AI Search in Service Portal

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of AI Search in Service Portal

    AI Search in Service Portal, available with the Yokohama release, enhances the portal search experience by providing intelligent, fast, and personalized search capabilities. It replaces the legacy Zing search with features like auto-complete, natural language understanding, typo correction, and personalized results based on user context such as role, location, and search history.

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    Key Features

    • Powerful and Flexible Search: Users benefit from faster search responses, query suggestions, and handling of typing errors, enabling quicker access to information.
    • Relevant and Actionable Results: Search results are personalized using user data and include "genius results" that allow users to take direct actions from the search list.
    • Intelligent Search Refinement: Users can narrow down results using dynamic and static filters, such as facets and tabs, to improve result relevance (e.g., filtering Mac-related results by hardware or user profiles).
    • Configurable Search Experience: Administrators can define search application configurations (search engine, limits) and search results configurations (display settings), customize widget options, and update portal records to enable or change AI Search settings.
    • Customizable UI: The look and feel of AI Search can be adjusted through CSS variables to align with company branding.
    • Browser Compatibility: AI Search requires users to log in with modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge (Chromium), or Safari for optimal performance.

    Activation and Configuration

    AI Search is enabled by default for all new and zBoot customers but disabled by default for existing customers upgrading to Yokohama, requiring manual activation via portal record updates. Customized or cloned search widgets from prior upgrades may need reclassification through a fix script to ensure compatibility.

    Configuration involves:

    • Defining search application configurations to control search engine behavior and limits.
    • Setting search results configurations to determine how results are displayed.
    • Updating widget instance options to use different configurations if needed.
    • Defining AI Search Results Actions to specify navigation targets when users select search results.
    • Configuring Entity View Action Mapping (EVAM) for action buttons within genius results.
    • Customizing search experience styling through CSS includes.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    Implementing AI Search in Service Portal enables your users to find information more efficiently with a smarter, personalized search experience. It reduces time spent searching, improves result relevance, and enhances user productivity by allowing immediate actions from search results. Administrators have flexible control over search behavior, presentation, and branding, ensuring alignment with organizational needs and user expectations.

    Configure the ServiceNow AI Search application for Service Portal so that portal users can take advantage of intelligent query features and quickly find the answers they need.

    AI Search features

    Powerful and flexible search

    Unlike the legacy Zing search that was used in previous releases, AI Search is faster and more assistive. Portal users can find answers more quickly and easily with features like auto-complete search queries, natural language support, and typo handling.

    Figure 1. Search suggestions
    Search suggestions example
    Figure 2. Typo handling
    Typo handling example
    Relevant and actionable search results

    With AI Search enabled in Service Portal, the portal search engine captures information about the user — such as their role, location, department, assets, and search history — and returns search results that are relevant and personalized.

    AI Search also includes genius results that enable users to take action directly from the search results list.

    Figure 3. Genius result
    Genius result example
    Intelligent search refinement

    Portal users can refine their search results using dynamic and static filters. For example, if a user searches Mac, they can use facets to filter search results by hardware or user profiles.

    Figure 4. Search facets
    Search facets example
    Figure 5. Tab filters
    Tab filters example

    For more information on using facets and tabs, see Faceted Search widget.

    For more information on AI Search features, see Exploring AI Search.

    Activation information

    AI Search is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.

    AI Search is enabled in Service Portal for all new and zBoot customers by default.

    If you are upgrading to Yokohama as an existing customer, AI Search is disabled in Service Portal by default. You can enable it by updating the portal record. For more information, see Enable and configure AI Search in Service Portal.

    Note:
    Search widgets that you cloned or customized before a system upgrade may not be compatible with AI Search. You can resolve this issue by running a fix script that reclassifies search widget instances. For more information, see Reclassify cloned or customized search widgets.

    Configuring AI Search for Service Portal

    Configure AI Search in Service Portal by defining the following:
    Search application configuration
    Defines search experience settings, such as the search engine, search results limit, and suggestions limit. For more information on defining a search application configuration, see Defining search application configurations.
    Search results configuration
    Defines how search results are displayed. For more information on defining a search results configuration, see Define a composite dataset.

    You can change the search application configuration or search results configuration that your portal uses by updating the portal record. For more information, see Enable and configure AI Search in Service Portal.

    To use a different search application or search results configuration for a specific search widget, update the widget instance options. AI Search is used in the following widgets:

    To configure the search results payload to navigate to and display the appropriate portal page for a selected data source, define an AI Search results action. For more information, see Define an AI Search Results Action.

    You can configure the action buttons in genius results by defining an Entity View Action Mapping (EVAM) action. For more information, see Define an EVAM action.

    You can customize the look and feel of the AI Search experience in Service Portal by updating the relevant CSS variables. For more information on these variables, see Theming for AI Search in Service Portal.

    Browser support

    With AI Search enabled in Service Portal, users must log in with a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge (Chromium), or Apple Safari.