The ServiceNow® Now Assist in Virtual Agent application uses generative AI skills in your conversational experiences. Now Assist in Virtual Agent uses large language models (LLMs) to create a natural-language conversational experience that can improve the success of your self-service workflows. Now Assist in Virtual Agent was enhanced and updated in the Xanadu release.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent highlights for the Xanadu release

Xanadu Patch 9
  • Use enhanced chat to provide users with 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. Enhanced chat includes synthesized responses after entering a search query into a portal's search bar. If Now Assist in AI Search is turned on, enhanced chat also offers an optional full-page experience where your users can enter into a full-page chat experience after entering a search query into a portal's search bar. Enhanced chat also offers an updated, modern look and feel along with chat controls to resize and move the chat window.
  • View an expanded list of inline citations for both standard and enhanced chat. New inline citations for external content and people searches are available.
  • View and work with suggested actions after completing an action in Now Assist in Virtual Agent.
  • Stream responses for Now Assist LLM - enhanced chat conversations.
  • Upload or drag documents and images into a standard or enhanced chat.
  • Automatically switch to the user's detected language in enhanced chat conversations when language detection is turned on.
  • Enable pinning a chat window on a portal by using the sn_nowassist_va.enhanced_chat_pin_enabled.<portal-url> system property.
Xanadu Patch 7
  • Stream responses for Now Assist LLM chat conversations.
Xanadu Patch 3
  • Run actions from a conversation.
  • Run subflows from a conversation.
  • Use an updated Virtual Agent Designer list-based home page that includes conversational subflows and actions.
  • Use language detection and engage in small talk within LLM conversations.
  • Link primary assistants with secondary assistants to use search sources from secondary assistants.
  • Use language detection and engage in small talk within LLM conversations.
  • Receive a synthesized response for Now Assist in Virtual Agent users.
Xanadu Patch 1

New in the Xanadu release

Xanadu Patch 9
Use enhanced chat
Enhanced chat is a conversational support experience within a resizable and moveable window that also includes the ability to have multiple active conversations and superior search capabilities. Using enhanced chat's full-page experience further intertwines chat and search capabilities by redirecting users into a full-page chat after entering a query into a portal's search bar.
View inline citations
View the expanded list of inline citations for standard and enhanced chat:
  • Catalog
  • Topic, subflows, or actions
  • Q&A Knowledge Base articles
  • External content connections
    Note: External content connections now include the following connection types:
    • Microsoft SharePoint
    • Confluence
    • Atlassian Jira Cloud
    • Google Drive
    • Microsoft Teams
    • Predefined web sources
    • ServiceNow® documentation
    • Slack
  • People
    Note: If Knowledge Graph is turned on, you can view information about a person. The people information in the Virtual Agent response typically includes their title, department, location, and email address. The people popover shows additional information.
Use suggested actions
View suggested actions that were related to your prior conversation and that you consider doing next. After completing a conversational catalog request, conversational subflow, or Virtual Agent topic, two suggested actions appear after a Here's what you can do next header.
Stream enhanced chat responses
Stream LLM response messages as they’re generated instead of the response text appearing all at once to end users. Responses stream in either one letter or one word at a time.
Use language detection to automatically switch the conversational language for enhanced chat conversations
Automatically switch the conversational language to the user's detected language during LLM enhanced chat conversations when language detection is turned on. This automatic switch can occur when a user enters an utterance at the start of a new conversation or within the portal home page’s search field.
Recognize the Boolean user input control during dynamic translation
Recognize the Boolean user input control in chat conversations during dynamic translation.
Adjust Shorten responses toggle to impact Show more option in chat
For bot text responses, adjust the Shorten responses toggle in Virtual Agent Designer to turn off the Show more option on the user side. When Shorten responses is turned off, the Show more option does not appear in the chat to the user and the full answer is displayed rather than a truncated response.
Configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent
In addition to configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants, admins can configure the default Now Assist panel assistants. Options may vary for Now Assist panel assistants.

Create an assistant

  • If multiple assistants are created, users can chat simultaneously with multiple assistants. Conversations are independent from each other.
  • Turn on or off Now Assist panel (agent or creator) assistant. Contact support to configure Now Assist panel assistants.

Assign Now Assist skills to an assistant

  • Now Assist Topic skill must be turned on at the assistant level for document uploads to be activated when managing the chat experience. For more information, see Manage an assistant chat experience.
  • Create and manage agentic workflows in Now Assist AI Agents Studio and assign the workflows to the assistant.

Display your assistant on a portal or channel

  • Display Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhanced chat, with or without the full-page experience, on your portal or mobile app. This dynamic window includes the ability to have multiple active conversations and search capabilities. To use enhanced chat, portals and mobile apps require AI Search to be enabled. For more information on the prerequisites, see Portal prerequisites for enhanced chat and Mobile app prerequisites for enhanced chat.

Manage an assistant chat experience

  • Upload documents to Now Assist in Virtual Agent standard chat or enhanced chat experience. The Now Assist topics skill must be enabled in Now Assist skills. For more information on file formats, see Upload documents in Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

Review assistant settings

  • Document uploads appear as active if it's turned on when managing the chat experience.
Upload documents in Now Assist in Virtual Agent
Upload or drag and drop files to Now Assist in Virtual Agent (standard chat or enhanced chat). The assistant analyzes and understands the content of the files, and a user can ask questions about the content of the files or get a summary.
Now Assist in Virtual Agent system properties
Enable suggested actions in Now Assist in Virtual Agent so that users are offered options for what they can do after completing a prior action. Suggested actions is applicable to standard and enhanced chat, mobile, and Microsoft Teams.
Xanadu Patch 7
Stream chat responses
Stream LLM response messages as they’re generated instead of the response text appearing all at once to end users. Responses stream in either one letter or one word at a time.
Xanadu Patch 3
Use Now Assist to call Microsoft Active Directory v2 actions
Install Now Assist for Conversational Spokes plugin and start utilizing the conversational ability of the Look up User spoke action. You can call this action from a conversational interface like Now Assist.
Run an action from a conversation
Run a Workflow Studio action from a Now Assist conversation. Create and configure the conversational action from Workflow Studio. View and edit conversational actions within Virtual Agent Designer.
Run a subflow from a conversation
Run a Workflow Studio subflow from a Now Assist conversation. Create and configure the conversational skill from Workflow Studio. View and edit conversational subflows within Virtual Agent Designer.
AI generated topic description message within topic migration
A Topic description generated by Now Assist message now appears near the Topic Description field during the topic migration's Review descriptions step.
Small talk for LLM conversations
Use small talk in LLM conversations for greetings and farewells along with gratitude and complaint statements. A Semantic Filtering Framework (SFF) detects small talk and generates an appropriate response.
Language detection for LLM conversations
Use language detection for your LLM conversations to improve your user's experience.
Virtual Agent Designer home page
A new list-based Virtual Agent Designer home page appears for users who have activated Now Assist in Virtual Agent and the Agent assist Topics skill. The card-based UI is still available for those users who use only NLU/keyword or Virtual Agent Lite.
Virtual Agent Designer user input controls
Updates to LLM user inputs include:
  • Use the Validation toggle in the Advanced section of User Inputs to confirm user input values by scripts.
  • Use the Allow slot filling toggle on User Inputs to switch between static (single field) and dynamic (define with scripts or data pill picker) detail description modes.
  • Get a message that a mandatory field cannot be skipped when you attempt to skip a user input with conditions not set to be skippable.
Configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent
Updates to the admin guided setup include:
  • Enhance functionality and efficiency of your Virtual Agent by linking primary assistants to secondary assistants, enabling a primary assistant to use search sources from secondary assistants.
  • View the relationship between primary and secondary assistants within a map view.
  • Select portals and mobile applications to display Virtual Agents.
  • Create conversational subflows and actions by launching Workflow Studio to make conversational subflows and actions available to the assistant.
Synthesized response
For Now Assist in Virtual Agent users, a synthesized response can appear. A synthesized response includes a brief summary of the requested information and search results along with Genius Results. Mid-topic switching can occur during a conversation with synthesized response. Users can continue with their original request or switch the conversation's focus.
New system properties
The following system property was added to increase flexibility of the search results and response:
  • sn_nowassist_va.synthesized_autostart_items: When synthesized response only returns a singular action, configure whether to directly launch into that action. By default, whenever synthesized response returns a single Virtual Agent topic, that action is auto-launched. The following actions can be configured to auto-launch:
    • Synthesized response returns a single conversational catalog item.
    • Synthesized response returns a single Virtual Agent topic, along with Knowledge Base information.
    • Synthesized response returns a single conversational catalog item, along with Knowledge Base information.
Xanadu Patch 1
Delete virtual agents
Delete a Virtual Agent from the assistants list.
Support virtual agents on a portal
Allow public availability of an LLM-based Virtual Agent on a portal.
Display a virtual agent in a channel
Integrate your preferred messaging channels to display your Virtual Agent.
Install proactive triggers
Install Proactive Triggers from within the Review page.
Support notifications in virtual agents
Support actionable and non-actionable notifications for LLM conversations in Virtual Agent.

UI changes

Xanadu Patch 9
UI chat updates
  • The summary card in a Now Assist in Virtual Agent conversation was updated to a more modern look and feel.
  • The default chat widget button for enhanced chat and standard chat now differs on the portal.
  • An Ask Now Assist header now appears with suggested searches in a drop-down on the portal's search bar.
  • The Boolean choice, static choice, and dynamic choice controls were updated to a more modern look and feel for requesters.
Xanadu Patch 3
UI chat updates
  • The New messages below button in Virtual Agent was replaced with a simplified down-arrow indicator.
  • The New messages above button was deprecated because Virtual Agent now auto-scrolls to the top of the oldest new message.
  • Input text bar was updated to a more modern look and feel.
  • The start a new conversation icon was updated.

Changed in this release

Xanadu Patch 9
Standard chat
The existing Now Assist in Virtual Agent LLM conversational behavior received a terminology update and is now referred to as standard chat.

Activation information

Now Assist features are available with activation of any Now Assist plugin from the ServiceNow Store. The following plugins are available:For more information, see Configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

Additional requirements

Now Assist in Virtual Agent requires a license for Virtual Agent and at least one Now Assist product.

Browser requirements

Now Assist in Virtual Agent supports various browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. For more information, see Browser support.

Localization information

Dynamic Translation is supported in Now Assist Virtual Agent conversations. For details, see Enable translation for Now Assist applications and Localization options for Virtual Agent.

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