Recommended actions card configurations

[liam95regan]

Hi,

I am wondering how I configure the buttons and cards for recommended actions as per the image attached. 

When doing so through guidances it seems to allow some buttons on the cards to be updated for example, the similar incidents record card is easily configurable through the guidances, however the knowledge articles don't seem to be as configurable. 

This is strange as it lets me change the completion message easily for the knowledge cards but the action label itself it doesn't. 

Any advice? 

Thanks in advance. 

[Naveen20]

This is a common point of confusion because ServiceNow treats knowledge article recommendation cards and similar incident recommendation cards differently under the hood, even though they appear side-by-side in the same Contextual Side Panel.

Here's what's going on and how the configuration works:

Why Similar Incidents are more configurable than Knowledge cards:

Similar Incident cards are fully driven by the Guidance framework (sys_guidance / sys_guidance_step). Each step exposes properties like the action label, completion message, and button behavior — so you get full control through the Guidance configuration.

Knowledge Article cards, however, are rendered by a dedicated platform component (the agent assist knowledge card component in the contextual side panel). The buttons like "Attach article," "Copy to comments," etc. are defined at the component level, not through the Guidance step record. That's why you can change the completion message (which IS stored on the guidance step) but not the action label itself (which is owned by the component).

How to configure what you can:

• Completion messages — Continue using the Guidance Step record as you've been doing. This works because the message is a guidance-layer property.
• Which actions appear on knowledge cards — Look under Agent Assist > Settings (or the sys_agent_assist_settings table). This controls which action buttons are available on knowledge recommendation cards globally.
• For deeper label customization — If you're on a Next Experience workspace (UI Builder-based), you can look at the Contextual Side Panel page definition in UI Builder and inspect the knowledge card component's properties. In some releases, the action labels are exposed as configurable component properties there.
• If you need full control — You may need to create a custom recommendation component or override the OOTB knowledge card using a scoped UI Component. This is more effort but gives you complete control over labels, icons, and behavior.

It's not a bug — it's an architectural split. Similar Incidents are guidance-driven (fully configurable via steps), while Knowledge cards use a dedicated component where only some properties bubble up to the Guidance layer. For the action label specifically, check Agent Assist Settings or the UI Builder component properties depending on your workspace type (Service Operations Workspace vs. legacy Agent Workspace).

[liam95regan]

Thanks for the reply Naveen. Unfortunately there isn't such a table in our instance and there's minimal configurable options in UI builder for this recommendations tab, see attached image. 

[Naveen20]

That applies only in Service Operations Workspace.

The key field to focus on is actually right there at the bottom: "Recommended action specific configuration" which currently shows {}. That's the JSON configuration object that controls per-recommendation-type behavior, including knowledge card actions.

Configuration:

The Recommended Actions component is a wrapper that delegates rendering to individual recommendation type definitions. To customize knowledge card labels, you'll want to look at these areas:

1. Recommendation Actions table — Navigate to sys_recommendation_action.list. This table defines the available actions (like "Attach article," "Copy to comments") for each recommendation type. You should find entries for the knowledge recommendation type where you can modify labels.

2. Guidance records — Go to System Definition > Guidances and filter where the type relates to knowledge recommendations. The guidance step records control what appears on the cards. Check whether the Action label field on the step is locked or read-only versus actually empty — sometimes the label falls through to a default from the recommendation action definition when the guidance step doesn't override it.

3. The JSON config property — That "Recommended action specific configuration" field accepts a JSON object. Try populating it with something like:

{
  "knowledge_search": {
    "actionLabel": "Your Custom Label"
  }
}

The exact key names depend on your release. You can inspect the component source to see what keys it accepts — navigate to sys_ux_lib_component.list, find the Recommended Actions component, and review its properties definition.

Way to find the right keys:

Open the browser DevTools on a live incident in SOW, inspect one of the knowledge cards in the side panel, and look at the rendered component's data-props or shadow DOM attributes. That will reveal the internal recommendation type identifiers being used, which you can then pass into that JSON configuration field.