As we close out the year, we wanted to take a minute and look back at what has been a great year of progress for SolarWinds® Service Desk. If we had to summarize 2025 in two themes, they would be: driving operational efficiency and making AI actually useful for IT pros.
From the expansion of SolarWinds AI to the UI updates you’ve been voting for in the Feature Requests forum (we’re looking at you, Dark Mode fans!), our goal was to empower you to resolve issues faster and with greater accuracy.
While this isn't an exhaustive list of every update, we wanted to round up the popular highlights that defined the year. For the complete, nitty-gritty list of everything that shipped in 2025, you can check out the full release notes here.
Below are the key capabilities delivered in 2025, mapped to their specific THWACK release discussion so you can dive deeper into the details.
THE COMMUNITY FAVORITE: USER EXPERIENCE
We heard you loud and clear on THWACK. You wanted a better environment for those late-night shifts, and we delivered.
Dark Mode: The #1 customer request is live! We introduced a native dark theme to reduce eye strain. Journey: Launched in Labs in June and went General Availability in August.
Resource Center: A new centralized hub to access help, documentation, and resources without leaving the platform. Released: October 12.
Virtual Agent Redirect: Options to redirect users from the Virtual Agent to the Service Portal for complex ticket creation. Released: May 18.
MAKING SOLARWINDS AI WORK FOR YOU
We focused on moving past the "AI hype" and into practical features that clean up your queues.
Intelligent Problem Management (Labs): GenAI now proactively detects patterns in incidents to suggest new problem records. Status: Currently in Labs – released November 23.
Broadened Search Scope: Suggested solutions now dig deeper, pulling from closed incidents, problems, KB articles, and solutions. Released: May 18.
AI in APAC: We brought SolarWinds AI capabilities to our Australian data center. Released: January 12.
SolarWinds AI Enhancements: Continuous improvements to the AI engine for better accuracy and performance in service delivery, released throughout the year.
STREAMLINING SERVICE MANAGEMENT & WORKFLOWS
This year was about giving you more control for complex automations.
Process Integration Variables: Dynamic variable replacement in integration URLs to support complex API automations. Released: November 23.
Group Assignment Enhancements: Dedicated Group Assignment fields and SLA support for groups. Released: September 21.
Workflow Entity Editing: Switch entities or replace steps in Change/Service catalog items efficiently. Released: July 20.
Approval Reminders: Automated notifications to nudge approvers on pending requests. Released: May 18.
Automated Satisfaction Survey Workflows: Don't just collect feedback—act on it. You can now automatically reopen, update, or create incidents based on specific survey responses (like low CSAT scores), ensuring no negative feedback goes unresolved. Released: March 16.
CONNECTIVITY & INTEGRATIONS
No tool is an island. In 2025, we strengthened the ecosystem.
Automox Integration: Streamline patch management and endpoint security workflows. Released: September 21.
Power BI Custom Fields: Support for custom fields within the Power BI integration. Released: April 6.
SolarWinds Incident Response Integration: Introduces integration that sends incidents from SolarWinds Service Desk to SolarWinds Incident Response for more complete context and visibility. Released: October 26.
Triggered Incident Field Mapping: Better control over how data from external SolarWinds Observability maps to specific fields in your Service Desk incidents. Released: April 6.
ENTERPRISE SERVICE MANAGEMENT (ESM)
Helping you deliver quality service beyond IT — no matter if that’s HR, Facilities, or a department unique to your organization.
Process Integrations Across Departments: Enables individual service providers or departments to configure and utilize integrations within workflows according to their own specific needs. Released: August 17.
Service Provider Duplication: Duplicate existing Service Provider configurations to spin up new departments fast. Released: September 21.
Facilities Service Templates: Introduced pre-built Service Provider template for Facilities, following the previously released HR template, which is populated with relevant categories and catalog items to accelerate departmental onboarding. Released: September 21.
PLATFORM, SECURITY, & REPORTING
Keeping the platform secure, your email reliable, and your data clean.
360 Reports: Delivers an analysis of service performance over time, providing executive-level visibility and actionable insights for strategic optimization. Launched in Labs in May and went General Availability in October.
Restrict Uploadable File Types: Administrators can now define and restrict which file types users are allowed to upload for enhanced security controls. Released: July 20.
Email Provider Transition: Completion of migration to AWS SES. Released: March 16.
Software Record Normalization: Cleaner data for asset management. Released: July 20.
Data Masking Enhancements: Expands data masking capabilities to custom fields and other areas to protect sensitive information, such as PII. Plus, added the ability to unmask data directly in the audits tab for streamlined context-gathering. Released: Jan 12 and July 20.
What’s Next?
Innovation is most valuable when it is put to work. We encourage you to review your current configurations, see if any of these releases can improve the way you and your teams work, and explore how features like SolarWinds AI and 360 Reports can optimize your service delivery today.
For detailed guides and discussions on every feature listed above, check out the specific release threads right here on the SolarWinds Service Desk product forum.
We would like to take a moment to thank you for your continued dedication to providing feedback that helps us improve the Service Desk for everyone and for choosing us as your ITSM partner. Our product is motivated by what will help your teams deliver high-quality services as simply as possible. We're looking forward to significant advancements, in partnership with you, in 2026!
What was your favorite feature released in 2025? Let us know in the comments below!
