What is upgrade-brief?

Upgrade Brief is an unofficial web tool that helps ServiceNow administrators understand what changes when moving from the Zurich release to the Australia release. It has two main views: a Family Upgrade Brief listing prioritized risks, changes, opportunities, and recommended next actions for that upgrade path, and a Monthly Release Radar that gathers ServiceNow Store application updates and platform patches into one review organized by role and product. The project is an independent community effort, not sponsored or endorsed by ServiceNow, and it separates the author's own editorial opinions from the official facts it references. Every entry links back to the exact official ServiceNow source it came from, and visitors can share filtered views through URLs or save a briefing as a PDF. An interactive Impact Radar visualizes the filtered results by product, priority, and signal type, with each marker linking to a detailed card, and the same information stays available to screen readers. The interface follows your operating system's light or dark mode by default, with a control to override that choice. Behind the scenes, the project pulls data from several official ServiceNow sources depending on type: the ServiceNowDocs repository for family documentation and release notes, public ServiceNow Store pages for monthly application versions, and the official patches and hotfixes page for platform patches. Anything requiring restricted Now Support access is deliberately left out rather than guessed at, and the project does not copy or republish ServiceNow's full documentation. To run the project locally you need Node.js version 22.13 or newer, then install dependencies and start a development server with standard npm commands. The underlying data lives in two JSON files, one for the Zurich to Australia signals and one for monthly signals, and each entry must include a stable ID, supported products and roles, a factual summary kept separate from editorial interpretation, at least one recommended action, and a verified public source link. A validation script checks both files for duplicate IDs or missing sources before changes are accepted. The project deploys automatically to GitHub Pages when the main branch changes, using a GitHub Actions workflow already included. Contributions go through GitHub issue templates, though factual corrections must be backed by a public official ServiceNow source. No license had been added to the repository as of this writing, and the project does not use any ServiceNow logos or claim official endorsement.