Now Assist AI agents capabilities
Summarize
Summary of Now Assist AI agents capabilities
Now Assist AI agents in ServiceNow enable advanced conversational AI capabilities integrated within the Workspace. These agents support both interactive and non-interactive execution modes, allowing flexibility in how AI-driven workflows engage with users. The AI Agent Background Channel and Provider facilitate invoking AI agent conversations and managing their execution within the platform. Additionally, multilingual support enhances AI agent effectiveness across different languages.
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Key Features
- AI Agent Background Channel and Provider: Uses the Custom Adapter Framework from Virtual Agent to invoke AI agent conversations programmatically via the
snaia.AiAgentRunttimeUtil().startAiAgentConversation(request)API. Conversations and executions are logged in thesnaiaexecutionplantable for tracking and testing. - Interactive vs Non-interactive AI Agents: Interactive agents actively engage users to collect information when fallback situations occur during execution. Non-interactive agents operate without requesting user input during fallbacks but still present outputs or failure messages in the Now Assist or Virtual Agent panels.
- Execution Mode Configuration: The execution mode (Interactive or Non-interactive) is controlled via a field in the execution plans table, enabling concurrent execution of AI agents and agentic workflows in background channels compatible with any chat panel.
- Multilingual Support: AI agents support multiple languages with capabilities to tune system prompts for native translations, apply dynamic translation strategies when native support is missing, and perform thorough testing through automated and manual evaluations to ensure translation quality.
Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers
- Customers can integrate AI agents seamlessly into their Workspace and chat environments to automate and enhance user interactions.
- The ability to choose between interactive and non-interactive modes allows tailoring AI agent behavior to specific use cases, either by prompting users or running autonomously.
- Execution logging and testing features enable customers to monitor AI agent performance and troubleshoot or optimize workflows effectively.
- Multilingual capabilities help global organizations deploy AI agents that communicate accurately and naturally in different languages, improving user experience worldwide.
Lists the features supported by Now Assist AI agents, including configuration options and functional capabilities.
Invoke Conversations with AI Agent Background Channel
The AI Agent Background Channel helps you to invoke AI Agent or agentic workflow execution from the Workspace. Use the AI Agent Background Channel associated with the AI Agent Background Provider to invoke conversations. The AI Agent Background Provider is based on the Custom Adapter Framework from Virtual Agent. For more information, see Configure a provider for your custom chat integration.
Create a channel identifier in the Provider Channel Identities table [sys_cs_provider_application] to add any additional conversational capabilities to your own provider application and get a new inbound ID that allows for customization. For more information, see Create a channel identifier for your custom chat integration.
To start a conversation, trigger the flow using the sn_aia.AiAgentRunttimeUtil().startAiAgentConversation(request) API in the Script Include (sys_script_include) of the AIAgentBackgroundProvider and select Run Script. When the Script execution status indicates Success, the conversation begins in the order of utterances defined in the Script.
Conversations that are invoked for executing an AI agent are logged in the Execution Plans [sn_aia_execution_plan] table. Open the conversation record to confirm the device type as AI Agent Background. Open the execution record to see the Execution Tasks, Messages, and the Tools Executions used to execute the AI agent.
You can also see the entire execution steps on the AI Agent Studio Testing page by copying the execution plan record's [sys_Id] and testing it. On the Chat responses tab, in the AI agent decision logs, you can see the AI agent details and the tools it used to resolve the issue.
Interactive and Non-interactive AI agents
The Interactive AI agents reach out to users for information when there is a fallback in the execution process, and the AI agent re-triggers the flow.
The Non-interactive AI agents do not reach out to the user at any fallback stage in the execution process. When the AI agent needs user information, it takes the dynamic prompt approach using the ReAct layer, where the prompt of the ReAct will change based on the execution mode of the AI agent or agentic workflow. Therefore, in the Non-interactive execution, the reach fallback options do not have to collect input from a user as a fallback option. However, the output of the AI agent or agentic workflow will still need to be presented to the user, and in any execution failure scenario, a message in the Now Assist panel or Virtual Agent is shown.
To implement the Non-interactive execution, the Execution Mode field is added in the Execution Plans [sn_aia_execution_plan] table, where the execution mode can be Interactive or Non Interactive based on the given runtime parameter.
You can run the AI agents and agentic workflows concurrently in the AI Agent Background Channel and in Non-interactive mode where the background execution allows AI agents to operate with any chat panel like Now Assist panel or Virtual Agent.
Multilingual support
- Tune system prompts for native translations.
- Implement dynamic translation strategies when native support is unavailable.
- Provide extensive testing via automated and manual evaluations.