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Transform reporting with AI Reporting Assistant

Pardeep K
ServiceNow Employee
15m ago

AI Reporting Assistant for IRM

Draft ServiceNow reports in Microsoft Word by asking — no exports, no copy-paste, no formatting struggle.

This is one in a series of articles exploring capabilities on the ServiceNow AI Platform that you may not be aware of but could be useful in improving your risk program.

What it is and the problem it solves

AI Reporting Assistant is a Now Assist–powered capability that lives inside the ServiceNow Document Designer add-in for Microsoft Word. Using the Microsoft Word reporting agent, it brings ServiceNow data directly into Word through a simple, conversational experience: you ask in plain language, and it queries your instance and inserts the output — a table, chart, data point, or written narrative (a “story”) — straight into your report, with no manual data exports, copy-pasting, or formatting struggles.

It is designed for business users who need fast, accurate, and consistently formatted reports — board packs, audit reports, Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA) summaries, environmental performance overviews — without depending on a report designer or someone with query skills. Instead of exporting records, pasting them into Word, and reformatting by hand, the practitioner stays in Word and simply describes what the report needs.

The capability is delivered by the AI for Document Designer application (App ID: sn_doc_design_ai), a ServiceNow-certified app in the Now Assist Suite, and is surfaced through the ServiceNow Document Designer with Word add-in (a certified app available on the ServiceNow Store). Recent releases consolidate the O365 and Document Designer add-ins into a single, unified Document Designer plugin. Once installed and deployed to Word, the AI reporting assistant appears as a panel inside the add-in.

How it works

Stage 1 — Entry point in Microsoft Word

The practitioner opens — or starts — a report in Microsoft Word with the ServiceNow Document Designer add-in installed. From the add-in, the Now Assist panel exposes the AI reporting assistant alongside other Document Designer actions such as Design template, Add content, and Manage content. Everything happens inside Word; the user never leaves the document.

Stage 2 — Natural-language request

The user types a plain-language request describing what the report needs — for example, “Add a table of active P1 incidents,” “Generate an Active Incidents by State and Priority chart,” or “Write an environmental performance overview for India and Japan in 2023.” The assistant can return four kinds of content: stories, tables, charts, and data points.

Stage 3 — Grounded data retrieval via the Knowledge Graph

The assistant translates the request into a query against live ServiceNow data. It uses the Knowledge Graph — the configured set of tables, synonyms, alternate names, business instructions, and data filters — to understand which tables and fields the user means. Because business users rarely know the platform’s technical table and column names, the Knowledge Graph lets administrators map everyday language to the right data (for example, treating “problem” as a synonym for the Issue table, or giving a column a friendlier alternate name). This grounding is what keeps the generated content accurate.

Stage 4 — Content generation

The assistant fetches the relevant records and generates the requested artifact, showing each step as it works (“Fetching electricity and emission data…,” “Generating Active Incidents by State and Priority chart (bar chart) for your report”). It can produce:

  • Tables — structured record sets pulled straight from platform data.
  • Charts — an appropriate visualization for the data, such as a vertical bar, stacked bar, donut, or trend chart.
  • Stories — a written narrative that summarizes the data in plain language, complete with figures and section headings.
  • Data points — a single figure pulled from live data and dropped inline into your narrative.

Stage 5 — Review, then approve

Nothing is inserted silently. Before anything is placed in the document, the assistant presents the generated plan and lets you approve it, make changes, or cancel the insertion. Because the output is AI-generated, the assistant reminds you to check it for accuracy. Once approved, the content is inserted into the Word document, consistently formatted, and a summary lists exactly what was added (for example, an Active P1 Incidents table and an Active Incidents by State and Priority chart).

Stage 6 — Iterate in place

The report is a living Word document. The assistant prompts, “What else would you like me to do for your Word report? You can ask for a table, chart, or story,” so the user keeps building — adding sections, refreshing figures, and refining the narrative — until the report is complete.

Stage 7 — Track and manage inserted content

AI-generated content can be tracked per conversation. The first time you add content in a new conversation, the assistant prompts you to enable tracking; once enabled, every item inserted in that conversation is recorded in the AI generated section of the Manage content panel in the add-in. Manage content lists all ServiceNow links in the report — including AI-generated items — and shows each one as a card with its title and content type, a link to its source table, and when the data was last updated. For risk and audit teams, that means a clear, reviewable trail of what data went into the report and where it came from.

How to configure it

  1. Install or update the AI for Document Designer app — In Application Manager, search for AI for Document Designer (App ID sn_doc_design_ai) and install or Proceed to update to the latest Now Assist Suite version. ServiceNow recommends testing in a lower (sub-production) instance first.
  2. Deploy the Word add-in via the Office Manifest — Open the Office Manifest — Document designer record and click Download Manifest. Deploy (side-load) that manifest to Microsoft Word so the Document Designer add-in — including the AI reporting assistant button — is available to users. The registered Office Controls (AI reporting assistant, Design template, Add content, Manage content) define what appears in the add-in.
  3. Enable Now Assist and assign roles — Confirm Now Assist is active on the instance and that report authors hold the roles needed to use Now Assist and to read the underlying IRM data.
  4. Configure the Knowledge Graph tag — This is what makes plain-language questions return the right data. In Knowledge Graph, create or edit a tag and:
  • Select tables — choose the tables the assistant may query (for example, Issue [sn_grc_issue] and Risk [sn_risk_risk]).
  • Add table synonyms — up to five alternative names per table, so business terms map to the correct table.
  • Add table instructions — short statements of business context that tell the AI how to interpret the table.
  • Assign column/edge alternative names — friendlier names for specific fields and relationships, so users don’t need to know technical column names.
  • Apply data filters — control which records appear in query results.

Time spent on the Knowledge Graph pays off directly: the better the synonyms, instructions, and alternate names, the more accurate and self-service the reporting experience becomes for non-technical users.

  1. Optionally, tune the appearance — Configure the properties that control the chart color palette and table size for content generated by the AI reporting assistant, so output matches your report style.

Requirements

Requirement

Detail

Where to confirm

Application

AI for Document Designer (sn_doc_design_ai) — latest Now Assist Suite version installed

Application Manager

Platform release

Documented for the Australia release

Product documentation / release notes

Now Assist / Assists

Now Assist activated on the instance. AI features are metered and consume Now Assist. Assists at the account level — review expected consumption before rollout.

Now Assist › Skill Configuration

Microsoft Word add-in

Document Designer add-in deployed to Word from the Office Manifest

Office Manifest — Document designer › Download Manifest

Knowledge Graph

At least one tag configured with table synonyms, column alternate names, and table/column instructions for the tables to be queried

Knowledge Graph › Tags

Roles

Report authors have Now Assist access plus read access to the target IRM tables

User Administration › Roles

 

ServiceNow resources

Confirm each URL against your instance version before publishing.

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/governance-risk-compliance/grc-common-functions/use-the-ai-reporti...

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