Rules in Recommended Actions

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Rules in Recommended Actions

    Rules in Recommended Actions define conditions and contexts to provide helpful recommendations to agents with specified user roles. These rules enable ServiceNow customers to suggest actionable guidance directly on records, improving agent efficiency and decision-making within case management and other contexts.

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    Key Features

    • Role-based Visibility: Rules specify which user roles can view the associated recommendations, ensuring targeted guidance.
    • Contextual Conditions: Rules apply conditions to context records and inputs, triggering recommendations only when criteria are met.
    • Multiple Recommendations: A single rule can include several recommendations, such as predicting field values or suggesting knowledge articles.
    • Context Records and Extensions: Rules are created within a specific context (e.g., case context). They can be applied to extended tables by enabling the “Apply to tables extended from the context table” option, allowing inherited recommendations across related data tables.
    • Rule Form Configuration: The Rule form captures key information including rule name, context, applicable roles, description, advanced conditions, monitored fields (which trigger recommendations on changes), activation status, and application order.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By defining rules in Recommended Actions, customers can automate and customize agent guidance based on real-time case data and user roles. For example, rules can automatically suggest the appropriate assignment group for a case or recommend relevant knowledge articles to attach. Enabling rules on extended tables ensures consistency across related datasets. The configuration options in the Rule form provide control over when and how recommendations appear, helping to streamline workflows and improve resolution times.

    A rule is a set of conditions that applies to a context. A rule shows recommendations to agents with certain roles for records that meet certain conditions.

    Creating a rule includes the following steps:
    • Selecting the user roles that can see the recommendations associated with the rule.
    • Defining the conditions that apply to the context records and context inputs.
    • Creating recommendations for the rule. A recommendation is a way to suggest a helpful action to an agent. A rule can have multiple recommendations.
    The Recommended Actions application includes one context record, case context, that you can use to create recommendations for cases. For example, following are some guidance recommendations:
    • Case field level recommendations: This rule includes one recommendation to predict a value for the Assignment group field on the Case form.
    • Case side panel recommendations: This rule includes recommendations to view and attach a knowledge article to a case and to attach and add a link to a knowledge article in a comment, work note, or email.

    Apply rules to tables extended from the context table

    The rule created in the parent context are inherited by the extended context when you select the Apply to tables extended from the context table check box in a rule. The rules inherited from the parent context appear in the Inherited Rules related list of the extended context. Therefore, the recommendations of these rules are passed on to the extended context. Along with the recommendations of the context table, the recommendations of the active rules from the parent context are inherited by the extended context.

    Rule form

    The Rule form provides information about the rule, including a description, the selected user roles, and conditions that apply to the table in the associated context.

    When you create a rule, provide this information and save the record. After saving, you can see the Recommendations related list.

    You can access the rule records by navigating to All > Recommended Actions > Rules. New rules can only be created from within a context. For more information, see Create a rule.

    Table 1. Rule form fields
    Field Description
    Name The name of the rule.
    Context The context that this rule is associated with. This field is auto-populated from the Context form.
    Roles The user roles that can see recommendations for this rule.
    Description A brief description of the rule.
    Advanced Condition The conditions that apply to the records from the context table.

    If a context input is available for the context, you can build conditions on it along with the context table.
    Fields affecting this rule Fields from the context table that need to be monitored. Changes to these fields generate recommended actions of the type field recommendation for unsaved records.
    Active When enabled, the rule is active.
    Apply to tables extended from the context table When enabled, the rule is applied to tables that are extended from the context table.
    Order Determines the order in which the rule is applied.