Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated April 16, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

    ServiceNow enables you to reuse Natural Language Understanding (NLU) intents by importing them from prebuilt NLU models into your own models. This functionality helps save time and effort when building custom NLU models for Virtual Agent chatbots. Prebuilt NLU models cover key business units such as IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Human Resources (HR), providing validated intents aligned with common conversation topics and actions relevant to each domain.

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    Key Features

    • Prebuilt Virtual Agent NLU Models: These read-only models contain intents derived from a large language corpus and include both ServiceNow and user-defined vocabularies. Each intent corresponds to a Virtual Agent conversation topic tailored to ITSM, CSM, or HR contexts.
    • Intent Reuse: You can import intents from these prebuilt models into your own NLU models or copy the entire prebuilt model as a foundation for customization. This allows your chatbots to immediately understand and respond to user inputs in the respective business domain.
    • Plugin Requirements: Access to prebuilt models requires activation of specific plugins (CSM, HR, ITSM Virtual Agent conversations) and roles with admin privileges. Activating these plugins also enables the NLU Workbench for managing models.
    • Application Scope Considerations: NLU models, including intents and entities, are linked to a specific application scope which cannot be changed after creation. Careful verification of the target scope is essential before importing or creating models.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Accelerated Model Development: Quickly build sophisticated Virtual Agent chatbots by leveraging validated, domain-specific intents from prebuilt models.
    • Consistency and Accuracy: Utilize intents that have been tested and aligned with Virtual Agent conversation topics, ensuring reliable chatbot interactions in ITSM, CSM, or HR scenarios.
    • Flexible Model Customization: Import and extend prebuilt intents alongside custom ones, or copy entire models to tailor solutions to specific organizational needs.
    • Streamlined Access Management: Activate necessary plugins and assign roles correctly to maintain secure and efficient access to prebuilt NLU content.

    Reuse Natural Language Understanding (NLU) intents by importing them from a prebuilt NLU model to other models. Reusing intents saves time when building your models.

    Prebuilt Virtual Agent NLU models provide language understanding needed for chatbot conversation flows in ITSM, CSM, and HR topics. Each NLU intent in these models maps to a single Virtual Agent conversation topic created in Virtual Agent Designer accordingly.

    The prebuilt models are read-only, but contain validated intents that you can reuse in your NLU models. For example, the prebuilt HR model for Virtual Agent contains several intents regarding HR requests. Adding the intents to one of your models makes that model ready to respond to user inputs regarding HR.

    Prebuilt Virtual Agent model content

    Each of the prebuilt Virtual Agent models uses language that's pertinent to their respective business unit (BU). The NLU that processes this language, built from a word corpus of 3 million words, is context-aware of general linguistic patterns and both ServiceNow and user-defined vocabularies.

    The prebuilt models map to common conversation topics used by Virtual Agent chatbots across each of the three BUs. Those topics correspond with intents that perform BU-specific actions.

    For more NLU and Virtual Agent context, refer to the following product documentation:

    Virtual Agent and NLU plugins and roles

    To access the prebuilt Virtual Agent models in the NLU Workbench, you must install and activate these plugins using the admin role.

    Plugins Descriptions
    • CSM Virtual Agent conversations [com.sn_csm.virtualagent]
    • Human Resources Scoped App: Virtual Agent Conversations [com.sn_hr_virtual_agent]
    • ITSM Virtual Agent conversations [com.snc.itsm.virtualagent]

    Enables Pre-built Virtual Agent topics, topic blocks, and ServiceNow NLU models for the Customer Service Management, HR Service Delivery, and IT Service Management applications.

    • Requires the Glide Virtual Agent (com.glide.cs.chatbot) plugin to be activated.
    • Automatically activates the NLU Workbench (com.snc.nlu_studio) plugin.

    Creating NLU models that reuse predefined Virtual Agent intents

    The prebuilt Virtual Agent models are set to read-only and can't be edited. However, the intents in these models can be imported into your new model, alongside any new intents you've created in your model. You can also copy the prebuilt model and use the intents as a foundation for a new model.

    To reuse the intents from a prebuilt Virtual Agent model, choose the prebuilt model when importing intents. See Import an NLU intent.

    NLU models and their intents and entities are associated to an application scope. The scope can't be changed later, so verify your target application scope before you begin.