Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

    ServiceNow enables you to save time when building Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models by reusing intents from prebuilt Virtual Agent NLU models. These prebuilt models provide validated, read-only intents tailored for common chatbot conversation flows in IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Human Resources (HR). Each intent corresponds to a specific Virtual Agent conversation topic, allowing your NLU models to effectively understand and respond to user inputs related to these business areas.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Prebuilt Virtual Agent Models: Contain language and intents relevant to ITSM, CSM, and HR, built on a robust corpus of 3 million words and incorporating ServiceNow and user-defined vocabularies.
    • Intent Reuse: Import validated intents from these read-only models into your own NLU models to extend language understanding without starting from scratch.
    • Application Scope Association: NLU models, along with their intents and entities, are tied to a specific application scope that must be set correctly before importing, as it cannot be changed later.
    • Plugin Requirements: Access to prebuilt models requires installing and activating Virtual Agent plugins corresponding to CSM, HR, or ITSM, along with the Glide Virtual Agent and NLU Workbench plugins, all manageable by administrators with the admin role.

    Practical Use and Benefits

    By reusing intents, you can quickly build or enhance NLU models that are contextually aware of common business conversations in ITSM, CSM, and HR. This accelerates chatbot development and improves accuracy in understanding user requests. You can either import intents directly from a chosen prebuilt model or copy an entire prebuilt model as a foundation for your own customized model.

    Remember to verify your target application's scope before importing intents to ensure proper configuration and avoid scope conflicts.

    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.

    Examples of how Virtual Agent NLU 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.

    The prebuilt Virtual Agent NLU models map their intents to common conversation topics used by Virtual Agent chatbots across each of the three business units.
    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.