Combined Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) release notes for upgrades from Vancouver to Xanadu

How to use this page

To help you prepare for your upgrade, we have combined the cross-family Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) release notes onto one page. Read this summary of the new features, changes, and updated information for your product from Vancouver to Xanadu.

Tip:

If there were no updates for a release notes section in a certain family release, we included a short note for your reference. For example, if a product did not have any updates in Tokyo, the row says "No updates for this release."

Important information for upgrading Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) to Xanadu

Before you upgrade to Xanadu, review these pre- and post-upgrade tasks and complete the tasks as needed.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

New features

Between your current release family and Xanadu, new features were introduced for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM).

Release

Release notes

Vancouver

No updates for this release.

Washington DC

No updates for this release.

Xanadu

Xanadu Patch 9

Using IT Service Management AI agent collection

Use the IT Service Management AI agent collection to boost productivity, and autonomously resolve business tasks.

Table 1. Available agentic workflows
Agentic workflows	Description
Triage and categorize ITSM incidents	Identify the category, subcategory, and configuration item for an incident automatically, and link associated major incidents or known problems.
Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents	Get recommendations to resolve an incident based on the incident number. Check for related catalog items, Knowledge articles, and similar resolved incidents to generate resolution steps for the incident.
Manage Microsoft 365 group members	Add or remove groups and email distribution lists from the Microsoft 365 group.

Generate change request plans use case

Use the following additional AI agents to handle change requests.


AI agent	Description
Change risk and impact analysis AI agent	Analyzes the potential risk and impact of a change request.
Change justification proposal AI agent	Proposes justification for a change request.

Generate a Major Incident email recommendation

Draft a communication for a major incident using an email template. You can fill in the template field values with an AI-generated response.

Generate comments and work notes using the Now Assist context menu

Enable your agents to generate comments and work notes quickly and add them to incidents using the Now Assist panel.

Incident sentiment and sentiment trend

Make informed decisions on incidents by considering the requester's sentiments and the reasoning behind them.

Generate suggested steps

Automatically generate suggested steps to resolve an incident by analyzing the solutions from clusters of similar resolved incidents.

Summarizing attachments in the Incident summarization skill

Summarize, analyze, and extract data from attachments that are of type PNG or JPEG using Document Intelligence in the Incident summarization skill.

Using self service to deflect incidents in a ServiceNow portal by using Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM)

Designed to reduce the number of incidents to be resolved by deflecting issues with self-service.

Customizing a Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) change risk skill

Efficiently explain the risk of a change request by adding custom input fields to the following input tables:

Change request
Past similar change request
Incident caused by change

Refining a change risk explanation response

Refine the explanation to a change risk by shortening or lengthening a response by using Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM).

Risk Assessment as input to calculate a change risk

Use risk assessment values as an input to explain the risk of a change request.

Generating an email response by using Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM)

Get recommendations for email responses that agents can review and send to users. Agents can also get email template and content edit recommendations from Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM).

Monitoring task status using pre-built LLM topics with Now Assist in ITSM Virtual Agent

Copy and customize a ITSM Virtual Agent core ITSM topic template to track the status of a task by using Now Assist in ITSM Virtual Agent.

Xanadu Patch 7

Using IT Service Management AI agent collection

Use IT Service Management AI agent collection to boost productivity, and autonomously resolve business tasks.

Table 2. Available AI agents use cases
AI agent use case	Description
Generate post incident reviews	Enhance IT productivity during major incidents by minimizing the time required to generate post-incident reviews using AI agents. This process helps improve communication and avoid outages. Important: To enable the display of the Generate post incident reviews use case, you must activate the Incident Management - Major Incident Management plugin (com.snc.incident.mim). For more information, see Activate Incident Management - Major Incident Management.
Generate change request plans	Enhance IT productivity and help decrease the time to schedule change and manage change risk using AI agents. These AI agents can look up similar changes, generate implementation, back out, and test plans to manage change effectively.
Categorize incidents	Autonomously recommend incident categorization using AI agents. The AI agent assigns a category, subcategory, and a configuration item (CI) to incidents based on the incident description. The assigned CI is also based on callers associated with that item.
Notify users with Twilio	Send text messages via SMS to recipients manually using AI agents to help improve the time required for subject matter expert response. Important: To enable the display of the Notify users with Twilio use case, you must activate the Twilio Spoke plugin (sn_twilio_spoke). For more information, see Twilio Spoke.

Xanadu Patch 3
Risk rating explanation for a change request: Provide your change managers with a better understanding of the risk rating of a change request, including the potential impacts and risks, by generating the risk explanation by using the Now Assist icon. The risk rating explanation can be generated on the change request form and in the Now Assist panel.
Ask questions on an incident: Enable your agents to quickly obtain common incident information conversationally within the incident record by asking questions in the Now Assist panel. Topics include the caller's assets, caller's recent incidents, on-call experts, and similar resolved incidents.
Enhanced incident resolution notes using the Now Assist context menu: Provide your agents with enhanced resolution notes information in the incident summary, including the root cause and steps taken to resolve the issue, by using the Now Assist context menu.
Proactive actionable ITSM Virtual Agent notifications: Provide your agents with proactive actionable notifications as part of ITSM Virtual Agent pre-built Large Language Model (LLM) topic conversations that are designed to help your users complete common IT-related tasks.
Change request summarization enhancements: Provide your change managers with an improved change request summary including additional details, such as the affected configuration items (CIs) and impacted services.
Incident summarization enhancements: Provide your agents with an improved incident summary by including additional details, such as the service level agreements (SLAs), affected CIs and impacted services, and child incidents.

Xanadu Patch 1
Summarize a change request: Provide your change managers with a better understanding of the content, intent, and impact of a change request by viewing the change summarization on the change request form and in the Now Assist panel.
Generating a knowledge article from similar incidents: Enable your agents to generate a comprehensive knowledge article by leveraging information from a similar set of incidents.
Generating chat reply recommendations: Provide your agents with quick answers to common questions that are asked in chats by using the Now Assist icon in chat reply recommendations.
Summarizing a Sidebar discussion: Enable your agents to summarize Sidebar chats and post summaries into the work notes of incidents, changes, requests, problems, and knowledge base tasks (any record type where Sidebar discussions are enabled) by using Sidebar discussion summarization.

Changes

Between your current release family and Xanadu, some changes were made to existing Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) features.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	Xanadu Patch 9 System property to display knowledge article templates Display Knowledge article templates that you can use to create articles by using a system property. In earlier releases, the templates were displayed by default. Triage and categorize ITSM incidents The Categorize incidents use case has been renamed to the Triage and categorize ITSM incidents agentic workflow. The following AI agents have been added to the workflow: Link major incident AI agent Link incident to problem AI agent The Incident categorize AI agent has been renamed to Categorize incident AI agent. Xanadu Patch 3 Resolution notes generation skill enhancements (for upgrade customers) Enhance your existing incident resolution notes generation skill to show the root cause and resolution steps taken. Enable this enhancement by using the toggle switch on the Configure response screen in the Now Assist Admin console. Note: This option is available only when the incident resolution notes generation skill has been activated prior to upgrading.

Removed

Between your current release family and Xanadu, some Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) features or functionality were removed.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

Deprecations

Between your current release family and Xanadu, some Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) features or functionality were deprecated.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

Activation information

Review information on how to activate Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM).


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	Install Now Assist for ITSM by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes. Important: To enable the display of the Generate post incident reviews use case, you must activate the Incident Management - Major Incident Management plugin (com.snc.incident.mim). For more information, see Activate Incident Management - Major Incident Management. Important: To enable the display of the Notify users with Twilio use case, you must activate the Twilio Spoke plugin (sn_twilio_spoke). For more information, see Twilio Spoke.

Additional requirements

If any additional requirements were introduced or changed for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) we have noted them here.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	The Now Assist for ITSM application requires an IT Service Management Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus license.

Browser requirements

If any specific browser requirements were introduced or changed for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) we have noted them here.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

Accessibility information

Review details on accessibility information for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM), such as specific requirements or compliance levels.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

Localization information

If there are specific localization considerations for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) we have noted them here.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	No updates for this release.

Highlight information

If there are specific highlight considerations for Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) we have noted them here.


Release	Release notes
Vancouver	No updates for this release.
Washington DC	No updates for this release.
Xanadu	Xanadu Patch 9 Identify the category, subcategory, and configuration item for a given incident automatically using a team of AI agents in the Triage and categorize ITSM incidents agentic workflow. Get recommendations to resolve incidents by using a team of AI agents for catalog, knowledge, and past incidents in the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow. Manage Microsoft 365 group members using AI agents in the Manage Microsoft 365 group members agentic workflow. Generate the Risk and impact analysis and the Justification fields using the AI agents in the Generate change request plans agentic workflow. Xanadu Patch 7: Scale your workflows, enhance productivity, and complete work autonomously using IT Service Management AI agent collection. Xanadu Patch 3 Provide change managers with an explanation of the risk rating in a change request by using the Now Assist icon . Enable agents to ask questions that are related to an incident in the Now Assist panel. Enable agents to generate resolution notes for an incident on demand by using the Now Assist context menu. Provide requesters with proactive actionable notifications as part of ITSM Virtual Agent pre-built large language model (LLM) topic conversations. Xanadu Patch 1 Enable agents to make a more informed decision quickly and efficiently when they’re approving a change by using change request summarization. Enable agents to reply to common questions asked in chats by using the Now Assist icon in chat reply recommendations. Enable agents to get a better understanding of the chat and incident context by using the Sidebar discussion summarization when they’re proposing resolutions to the requesters. See Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) for more information.