Can we still use scripted external search sources with AI search

[valkyrichek]

I need to integrate external content search into the search results on the Employee Center. The external system provides a REST API for searching resources by the search term. Previousely with Zing search, it could be done quite easily with the Zing scripted search sources, by setting up an external search source. Now with the AI search, it seems that the only way to set it up is to actually index the external content with AI search, using External Content for AI Search plugin, setting up the schema, security, pushing the content for indexing through the External Content REST API etc. So suddenly a question of a couple of hours of work turns into a mini-project... All that, taking into account that the external sysem search engine is also not so stupid, so we could just retreive the results from it on the fly...

My question is, is there a way to set up something similar to a scripted search source on the portal that is using AI search? 

[Shamus Mulhall]

Hi @valkyrichek this article should provide some guidance on how to get external content into AI Search.

https://www.servicenow.com/community/ai-intelligence-articles/how-to-bring-external-content-into-ai-...

[valkyrichek]

Thanks @Shamus Mulhall , I've seen it. It's very useful, but it talks about indexing external content. What we want to do is query and external source on the fly, and present the results in ServiceNow along with the ServiceNow resources, like it was possible with Zing. It seems that it's no more possible with AI search, unless we script some completely custom widgets for that...

[Shamus Mulhall]

Hi @valkyrichek yes, the only mechanism to take advantage of the full feature set of AI Search like language processing and relevancy is to index that content into AI Search.

[Scotty Williams]

@valkyrichek did you figure out how to do this? Just now realizing our scripted search sources won't work after moving to AI Search 🤦🏼‍♂️