Now Assist AI agents release notes

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated February 11, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Now Assist AI agents release notes

    The ServiceNow® Now Assist AI agents application, introduced in the Xanadu release, empowers organizations to automate tasks through AI agents capable of perceiving their environment, making decisions, and taking proactive actions without constant human oversight. This application enhances issue resolution, workflow automation, and user interactions by embedding AI-driven capabilities directly within ServiceNow.

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    Key Features

    • Access Control Lists (ACLs) Configuration: Administrators can define who can discover and trigger AI agents and agentic workflows, ensuring secure and authorized use through mandatory ACLs applied to AI operations.
    • Agentic Workflows: Now called agentic workflows, these are execution plans that orchestrate AI agents to accomplish complex tasks, with options to clone existing workflows to streamline setup and testing capabilities before deployment.
    • AI Agent Creation: Build AI agents that perform specific tasks by integrating tools like catalog items, conversational topics, flow actions, skills, scripts, and web search to automate processes traditionally handled by humans.
    • Now Assist Guardian: Automatically detects and blocks offensive messages sent by human agents, enhancing communication safety.
    • Multiple Conversations Support: Live agents can manage multiple concurrent AI agent conversations via the Now Assist panel, improving multitasking and responsiveness.
    • AI Agent Analytics Dashboard: Provides insights into AI agent usage, performance, and efficiency gains through preconfigured dashboards.
    • Voice Input Accessibility: Optional voice-to-text input enables users, including those with mobility or vision impairments and non-native speakers, to interact with Now Assist AI agents more easily.
    • Localization: Built on the GPT-4o framework, the AI agents support localization aligned with GPT-4o capabilities.

    Activation and Requirements

    • Now Assist AI agents require activation of any Now Assist plugin available from the ServiceNow Store.
    • To use AI agents, the supported Now Assist version must be installed, and the Next Experience UI Framework must be enabled to access the Now Assist panel.
    • The application supports modern browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge but does not support Internet Explorer.

    Related Applications and Features

    • Now Assist Panel: A conversational interface that leverages generative AI to assist with customer issue resolution, summarization, and note generation.
    • Generative AI Controller: Enables integration of third-party large language models with ServiceNow workflows.
    • AI Search: Provides enhanced search capabilities across Service Portal, Now Mobile, and Virtual Agent.
    • Now Assist Skill Kit: Allows creation and publication of custom prompts and skills, offering greater flexibility in extending generative AI capabilities.

    The ServiceNow® Now Assist AI agents application provides solutions that can perceive the environment, make decisions, and proactively take actions to achieve specific goals without need for constant human oversight. Now Assist AI agents is a new application in the Xanadu release.

    Now Assist AI agents highlights for the Xanadu release

    Xanadu Patch 10
    • Create ACLs for AI agents and agentic workflows to customize who can discover and trigger AI agents and agentic workflows.
    • Add secure methods for AI agent and agentic workflow operations and apply appropriate ACLs to ensure that they can only be accessed and run by authorized users.
    • Security implementation with access control lists (ACLs) for agentic workflows and AI agents is mandatory.
    Xanadu EA
    • Define agentic workflows with an execution plan to achieve various tasks.
    • Use the Now Assist panel to communicate with the agent during an issue resolution.
    • Clone existing AI agents and use cases to save time and avoid manual configuration.
    • Enable Now Assist Guardian to automatically identify and block offensive messages.
    • View the usage and performance of your AI agents with the AI agent analytics dashboard.
    • Enable multiple conversations for AI agents on the Now Assist panel.

    See Now Assist AI agents for more information.

    For the Platform Now Assist release notes, see Now Assist release notes.

    Important:
    AI Agent Studio is available in ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

    Now Assist AI agents features

    Xanadu Patch 10
    Configure ACLs for AI agents and agentic workflows
    Configure the access control lists (ACLs) for who can discover and trigger AI agents and agentic workflows in their guided setups in the 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 only authenticated users or publicly available.
    Xanadu EA
    Create an AI agent
    Create AI agents accomplish discrete tasks to use in a use case:
    • Create AI agents to gather data, make decisions, and complete tasks that would otherwise need to be done by a human.
    • Add one of the following tools or information sources for the AI agent to execute:
      • Catalog item
      • Conversational topic
      • Flow action
      • Now Assist skill
      • Record operation
      • Script
      • Search retrieval
      • Subflow
      • Web search
    Create an agentic workflow

    Create a use case with an execution plan to solve complex tasks with Now Assist. You can also do the following tasks:

    • Clone an existing use case to avoid manual configuration.
    • Create triggers when creating a use case that calls the AI agent when a condition or objective is observed.
    • Test a use case before execution.
    • Resolve record-based cases with AI agents.
    Enable Now Assist Guardian in AI agents
    Enable Now Assist Guardian in AI agents to automatically identify and block offensive messages that are sent by human agents.
    Multiple conversations in Now Assist AI agents
    Enable live agents to interact with multiple AI agent conversations through the Now Assist panel.
    AI Agent Analytics dashboard
    Analyze the performance, efficiency gain, and usage of AI agents through preconfigured dashboards.

    UI changes

    Xanadu Patch 5
    • Use cases are now called agentic workflows.

    Activation information

    Now Assist in AI agents is available with activation of any Now Assist plugin from the ServiceNow Store. For more information about the prerequisites for using Now Assist, see Install Now Assist AI agents.

    Additional requirements

    You must first install the supported Now Assist version of ServiceNow to be able to use the Now Assist AI agents. For more information, see Install Now Assist AI agents.

    Enable the Next Experience UI Framework before you can use the Now Assist panel.

    Browser requirements

    Now Assist AI agents supports various browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Now Assist AI agents isn’t supported in Internet Explorer.

    Accessibility information

    Voice Input for Now Assist AI agents
    Administrators can enable an optional voice input setting for the Now Assist panel in the Now Assist Admin console. This feature gives users a voice-to-text input option to access the Now Assist skills in the panel in any supported language. For more information, see Enable voice input for Now Assist panel.
    Once enabled, the Enable voice input for the Now Assist panel option will be available in individual user accessibility preferences. See Configure Next Experience accessibility preferences for more information.
    Voice-to-text input can help users with mobility impairments access generative AI skills without using a keyboard. This feature can also be useful to blind or low-vision users, neurodivergent users, non-native language speakers, or mobile users on the go, such as field service agents.

    Localization information

    Now Assist AI agents is built on the GPT-4o-based framework and supports localization as per the GPT-4o model.

    Related ServiceNow applications and features

    Now Assist panel

    With the ServiceNow®Now Assist panel, you can get assistance from generative AI experiences to solve customer issues faster. Use this conversational interface to summarize a chat, case, or incident, get help, or generate resolution notes so that you can get the context of this information more quickly.

    Generative AI Controller
    The ServiceNow® Generative AI Controller lets you integrate third-party large language models (LLMs) with your workflows.
    AI Search
    The ServiceNow® AI Search application provides a consumer-grade search engine for Service Portal, Now Mobile, and Virtual Agent. Intelligent query features help you quickly find the answers you need.
    Now Assist Skill Kit
    Use the ServiceNow® Now Assist Skill Kit to create and publish custom prompts and skills for Now Assist. Creating custom skills and prompts enables you to have greater flexibility with Now Assist's generative AI capabilities.