Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM) release notes
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Summary of Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM) Yokohama Release Notes
The Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM) application integrates generative AI into ITOM workflows to enhance alert management, impact analysis, and incident triage. The Yokohama release introduces significant updates and new features designed to automate and improve operational efficiency, reduce resolution times, and provide deeper insights through AI-driven workflows. This application requires an ITOM Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus license and is available for installation via the ServiceNow Store.
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Key Features
- Manage Alerts Autonomously Workflow: Automates alert triage, impact analysis, and root cause investigation using AI agents, delivering consolidated insights through the Express List for immediate operator visibility.
- Expanded Observability Tool Support: Integration with additional observability skills such as Datadog and Google Gemini Cloud Assistant, complementing existing tools like Dynatrace, Kentik, and New Relic, broadening alert investigation capabilities.
- Analyze Alert Impact Agentic Workflow Enhancements: Includes five new AI agents providing richer impact analysis by incorporating ITOM and business context data, with support for Dynatrace alerts and other observability tools.
- Analyze Potential Impact Agentic Workflow: Offers assessment of change requests by analyzing relevant servers and services potentially affected, supporting informed decision-making before implementing changes.
- Triage and Analyze Alerts Agentic Workflow: Enables automatic assignment, acknowledgment, and summarization of alerts within incident contexts, improving response efficiency through historical and related incident analysis.
- Security Enhancements with Access Control Lists (ACLs): ACLs can be configured in AI Agent Studio to control user access and the behavior of AI agents and workflows, ensuring secure and compliant operations.
- New AI Model Providers: Support for Google Gemini and AWS Anthropic Claude expands AI model options alongside Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
Changes and Removals
- The
snobsaia.adminrole has been replaced bycredentialadminandconnectionadminroles for configuring AI agents in the Analyze alert impact workflow. - Certain prompts and four AIOps AI agents have been removed from the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow as they are now part of the Manage alerts autonomously workflow.
- Default behavior for Now Assist skills has been updated: new customers have designated skills enabled automatically upon installation, while existing customers have unconfigured skills turned on by default during upgrades.
- Now Assist usage measurement has transitioned to a 365-day burn-down model resetting at contract anniversary, improving usage tracking accuracy.
Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers
- Automating alert management with AI-driven workflows reduces manual effort and accelerates problem resolution.
- Enhanced integration with multiple observability tools enables comprehensive alert investigation across diverse environments.
- Security controls via ACLs allow precise governance of AI agent access, supporting enterprise compliance requirements.
- New AI model providers offer flexibility in selecting AI capabilities tailored to organizational needs.
- Upgrading customers should review and adjust skill configurations and roles to align with updated requirements and defaults.
- Installation and activation require acquiring the AIOps Experience plugin from the ServiceNow Store and ensuring appropriate licensing.
Next Steps
ServiceNow customers should:
- Install or upgrade to the Yokohama release of Now Assist for ITOM through the ServiceNow Store.
- Configure AI agents, workflows, and ACLs according to organizational security and operational policies using AI Agent Studio.
- Leverage new AI-powered workflows to streamline alert triage, impact analysis, and change impact assessments.
- Review role assignments and skill enablement to ensure optimal use of updated features and compliance with new defaults.
- Explore integration with supported observability tools for comprehensive monitoring and faster incident response.
The ServiceNow® Now Assist for ITOM application brings generative AI to ITOM. Now Assist for ITOM was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.
Now Assist for ITOM highlights for the Yokohama release
Yokohama Patch 11
- Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement.
- Now Assist skills used in the analyze potential impact agentic workflow are turned on by default.
- Use the new manage alerts autonomously workflow to efficiently manage alerts and minimize resolution times, including an AI agent for triage, impact analysis, and root cause investigation.
- Additional role configuration is required for agentic workflows and AI agents included with Now Assist applications.
Yokohama Patch 6
- Get deeper impact analysis in the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow with five new AI agents.
- Review Alert analysis, and relevant information for new mixed alert groups in the Now Assist panel to help investigate alerts more effectively.
- Use the Triage and analyze alert agentic workflow to perform initial triage and analysis in the context of an incident.
- Enhance security for Now Assist AI agents with Access Control Lists (ACLs).
- Use Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude on AWS as AI model providers for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
Yokohama Patch 3
- Investigate alerts and get the context that you need to respond efficiently using the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow.
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Automatically perform initial alert triage and analysis tasks such as assigning alerts, analyzing alert history, and summarizing past incidents, with the Triage and analyze alert agentic workflow.
See Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM) for more information.
Important:
Now Assist for ITOM is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
New in the Yokohama release
- Yokohama Patch 11
- Enhance IT operations with AI-driven, autonomous alert management using the manage alerts autonomously workflow
-
Automate alert triage, impact analysis, and root cause investigation with an AI-driven workflow that replaces manual operator steps with autonomous decision-making. The workflow processes incoming alerts end-to-end and surfaces consolidated insights through Express List, giving operators immediate visibility into what happened, what's affected, and why.
- Configure the Datadog and Gemini Cloud Assistant observability skills
- Set up the new Datadog and Gemini Cloud Assistant observability skills to get insights from those tools in the manage alerts autonomously agentic workflow. With Datadog and Google Gemini, the workflow now supports five observability tools, including Dynatrace, Kentik, and New Relic, helping you investigate and respond to a wider range of alerts.
- Yokohama Patch 6
- Configure the Dynatrace analysis AI agent
- Set up the Dynatrace analysis AI agent in the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow to investigate Dynatrace alerts. With Dynatrace, the agentic workflow now supports three observability tools, including Kentik and New Relic, helping you investigate and respond to a wider range of alerts.
- Expand the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow with four new AIOps agents
- Get a fuller view of alert impact with four new AIOps agents in the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow. Along with observability data, the agentic workflow now includes information from within ServiceNow to help surface business impact and related issues. Activate the AIOps agents to include them in the agentic workflow.
- Enhance your decision-making process with the Analyze Potential Impact agentic workflow
- Assess the potential impact of a change using the Analyze Potential Impact agentic workflow. This workflow provides an analysis of the relevant servers and suggested services that might be impacted by your change request, ensuring you have all the insights needed to make informed decision before a change.
- Add access control lists for security in AI agents
- Enable security settings to run AI agents and agentic workflows using ACLs and user identities. You can configure and manage the ACLs in AI Agent Studio.
- Utilize the Triage and analyze alerts agentic workflow in the context of an incident
- Initiate the Triage and analyze alerts agentic workflow from the Now Assist panel in the context of the incident form to perform all the functions of the workflow. This workflow automatically assigns, acknowledges, and summarizes origin alerts, determines their significance through historical analysis, and analyzes related incidents.
- New third-party AI model provider options available for all Now Assist applications
- Google Gemini and AWS Claude are available for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
- Yokohama Patch 3
- Analyze alert impact agentic workflow
-
Analyze the impact of alerts and identify the possible causes with the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow. The workflow interacts with observability tools, such as Kentik and New Relic, to surface alert details and provide insights.
- Now Assist for IT Operations Management (ITOM) Triage and analyze alert agentic workflow
-
Automatically assign, acknowledge, and summarize the alerts, determine their significance through history analysis, and analyze the related incidents. Initiate multiple parallel processes to triage and analyze the different alerts.
Removed in this release
- Starting with version 2.0.1 of AI Agents for Observability, the sn_obs_aia.admin role, previously required to configure AI agents in the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow, has been removed. Users must now have the credential_admin and connection_admin roles instead.
- Starting with version 2.0.1 of AI Agents for Observability, the prompt
How severe is this alert?no longer appears in the Analyze alert impact agentic workflow.
Changed in this release
- Yokohama Patch 11
- Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
- Starting with Yokohama Patch 5, Now Assist usage measurement is transitioning from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model, with usage resetting at the contract anniversary date. For more information, refer to KB KB2704710: Now Assist Usage - Overview & New Measurement Logic.
- Some Now Assist skills are turned on by default
- The new default behavior works as follows:
- New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills are turned on automatically.
- Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Yokohama Patch 11): Any previously unconfigured skill is turned on automatically (the skill was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
- Configure ACLs for AI agents and agentic workflows
- Configure the access control lists for who can discover and trigger AI agents and agentic workflows in their guided setups in AI Agent Studio. You can determine whether an AI agent or agentic workflow behaves as a dynamic user or as an AI user. You can also specify if an AI agent or agentic workflow can be available to all authenticated users or publicly available.
- AIOps AI agents removed from the analyze alert impact agentic workflow
- Four AIOps AI agents have been removed from the analyze alert impact agentic workflow as they're now available in the manage alerts autonomously agentic workflow. AI agents for Dynatrace, Kentik, and New Relic remain in the analyze alert impact agentic workflow to help you learn about and respond to alerts.
Activation information
- Install the AIOps Experience [sn_sow_aiops] application from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.
- Install Now Assist for ITOM by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.
Additional requirements
The Now Assist for ITOM application requires an ITOM Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus license.