Getting Employee Slate Configured: A Technical Deep Dive

[SujanDutta]

We already learned about:

• EmployeeWorks Architecture, Otto, difference between Now Assist and EmployeeWorks: https://youtu.be/v7fyuobBDnA
  
• Employee Slate, look and feel with a detailed demo: https://youtu.be/UMlyErvPi7U

Now are you ready to build a unified employee experience that actually works? Employee Slate is the tool that makes it happen, but here's the thing: you need to set it up right. And that's exactly what we're covering here. Whether you're standing up a fresh instance or rolling this out to your entire organization, we're going to walk you through every single step so you can get Employee Slate live and humming without the guesswork.

Before You Start: Prerequisites

Before you touch any configuration, make sure you've got:

• Zurich patch 9 or Australia Patch 3.
• System administrator access
• If integrating with Moveworks: access to the Moveworks instance and proper licensing

Required Plugins:

Depending on what you want to deploy, you'll need to install one or more of these plugins from the ServiceNow Store:

• sn_ex_ai_portal - Employee Slate Core
• sn_ex_emp_hub_adv - Employee Slate Advanced
• sn_ex_emp_hub_na - Employee Slate for Now Assist
• sn_ex_emp_hub_mw - Employee Slate for Moveworks

Make sure all required plugins are installed before starting the configuration process.

The Configuration Roadmap

Once your plugins are installed, the Admin Console gives you a configuration summary showing exactly what's left to do. Here's how we break it down:

1. Branding & Theming

This is where your portal becomes your portal. You can:

• Toggle preview between dark and light modes.
• Change the portal name (Employee Hub, Employee Center, whatever fits)
• Customize the URL (so instead of /employee_slate, you can use your own)
• Upload logos for both light and dark modes
• Define custom theme colors to match your organization

It takes a few minutes and makes a huge difference in how your employees experience the platform.

2. Data Sources: Where Your Search Lives

Employee Slate needs to know where to pull results from. By default, you get:

• Internal sources: Catalog and knowledge base search
• External sources: Optional integration with external systems

You can add existing sources or create new ones depending on what information your employees need access to. Think about what content matters most to your users and make sure it's searchable.

3. The Conversational Assistant: Moveworks Setup

Now this is where it gets interesting. If you're wiring up Employee Slate with Moveworks, pay close attention, there are a few gotchas here that'll save you a support ticket.

For Moveworks Setup:

• Start with your Moveworks instance URL.
• Create a connector so Otto can talk to your ServiceNow instance.
• For Bot ID, just enter 1234. Once you save, it auto-populates with a randomized value.
• Set the bot-friendly name, this is what your end users actually see in the portal, so make it something that makes sense to them.
• Set the Bot Name using this format: {org-name}-employeeworks-webchat. That -webchat suffix isn't optional, it's a hard validation requirement on the Moveworks side. Skip it and you'll hit a wall.
• Set the Surface to Unified Front Door.

A few things that'll trip you up if you don't know about them:

• Do not reuse your existing Moveworks bot. This needs to be a dedicated, net new bot created specifically for Employee Slate. Repurposing an old one will cause issues.
• Enable File Attachment before you submit. When you're creating the chatbot, scroll down to the additional controls, it's easy to miss. Turn on file attachment before hitting save.
• "Setup Internal" is a separate step. Connector selection, user inbox toggle, trusted issuer, and suggested prompts all live under "Setup Internal", that's a different section from Moveworks Setup. You need to complete both or your configuration is incomplete.
• Multiple trusted issuers? You can add multiple trusted issuers if the same Movework bot is deployed across more than one ServiceNow Instance.
• Suggested prompts have character limits. Display Text maxes out at 16 characters (that's the chip label users see), and the Utterance caps at 130 characters (that's the action fired when they click). You get up to 4 prompts.

4. Portal Widgets: The User Experience

Once the backend is configured, it's time to fill the portal with useful content:

• Canvas: Configure the default canvas for your employee experience.
• Custom Widget Creation: Vibe code custom widgets and make it shareable across users.
• Communications & Announcements: Create announcements with scheduling, audience targeting, and priority settings. They automatically organize in a grid as you add them.
• Holiday Calendar: Set location-based holidays so employees see what applies to them (different holidays for US vs UK, for example).
• Popular Content: Automatically promoted knowledge articles and catalog items based on views and requests. This updates as your instance gets used.
• Quick Links: Configurable shortcuts to commonly used resources. For detailed setup instructions on quick links configuration, refer to this guide.
• Upload Batch: The unique way to transfer the Employee Slate configurations from one instance to another.

Putting It All Together

What makes Employee Slate work so well is that all of the branding, theming, integration, widgets comes together in one place. You don't need to be a coder to configure any of it. System admins and low-code developers can get this up and running in a straightforward way.

Community Perspectives

Don't miss what the ServiceNow community thinks about this powerful combination of Moveworks, Employee Slate and Now Assist, their insights highlight how transformative unified employee experiences can be. Watch the full episode to hear directly from the community about real-world impact and possibilities.