valid and compatible attributes (e.g., Queue Management and/Or), reducing misconfigurations and improving system stability
- Correcting the event ‘created at’ time format
- Rules fixes:
- Provide visibility to the user for the created rules on the workspace without the hassle of navigating back and forth between the UI-16 and the workspace
- Homepages’ fixes:
- Fixed the refresh button
- Fixed the ‘not assigned detection capability’ KPI data for the central operations dashboard
- Roles and Permissions fixes:
- Fixed an issue where CAB (Change Advisory Board) members were able to open notifications linked to Edge configurations they did not have permission to access. The system now correctly enforces access control
- Fix Smart Operations personas’ access controls
- Edge page enhancements:
- Added support to enable certificate renewal for edges marked as retired
- Introduced a unique identifier for each broken service log entry, improving traceability and debugging efficiency.
- Improved the user experience and interface clarity for the Remove Blackout action
- Queue management detection capability and accuracy enhancements:
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- Resolved an issue where Monitoring Zones of type 'Line' were incorrectly displayed in the Grouped Zones tab. The system now properly filters out line-type zones
- Enhanced logic to accurately distinguish between individuals who overlap or occlude each other within monitoring zones.
- Increased detection accuracy to ensure all individuals are reliably captured
- Improved recognition of the same individual across multiple monitoring zones in a monitoring zone group to prevent double-counting
- Resolved issue with incorrect Point of Sale transaction timestamps; data now reflects the accurate transaction date and time
- Corrected station type values to ensure only accepted types are used — either ‘Cashier’ or ‘Self-checkout (SCO)
- Queue Management Dashboard Enhancements:
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- Enable selecting a specific date from the filters
- The week filter is now aligned with the device’s calendar settings for consistent regional behavior
- Full ‘Stations’ names are now displayed correctly across all supported browsers
- Charts will now reset only when new filter conditions are applied, improving performance and user experience.
- The dashboard now defaults to the ‘Today’ filter on initial load, ensuring users see the most current data immediately
Required Plugins:
- sn_smartops_comp
- sn_cmdb_ci_class
Dependencies:
- com.glide.kaa
- com.glide.hub.etl_consumer.kafka
- com.glide.hermes