4 unexpected ways Now Assist can fail after an upgrade or patch

Claire_Conant · a week ago

If Now Assist stops working after an upgrade or patch, the cause isn't always easy to spot. The platform upgrade process isn't synced with the Now Assist store app release cycle. The platform patch handles the core release, but Now Assist depends on a separate set of store apps that follow their own versioning. When those versions fall out of sync, failures look like configuration problems rather than version mismatches. The following four scenarios all trace back to that version drift, and knowing the pattern makes each one easier to resolve.

Does this apply to you?

This article covers failures that appear after applying a platform patch or completing a family upgrade. If your Now Assist issues started without a recent change to your instance, see Now Assist panel isn't working: find the cause and get to the fix.

1. Now Assist store apps fall behind after a patch

When you apply a platform patch (for example, moving from Yokohama Patch 2 to Patch 3), the Now Assist store apps stay on their previous version. They follow a separate release cycle—typically one major update per quarter—and need to be updated manually through the Application Manager after each patch.

If you skip this step, you can end up running a newer platform patch with older store app versions. This version drift is the root cause of the other three scenarios in this article.

To confirm and update your store apps after a patch:

Go to Application Manager (System Definition > Plugins).
Select Sync Now to pull the latest versions from the store.
Search for Now Assist and verify whether updates are available.
Start with the parent Now Assist application your instance is entitled to (for example, "Now Assist for IT Service Management" or "Now Assist for HR Service Delivery") and select Proceed to update.
After the update, go to System Diagnostics > Upgrade History and check for skipped changes. Any skipped change with a priority value under 5 should be evaluated and may need to be reverted to the base system version.

For the full update process including how to handle skipped changes, see How to update Now Assist plugins after a patch.

If you run into issues with the Application Manager during this process, see Why your install failed in Application Manager... and how to fix it.

2. AI Agent Studio and Skill Kit vanish with a security constraints error

After upgrading to Yokohama Patch 7 or later or Zurich Patch 1 or later, you may find that AI Agent Studio and Now Assist Skill Kit are no longer accessible. Instead of loading, they show a "security constraints" error. Custom skills may also disappear from Now Assist Admin.

This happens because of a version dependency between two store apps that isn't enforced during the upgrade:

The Now Assist AI Agents store app (version 5.3.0 and later) calls a method called checkAccessForAssetSubscription() that verifies your Now Assist entitlement.
That method only exists in the Now Assist Admin Console store app starting at version 6.6.4.
If your instance updates the AI agents app to the latest version but the Admin Console stays on an older version, the entitlement check fails and the security constraints error appears.

To resolve this:

Go to Application Manager and select Sync Now.
Search for sn_nowassist_admin (Now Assist Admin Console).
If an update is available, proceed with the update to the latest version.
Verify that AI Agent Studio and Skill Kit load without the security constraints error.

For the full resolution steps and all root cause variants, see Resolve the security constraints error after upgrading AI Agent Studio.

3. The panel goes blank or gets stuck loading after a Zurich patch

If you've applied a Zurich patch and the Now Assist panel suddenly shows a blank page or spins indefinitely, you're likely hitting a known interaction between the AI Engagement Experience plugin and a Voice Input setting. The rest of the instance works normally, only the panel is affected.

The issue occurs when the AI Engagement Experience plugin (sn-ai-engagement-experience) is at version 1.0.0 and the Voice Input setting for Now Assist is turned off. That specific combination triggers a rendering failure in the panel. Community members have confirmed this on Zurich Patch 1, Patch 1 Hot Fix 1, Hot Fix 2, Hot Fix 1a, and Patch 2.

Here's how to address it:

Update the plugin: Upgrade AI Engagement Experience to version 1.0.6 or later through the ServiceNow Store.
Quick workaround: If you can't update right away, enable the Voice Input setting for Now Assist. This resolves the rendering issue even on plugin version 1.0.0.
Permanent resolution: Upgrade to Zurich Patch 3 or later, which includes a permanent fix.

4. Knowledge article generation falls back to the wrong template after an ITSM plugin upgrade

If you upgrade the Now Assist for IT Service Management plugin to version 6 (v6.0.5, v6.1.2, or v6.1.3), you may notice that knowledge articles generated from incidents no longer use the Incident-KCS article – HTML template. Instead, they silently default to the Standard template, even though the KCS template is still available and was working before the upgrade.

The root cause is an access control change introduced in version 6. The Create Knowledge UI action now uses GlideRecordSecure() to look up the template, which enforces ACL rules. The ACL on the kb_article_template table requires the knowledge_admin or knowledge_manager role for read access. If the user generating the article doesn't have one of those roles, the template lookup fails silently and falls back to the Standard template.

To fix this:

Update the plugin: Upgrade Now Assist for ITSM to version 7 or later, where the method has been changed back to GlideRecord() (which doesn't enforce ACLs for this lookup).
Alternative: Assign the knowledge_admin or knowledge_manager role to users who generate knowledge articles from incidents.

For the full technical details, see Resolve the knowledge article template regression after the ITSM plugin upgrade.

Where to go from here

Most of these gotchas come down to one principle: after any upgrade or patch, verify your Now Assist store app versions before assuming something is misconfigured. Treating Now Assist plugin updates as a required follow-up step after every platform patch prevents most of these issues from appearing in the first place.

If your issue isn't related to an upgrade or patch but the panel just stopped working or was never set up correctly, this companion article covers the most common panel failure scenarios. See Now Assist panel isn't working: find the cause and get to the fix.