Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent
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Summary of Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent
Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhances ServiceNow portals by integrating AI Search with generative AI chat capabilities. This combination accelerates issue resolution and reduces the need for live agent intervention, improving user experience and operational efficiency.
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Chat Experience Options
During setup, you can choose between two chat experiences:
- Standard chat: A static chat widget offering a straightforward conversational interface.
- Enhanced chat: A more dynamic, resizable, and movable chat window supporting multiple simultaneous conversations and accessible from various portal entry points.
If AI Search is enabled, enhanced chat can be configured to open a full-page chat experience from the portal’s search bar, merging search and chat into a seamless interaction. Both enhanced chat modes maintain synchronized conversation histories and citation behavior.
Key Features and Differences
- Enhanced chat supports chat window resizing, multiple active conversations, persistent conversations after task completion, and redirects portal search bars to integrated chat capabilities.
- Standard chat lacks these advanced interaction features and does not redirect portal search bars.
- Both experiences provide synthesized responses with citations from catalog topics, knowledge bases, external content, and people, but formatting differs.
- Chat widget buttons differ visually: standard chat uses a traditional message icon, while enhanced chat uses an AI-generated sparkle icon.
Full-Page Experience Details
The full-page experience of enhanced chat:
- Redirects portal search queries directly to a chat tab showing Now Assist-generated synthesized responses.
- Keeps conversations synchronized with the enhanced chat window, allowing users to continue interactions seamlessly across both modes.
- Separates search and chat tabs, letting users conduct searches independently without disrupting ongoing chats.
Chat Controls and Navigation
- New chat: Initiate new conversations with optional promoted content or custom chat names.
- Chats: Access active, updated, and optionally closed chats, with features to manage chat inactivity timeouts and notifications.
- Support: View live agent availability and contact support when needed; only one live agent chat is allowed at a time.
- Settings: Configure audio notifications and visual alerts according to user preferences.
Feedback and Interaction Enhancements
Each Virtual Agent response includes feedback icons for users to indicate helpfulness, enabling continuous improvement of AI responses. When applicable, a "go to search results" option directs users to relevant search results, enhancing navigational flow.
Prerequisites for Deployment
To enable standard or enhanced chat with synthesized AI responses, ensure the following are configured on your portal:
- Enable the portal's AI Search.
- Activate the ServiceNow default Search page widget and chat widget button.
- For the enhanced chat full-page experience, also enable the Search Typeahead widget.
Why It Matters
Implementing Now Assist in Virtual Agent empowers your ServiceNow portal users to resolve issues faster through AI-driven, conversational search and support. Enhanced chat options provide flexible and engaging user experiences, while synchronization and feedback mechanisms ensure consistent, evolving assistance.
Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhances the user experience by combining AI Search with generative AI chat skills. These skills can speed up issue resolution and reduce deflection to a live agent.
Standard chat and enhanced chat
During the Now Assist in Virtual Agent guided setup, you may be presented with two user experiences to select from: standard chat or enhanced chat.
Standard chat is a conversational support experience within a static chat widget. Enhanced chat is a conversational experience within a resizable and movable chat window that includes the ability to have multiple active conversations. Enhanced chat enables users to choose their way of engaging with Now Assist on their ServiceNow portals from a variety of entry points. When choosing enhanced chat from the guided setup, if you also have AI Search enabled on your portal, you’re presented the Allow the search bar to open into a full-page chat experience option. If you select this option, your conversational and search experience appears as a full page inside the portal. The conversational fluidity and citation behavior between the enhanced chat and enhanced chat's full-page experience remains the same regardless of which chat experience you choose. You can still access enhanced chat's resizable and moveable chat window when you have full-page experience turned on and are on screens other than the full-page experience itself. Turning on enhanced chat's full-page experience further intertwines chat and search capabilities by redirecting you into a full-page chat after entering a query into a portal's search bar.
The following table outlines feature differences between standard and enhanced chat.
| Feature | Standard chat | Enhanced chat |
|---|---|---|
| Portal's search bars redirect to include chat capabilities or directly into chat | No | Yes |
| Chat window resizable and moveable | No | Yes |
| Multiple active conversations | No | Yes |
| Conversations remain active after task completion | No | Yes |
| View all topics option | Yes | No |
- Catalog
- Topic, subflows, or actions
- Q&A Knowledge Base articles
- External content connections
- People
The appearance of the default chat widget button varies depending on whether you have standard or enhanced chat turned on. The default standard chat button displays as a traditional message icon and the default enhanced chat button displays as the universal AI-generated sparkle icon. This button is only accessible through portal pages. While in enhanced chat's full-page experience, you’re unable to access the chat widget button.
Enhanced chat's full-page experience
The conversational fluidity and citation behavior between the enhanced chat and enhanced chat's full-page experience remains the same regardless of which chat experience you use. The conversations that you have either through the enhanced chat's window or full-page experience remain in synchronization, and the conversational history is retained in both mediums. For example, if you enter Order a loaner laptop the conversational fluidity and citations that appear are the same whether in enhanced chat or enhanced chat's full-page experience. If you begin the laptop catalog request in the full-page experience, you can still view and continue the conversation in the enhanced chat's window because the chat experiences remain in synchronization with one another. For more information about conversational behavior and citations, see Enhanced chat.
Each Virtual Agent response includes a feedback icons panel. The feedback icons panel appears on the latest Virtual Agent response and whenever you hover over any previous Virtual Agent response. You can indicate if the response was helpful by selecting the like thumbs up icon (
). If the response wasn't helpful, select the dislike thumbs down icon (
). This feedback is used to train the LLM model and improve responses over time. Depending on the context of the response, an
additional go to search results icon (
) may appear in the feedback icons panel. This icon appears alongside synthesized responses in Virtual Agent, clarifying questions in Virtual Agent, and fallback topics whenever a synthesized response is unavailable but there are regular search results available. When the full-page experience is on and you select the go to search results icon (), you’re redirected to the Search tab. After redirecting to the Search tab, a search query using the last five chat utterances you entered begins.
The chat controls area consists of four icons that represent the following tasks:
- New chat (
) - Select New chat () to open a new conversation. You may be prompted with a greeting message along with any promoted conversational assets such as topics, subflows, and actions. If you select a promoted asset, that asset's title appears as
the chat name in the navigation area. If instead you enter an utterance into the Reply to Now Assist field, your utterance becomes the chat name in the section in the navigation area.
- Chats (
) - All chats are organized with the most recent conversations at the top. Selecting a chat opens the chat in the conversation area. If there are unread chats or notifications, a badge number appears on the chats icon . Any unread chat or notification appears with a red dot next to it and the chat title appears in bold. Additionally, if you switch to a new chat through another action while another active chat is ongoing, a pop-up
message on the chats icon appears: Your previous chat was saved. You can revisit all of your past chats and continue ones that are still active. The following list includes the chat sections that you may see in the
chats navigation area.
- Active: Chats where you can continue the conversation. If applicable, active chats move to the Closed chats section after two hours of inactivity. This-two hour time limit can be configured within the Messaging Channels {sys_cs_channel.list} table. To change the inactivity time limit, from the Messaging Channels {sys_cs_channel.list} table, select the NASS record and populate the Conversation Idle Timeout field with your preferred active chat time limit. If you have no active chats, No chatter at the moment is displayed. If more than 10 active chats are running, a Show more link appears to view more chats. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10 chats.
- Updates: Updates for important notifications and reminders can be configured to display. When sn_nowassist_va.nass_notification_enabled is set to true (the default), simple
(nonactonable) Virtual Agent notifications appear on your portal home page. After selecting a notification, you’re redirected to this Updates section. If you have no updates, You're all caught
up is displayed. If more than four updates are available, a Show more link appears to view more updates. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10
updates.Note:If sn_nowassist_va.nass_notification_enabled is set to false, the Updates section doesn't appear.
- Closed: Closed chats can be configured to display. You know that a message has closed when the designated time has passed (2 hours of inactivity) or you receive the following response in the chat: It looks like you're finished with this chat, so I'll go ahead and close it. Turn on closed chats by selecting the Show closed chats check box within . After being turned on, closed chats are displayed for as long as they’re available within the Conversations (sys_cs_conversation) table. Closed chats appear in a read-only mode and can’t become active again. If more than four closed chats are available, a Show more link appears to view more closed chats. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10 closed chats. After a conversation has closed, you can’t reopen it.
- Support (
) - Support contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses are listed. If live agents are available, an active Contact Live Agent button is displayed. Although multiple active conversations are possible, you can only have one live agent conversation at a time. Selecting Contact Live Agent begins a chat with a live agent. After a live agent enters the chat, the Contact Live Agent button becomes inactive. If live agents are unavailable, an inactive No live agents currently available button is displayed.
- Settings (
) - Toggles for Audio notifications and Notifications appear. By default, audio notifications are turned on and notifications are turned off. If admins have enabled notifications within the guided setup, users can turn on the notifications.
(Request in Chat)The
(Request in Chat) icon opens the conversational catalog into a new chat.
(Open in New Tab)The
(Open a New Tab) icon redirects you to either complete a catalog form or view content in a new tab.
The following table outlines the preceding feature differences between enhanced chat window and enhanced chat full-page experience.
| Feature | Enhanced chat | Enhanced chat full-page experience |
|---|---|---|
| Entry points |
|
|
| Portal search bar results | Redirects to the portal's search page results. | Redirects into the full-page experience's chat tab. |
Prerequisite requirements for standard and enhanced chat
- Configure the portal's AI Search
- Turn on the ServiceNow default Search page widget.
- Turn on the ServiceNow default chat widget button.
The following actions must be completed for enhanced chat to display a synthesized response in the full-page experience after entering a search query through the portal's search bar:
- Configure the portal's AI Search configured
- Turn on the ServiceNow default Search page widget.
- Turn on the ServiceNow default chat widget button.
- Turn on the ServiceNow default Search Typeahead widget.
More information
- For more information on enhanced chat, see Enhanced chat.
- For more information on enhanced chat in Employee Center, see Enhanced chat in Employee Center.
- For more information on enhanced chat in self-service portals, see Using the Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhanced chat in self-service portals.
- For more information on Now Assist, see Now Assist.
- For more information on Now Assist in AI Search, see Now Assist in AI Search.
- For more information on language support, see Translation for Now Assist.
- For more information on Now Assist in Virtual Agent analytics, see Analyzing Now Assist in Virtual Agent.