ServiceNow’s Now Mobile app brings IT support, HR services, facilities requests, and more into a single, intuitive mobile experience. Whether employees are submitting requests, tracking statuses, or approving tasks, Now Mobile helps them stay productive on the go and fosters a more connected workplace for every role.
When combined with Now Assist’s Generative AI capabilities, the experience becomes even more transformative. Instead of spending hours on repetitive, manual tasks, employees gain a seamless, conversational way to interact with business services powered by AI that understands their needs and accelerates their work.
In this article, we’ll explore the different Now Assist capabilities available on Now Mobile app, how your employees can access them, the benefits they offer, and how you can set up this experience for your employees.
Note: This article focuses on Now Assist capabilities for the employee persona and does not cover AI agents in Now Mobile, to read more about Now Assist agentic workflow, follow the product documentation guide on the same.
Table of Content
1. Pre-requisites for Now Assist in Now Mobile
i. Understanding Now Assist and platform terminologies.
ii. Licensing required for Now Assist in Now Mobile
2. Access Now Assist in Now Mobile application
i. Now Assist in Virtual Agent chat bot
ii. Now Assist in AI Search
3. Enhanced chat - combining VA chatbot and AI Search for Now Assist powered conversational experience
4. Admin experience
i. Setting up Now Assist in Virtual agent and AI Search for Now Mobile
ii. Additional Now Assist admin configurations for
a. Document summary and External search in VA chat bot
b. Full page search experience in AI Search
5. Related resources
Pre-requisites for Now Assist in Now Mobile
1. Understanding Now Assist and platform terminologies
Before getting deep into Now Assist for Now mobile we recommend starting with Now Assist and Gen AI foundation. To help you build a strong foundation, we’ve included links to two ServiceNow University courses:
i. Within Now Assist essentials course you will learn about:
Recognize common Artificial Intelligence (AI) terms and definitions
Identify how Generative AI works
Indicate how industries are impacted by it
Its benefits, limitations, and risks
ii. Within Introduction to Generative AI course you will learn about:
Generative AI terminology
How Now Assist works in the platform
How to Install Now Assist
How to use the Generative AI Controller in Flow Designer and Virtual Agent
How data is used with Generative AI
Additionally, Now Assist quick start guide and Now Assist FAQs will help you get quick answers and better understanding on how to get started with Now Assist and how to install it before diving deeper into Now Assist capabilities available for your employees in Now Mobile application.
2. Licenses required for Now Assist in Now Mobile
Customers need to have at least one of the Now Assist SKUs along with the Pro plus or above subscription of their current license to get the capabilities covered in this article.
Note: Your entitlements depend on the license you have today, we recommend you work with your ServiceNow account team for the same.
Access Now Assist in Now Mobile Application
Let’s step into your employees' shoes for a day and see how Now Assist completely transforms their mobile experience, while also getting a peek at how you make all this magic happen behind the scenes.
Your employees start their morning early, and they need to submit the request for their “Tuition reimbursement pre-approval request” to avoid the delays, but they could be travelling and away from their laptop and the request needs to be filled immediately. On any other day, this would throw off their entire routine, but not today!
Instead, they open the Now Mobile app to get immediate help. And right away, they have two simple ways to access Now Assist:
i. Start a conversation with the Now Assist Virtual Agent chatbot, or
ii. Use the Now Assist–powered AI Search built directly into the mobile app.
Both options help them solve the issue quickly without any stress or delays.
1. Now Assist in Virtual Agent chat bot
Your employees can start with the Virtual Agent chatbot. Even without Now Assist, it is still incredibly helpful. It can quickly share relevant knowledge articles, which your employees can read through, guide them step-by-step when they need to submit a catalog request, help them create an incident, and support them through many other everyday tasks.
Virtual agent chat bot is available for all our customers, follow this product documentation guide to set up virtual agent in Now Mobile.
Once Now Assist is configured for Virtual agent chat bot, this experience becoming smoother. The entire interaction feels more natural, faster, and even more intuitive. Your employees can simply chat the way they normally would, no need to search around or navigate through menus. Now Assist understands what they need and helps them get it done right away. It brings a truly AI‑powered, conversational way for them to self‑serve or ask for support on the go.
With our latest release, accessing the Now Assist enabled Virtual Agent on mobile becomes even easier. It now appears right on the bottom navigation bar of the Now Mobile home page as a prominent action button placed at the centre. You can follow the product documentation to make Now Assist VA as prominent action button.
When your employees open the Now Mobile app, they can simply tap the Now Assist star icon at the centre of the bottom navigation bar. The moment they do, a friendly chat window opens with a customizable welcome message.
For example:
“Hi [Name], how can I help you?
I’m an AI-powered virtual assistant that can handle work-related questions and
requests.”
Alternatively, your employees can access the Now Assist enabled Virtual Agent through the traditional navigation. From the top right corner of their mobile app, next to their name, they can simply tap the Now Assist star icon to open the VA.
The key capabilities include:
i. Summarised Knowledge base articles
ii. Multi-turn catalog ordering
iii. People search
iv. Multiple active chats
v. External Web search
vi. Document summary and Q&A
vii. Conversational Topics for Tasks and Approvals
i. Summarised Knowledge base articles
Your employee can simply type the issue they’re facing, and Now Assist immediately gets to work. Following the same use case, your employee can just tap on the Now Assist button and type: “What is our tuition reimbursement policy?” And that’s all it takes and Now Assist jumps into action.
Before creating a ticket or asking follow‑up questions, Now Assist intelligently searches across your organization’s knowledge base inside ServiceNow, as well as external intranet sources like SharePoint, Confluence, and more. It quickly gathers the most relevant information and presents it as a clear, easy‑to‑read summary so your employee can skim and understand the solution in seconds. To build trust and provide full transparency, Now Assist will also include the original source link, just in case the employee wants to read the entire article for more detail.
This not only empowers your employees to help themselves right from their mobile device but also reduces unnecessary ticket creation. Boosting your organization’s ticket deflection rate while giving employees the fast, frictionless support they expect.
Pro tip: To improve the Now Assist VA results there are few tips for you:
i. Keep KB articles clear and structured for better summarisation.
ii. Use user criteria to control visibility of KB content.
iii. Monitor Now Assist analytics for performance and feedback.
ii. Multi-turn catalog ordering
If the knowledge base summary doesn’t resolve the issue, or if your employees need to take the next step, like ordering a new laptop, requesting software access, or creating an incident. Now Assist keeps the conversation moving. Because it’s fully context‑aware, it understands what the employee is trying to accomplish and guides them to the next best action, for this you can configure Now Assist in conversational catalog request.
Depending on their request, Now Assist may present relevant catalog options such as creating an incident or ordering an item. In our example, the employee needed to submit a Tuition Reimbursement Pre‑Approval request.
Instead of sending them to a long, static form, Now Assist in Virtual Agent transforms the process into a smooth conversational experience. As the employee starts the request, Now Assist asks the necessary questions pulled directly from the catalog form you’ve set up. All the employee has to do is answer naturally, just like they would in a chat, without dealing with page after page of form fields.
This conversational flow makes submitting requests faster, simpler, and far more intuitive, helping employees get things done with less friction, and improving service efficiency for your organization.
iii. Search for people
With Now Assist in Virtual Agent, your employees can do more than just access summarized knowledge or follow guided request flows, they can also quickly find people across the organization.
Halfway through a conversation with Now Assist, your employee suddenly remembers that a teammate Adrian once faced a similar issue with their laptop when they were also logged out and could not log in. Instead of losing momentum, they can simply start a fresh chat using the “+” button in the top‑right corner and ask Now Assist: “Find Adrian Hunt.”
In seconds, Now Assist brings up Adrian’s profile: department, contact details, office location, and more so the employee can immediately reach out and learn how Adrian solved the problem.
iv. Multiple active chats
With Now Assist enabled in VA, employees can seamlessly manage multiple conversations at the same time. For example, while they’re receiving help to resolve a MacBook issue, they simultaneously started a new chat to look up a colleague; Adrian Hunt - without losing context in either conversation.
Now Assist keeps all chats neatly organized into Active, Updates, and Closed sections. Users can easily switch between ongoing conversations or revisit past interactions, just like toggling between browser tabs. This makes multitasking effortless and ensures they always have quick access to the support they need.
v. External Web Search
After chatting with Adrian, they might mention, “This could be a MacBook issue today.” To verify this, your employees can rely on the External Web Search capability built into Now Assist in Virtual Agent on Now Mobile. When external web is enabled, your employees will see a “globe” icon on the search bar and all they need to do is tap on that globe icon and search: “Is MacBook having issues opening today?”
If external search is enabled, Now Assist will instantly scan public and trusted sources. Based on what it finds, it will let your employees know whether there are any known incidents like, outages impacting MacBook services. To ensure credibility, Now Assist also includes the source link so employees can validate the information or explore it further.
This means your employees don’t need to hunt through announcements or open a separate browser. Everything they need: context, verification, and links are delivered directly within one conversational interface in the Now Mobile Virtual Agent chat.
vi.Document summary in Now Assist Virtual Agent
After checking with Adrian and verifying through external web search that MacBook services might be experiencing issues, your employee remembers that IT had previously shared a troubleshooting guide for Mac laptops.
Instead of scrolling through long documents or searching inboxes, they can simply open a new chat in the Now Assist VA window and upload the PDF or image of the guide.
If document upload is enabled, then your employees will see a “+” sign which will allow them to:
a. Attach images from gallery
b. Take photo and it will open the camera
c. Attach file from the phone
Once the document is uploaded, Now Assist instantly summarizes the document, distilling key steps they should try, saving them from reading page after page.
To make things even easier, Now Assist also suggests intelligent follow‑up questions based on the uploaded content. For example, if the document mentions Safe Mode or Resetting NVRAM, Now Assist might prompt with:
“What steps should I follow to reset NVRAM reset on a MacBook laptop?”
The employee can type a suggested question number, and the VA chatbot responds with guidance directly derived from the uploaded document.
This capability ensures that employees always have the information they need right where they are quick, contextual, and entirely conversational, making Now Assist in Virtual Agent a powerful companion in resolving issues with speed and clarity.
Now Assist VA works with common file types like PDF, DOCX, JPEG, PNG. It can also support unstructured documents, making it flexible for diverse use cases.
vii. Conversational Topics for Tasks and Approvals
Now Assist in VA is there to boost your employees’ productivity with the ability to show all the pending tasks and approvals and ability to complete task and manage approvals directly in chat.
Currently, out of the box we have two pre-built conversational LLM topics available for your employees:
a. Your employees can view and complete pending tasks as per their to-do configuration via Now Assist for tasks like HR tasks and Catalog items, To-dos etc.
b. Your employees can approve or reject actions for all approval types, such as REQ, RITM, CHG and HR approvals
Note: Approvals routed through third-party systems like SAP or Workday via Approval Hub are currently not supported in the conversational interface.
Refer to Check your to-do tasks by using the Now Assist in Virtual Agent for setting this experience for your employees.
2. Now Assist in AI Search
Your employees were able to resolve their issues and get timely assistance through the Now Assist VA chatbot. Later, they might need to submit a travel request for an upcoming business trip but can’t recall the policy details, they don’t have to navigate through menus, search old emails, or browse multiple internal portals.
With Now Mobile, they can simply tap the Search bar and look up travel-related information directly.
ServiceNow AI Search is the platform’s modern, intelligent search engine designed to help employees and customers find answers quickly and intuitively. AI Search intelligently retrieves genius results from knowledge articles, catalog items, and people resources, based on the search profile you’ve configured for your workforce, making it easier than ever to surface the right information at the right time.
AI Search is available to all customers, follow the product documentation to set up AI Search in Now Mobile.
Now Assist genius results
With Now Assist enabled, AI Search delivers a richer, more intuitive search experience for your employees. Anytime they use the search bar at the top of Now Mobile, Now Assist generates AI‑powered genius results that surface exactly what they need instantly.
For example, if an employee searches for “Booking travel” while preparing for a business trip, Now Assist can present a set of highly relevant, actionable and Q&A results right at the top of the search window. This might include:
i. A Travel Approval catalog item, which they can tap to immediately open the form and submit their request.
ii. A predicted contact such as Maria Lanager, the travel agent who can help with corporate travel bookings, allowing the employee to reach out directly if they need clarification.
iii. A summarized view of knowledge articles explaining how to book business travel, complete with a concise, AI‑generated summary and links to the original KBs for deeper reading.
These Now Assist–generated genius results appear above standard genius results, ensuring quick visibility and easy access.
Employees can launch requests directly from actionable results, contact experts, or skim through knowledge summaries all without navigating through menus or multiple systems.
Each genius result also includes a feedback option, helping you understand how well the AI is meeting employee needs and where the experience can be refined further.
You can elevate the search experience by having Now Assist generate a single, synthesized summary instead of multiple individual genius results. This unified summary appears at the top of the standard results, consolidating all relevant information into a concise, easy‑to‑scan section.
Follow the product documentation for setting up Now Assist genius results in AI Search in Now Mobile app. Select “Now Assist Multi-Content Response” check box to enable summarised result in AI Search as shown in the image above
Enhanced chat - combining VA chatbot and AI Search for Now Assist powered conversational experience
Once enhanced chat is enabled, within the summarised results generated by Now Assist, your employees will see a “chat” icon next to applicable options. Tapping it lets them choose to either proceed via the request form or continue in the Virtual Agent for a conversational flow. Based on their choice, the appropriate experience opens automatically.
If they select the Virtual Agent, they’re taken directly into a context‑aware conversation where the VA understands their initial query and guides them through the next steps.
If employees aren’t fully satisfied with what AI Search surfaced, they can tap “Ask as a follow‑up” at the bottom of the summary. This opens the Now Assist–powered Virtual Agent, which uses the existing search context to provide a more tailored, conversational response.
Allow the search bar results to open directly into a chat experience
You can provide your employees a conversational experience from AI Search bar by routing their search queries directly into the Now Assist–powered Virtual Agent. Employees will notice a Now Assist “star” icon on the search bar, indicating that their query will open directly in the VA.
As soon as they type their query, the results appear directly in the Virtual Agent chat window, allowing them to interact with the VA in a natural, conversational way. The Now Assist enabled VA then guides them step‑by‑step based on their intent and needs.
At any time, employees can switch back to the standard search results view by tapping the “search results” icon within the VA interface. This gives them the flexibility to move seamlessly between conversational and traditional search experiences.
Admin experience for setting up Now Assist in Virtual agent and AI Search in Now Mobile
We have streamlined the admin experience for setting up Now Assist for both VA and AI Search, it can be configured in a single centralized location. Navigate to Conversational Interfaces> Assistants > “Default Now Assist Virtual agent” or any assistant of your choice.
This unified configuration experience supports configuration for “portals” like Employee Center, Service Portal and Browser extension as well as “channels” such as Microsoft Teams and “mobile” applications.
For Mobile, the configuration for both the Virtual Agent chatbot and AI Search is unified in one place: Conversational Interfaces> Assistants > “Default Now Assist Virtual agent”> Display experience> Mobile (as shown in the image below).
Follow the step by step product documentation guide to set up Now Assist in Now Mobile. The setup guide covers the complete process for enabling both Now Assist in Virtual Agent and AI Search, helping you get the full experience up and running smoothly.
Additional admin configurations
i. Document summary and External search in VA chatbot:
To enable the document summary, you will have o first enable the smart document platform skill. You can follow the Now Assist in document management product documentation for step-by-step configuration.
Once you have enabled this skill, you can navigate to: Conversational Interfaces> Assistants > default Now Assist Virtual agent> Chat experience and check the box for “Allow document upload” to see “+” in Now Assist VA in Now mobile app and allowing your employees to upload the documents.
For the web search check the box for “Enable web search” to see “globe” icon in Now Assist VA in Now mobile app and enable your employees to search beyond ServiceNow in the VA.
ii. Full page search experience
Enable full page search experience, allowing your employees to open AI Search bar results directly into Now Assist enabled VA chat. For this you can select the “Allow the search bar to open into a chat experience” while configuring Now Assist in AI Search for Now Mobile, as shown in the image below.
Conversational Interfaces> Assistants > “Default Now Assist Virtual agent”> Display experience> Mobile>Chat launcher functions> Allow the search bar to open into a chat experience
Related resources:
i. Refer to Now Assist for Employee Center: An introductory guide, for everything you need to know to implement and maximize Now Assist capabilities in Employee Center portal.
ii. Refer to the Now Assist implementation resources available to help you get started with the Now Assist implementation journey.
iii. Refer to Getting ready for Now Assist guide for the leading best practices for implementing Now Assist.
iv. Explore Now Assist community page to learn more about latest releases, best practices and to engage with peers.
v. To learn more about Now Assist, look for AI Academy videos on YouTube!
vi. Read about more Now mobile capabilities on Now Mobile Community page or follow Mobile app academy videos on YouTube.
