Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Q1 2026 SolarWinds Service Desk Product Update! The energy and engagement in the chat was incredible. You submitted over 100 questions across our US & LATAM, EMEA, and APJ sessions.
If you missed the live session or want to revisit anything we covered, you can watch the full replay here.
We answered as many questions as we could live, but a handful of great ones slipped through, and several answers deserve a wider audience. We’ve compiled both below.
Microsoft Entra ID & Active Directory
Q: What does the new Entra ID integration actually enable, and how does it work alongside existing SSO and provisioning setups?
The new integration builds on top of your existing SSO and provisioning setup, it doesn’t replace it. It augments what you can automate via service and change catalog workflows. For example, a requester can submit a ticket to be added to an Entra group, and SWSD can automatically action that without anyone touching the Entra ID console. Anything actionable via Microsoft’s Graph API is available to automate via process integration calls, including time-based conditions (e.g., disabling a user account 3 days after an incident is created).
Q: Does the Entra ID integration cover Intune, Autopilot, conditional access, or other Graph API capabilities? And is there an existing integration for on-premises Active Directory?
The existing Entra ID integration for SWSD is limited to SSO and user provisioning (syncing users and attributes between Entra and SWSD). It does not expose or manage Intune, Autopilot, conditional access policies, or other Graph workloads—that all remains configured and operated directly in Entra/Intune.
Q: If we already have Entra integrated, will we need to remove the existing integration to use the new built-in one?
No, both serve different purposes and can be used simultaneously. The recently introduced built-in Process Integration with Entra ID enables admin to provision users in Entra ID from workflows. The existing integration is more geared towards SSO and SWSD user management.
AI Capabilities & Controls
Q: Are AI features included in existing plans, or priced separately? And will we be able to control which AI capabilities are enabled?
AI capabilities are included as part of your plan tier. They’re not separately priced. We’re actively working on giving administrators toggles to decide which AI features are enabled for their organization, so you won’t be forced to adopt everything at once.
Q: Will AI be able to generate and format knowledge base articles from ticket content?
Yes, some of this is already possible today with the ability to generate an article from a resolved ticket, and on our short-term roadmap we’re adding the ability to generate formatted knowledge base articles.
Q: Will there be reporting on AI feature usage — who’s using what, and how it’s impacting resolution times?
Yes, and this has been one of the most frequently requested items. We’re actively working on it and expect to deliver visibility within the next 2–3 months. The goal is to surface which AI features were used in which tickets, by whom, and how that affected metrics like mean time to resolution.
Q: Is there a way to enable AI features selectively — for example, using the chatbot without enabling AI across the entire instance?
Yes, AI features can be enabled selectively. The AI-powered chatbot (targeted for release in early Q3) will have its own independent admin control.
Q: How does SWSD handle sensitive content processed through AI features; is there tagging for PII, sentiment, or industry-specific data?
Data masking capabilities are available; you can find more detail in the Labs documentation. In addition, we are actively working on extending data masking capabilities to more custom field types, targeted for release in Q3. For broader questions about content classification or industry-specific needs, we’d recommend a conversation with your account team.
Automation & Integrations
Q: Do runbooks support conditional logic and branching?
Yes. Runbooks support conditions, and you can use process integration to extract data, evaluate it against conditions, and then trigger further actions, such as calling a remote service to kill a process or free up disk space. It’s a powerful combination for complex automated remediation.
Q: Is an MCP agentic interface on the roadmap?
Yes, an MCP interface is on our roadmap and is actively being worked on.
Q: Are integrations with tools like Intune, Mimecast, CrowdStrike, and others planned?
Intune integration is already available, see the documentation here. For others like Mimecast, CrowdStrike, and UKG, these are noted and on our radar for future automation and playbook integrations. Digital signature integrations beyond DocuSign are also planned. The built-in DocuSign support is being designed to extend to similar solutions.
Ticketing, Catalog & Approvals
Q: Are there plans to decouple Service Catalog categories from ticket categories, and to add an “incident catalog” for different incident form types?
Decoupling Service Catalog categories from ticket categories is on our roadmap. It’s been requested by many customers who want cleaner reporting without sacrificing the end-user catalog experience. An incident catalog similar to the service catalog is also something we’re evaluating.
Q: Are there plans to add Approvals to incident tickets? And can external users (non-SWSD users) participate in approval workflows?
Approvals on incident tickets are available today via runbooks. Adhoc approvals are on the roadmap for feature development. For external approvers: they do need to be a SWSD user to participate, but we’d recommend taking a look at dynamic approvers as a flexible way to route approvals without hardcoding specific people.
Assets
Q: Can assets be recategorized without losing their audit trail? And will assets be accessible outside of IT (ESM use cases)?
On recategorization without audit trail loss: You are able to change a computer type to another type without losing the audit trial. If you change it from a computer to a network device, the audit trial currently does not follow the device. A uniformed design is on our roadmap that will help bring the audit trial from one device type to another.
On ESM access: yes, enabling assets and other modules for non-IT service providers is on our ESM roadmap. For asset quantity tracking (e.g., entering 100 units of the same model without doing it one by one), that’s also on the ITAM roadmap. For now, a custom field can be used as a workaround.
Customization & Permissions
Q: Are there plans to expand what custom fields can do, including calculations, use in email templates, and username composition logic?
Yes, across the board. Formula fields (e.g., Field X = Field Y × Field Z) and built-in date functions are planned on our roadmap in the mid-long term. Custom fields in email templates are also on the roadmap. For username composition logic when creating users via workflow (e.g., first initial + last name, with duplicate handling), this isn’t built in yet but is a known need. We’re planning to address it via text processing functions and small scriptlets in workflows.
Q: Are there plans to expand role restrictions and permissions? For example, scoping to individual users rather than just departments, or field-level permissions?
On scoping to individual users: this is already possible today: roles can be created and assigned to a single user, so you're not limited to department-level restrictions. If you're running into a specific limitation here, we'd recommend reaching out to your CSM to walk through your setup. On field-level permissions more broadly: that is on the long-term roadmap, including the ability to base permissions on the value of specific custom fields for much greater flexibility and granularity.
Project Management
Q: When is Project Management releasing, what plans will it be included in, and will it integrate with external tools like Asana, DevOps, or Monday.com?
We’re targeting early access at the end of Q2. Project Management will be included in both Advanced and Premier plans at no additional cost. For third-party integrations (Asana, Azure DevOps, Monday.com): importing projects from other tools is on the roadmap for a later phase, but won’t be available in the first release.
Virtual Agent & Microsoft Teams / Slack
Q: What’s the plan for the Virtual Agent, and will it integrate more deeply with Teams and Slack?
We’re actively building an AI-powered Virtual Agent. As part of that work, we have a roadmap item to significantly enhance the Teams and Slack apps to leverage the new Virtual Agent capabilities. We expect to take that up around Q4. Deeper embedding of the SWSD portal within Teams (e.g., as a native tab) is also being considered as part of this effort.
Sandbox & Labs
Q: Is the Sandbox limited to the portal side? What’s the plan for a fuller dev/test workflow that doesn’t require making changes in production first?
The current implementation of Sandbox allows for dev/test in a fully isolated tenant that does not impact production. The next phase we are working on with a late Q2/early Q3 release is to sync data from production to sandbox and from sandbox to production. This will allow you to not only make the changes in the sandbox but then push the changes to your production account.
Q: How long does it typically take for a Labs feature to reach general availability?
It depends on the scope of the feature and the feedback we receive, but on average the journey from Labs to GA is around 1–2 months. Features with significant changes based on customer feedback may take longer.
MSP & Mobile
Q: Are there updates planned for the MSP interface, mobile app, and mobile approval workflows?
Yes, we have ongoing investments in our mobile experience, with a focus on improving parity and overall reliability. In the near term, this includes enhancements around task management, as well as improvements to sign-in, attachments, and general app stability.
On MSP specifically, MSP use cases are supported today in the web experience. Mobile support for MSP scenarios is more limited at the moment, and improving parity there is a known area we’re continuing to evaluate.
Final Thoughts
If you have a feature you’d like to see in Service Desk, we’d love to hear from you on the Feature Requests board. We review submissions regularly and your ideas directly influence the roadmap.
As always, if there’s anything you’d like to know more about before the next product update, don’t hesitate to schedule time with your customer success manager or account manager to discuss further. They’re always there to help make Service Desk the best it can be for your organization.
Thanks again for a fantastic session. See you next quarter! 🧡
