Paty Montesinos
ServiceNow Employee
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59m ago
AI Academy
SmartDocs Redaction Agent & Doc to Voice
Two new generally available SmartDocs capabilities for secure, voice-enabled document experiences in ServiceNow.
In this AI Academy session, we explored two of the newest additions to SmartDocs: the Redaction Agent and Doc to Voice. Both are generally available today and are designed to help teams share documents safely and interact with them in entirely new ways.
SmartDocs Redaction Agent Doc2Voice Document Management GA 2026
Watch the Session
What Is SmartDocs?
Introduced in Q1 of 2026, SmartDocs brings AI capabilities into the Document Management System within ServiceNow. With SmartDocs, a user can:
- Summarize a piece of a document
- Generate FAQs from a document
- Ask any set of questions and get answers from the document in real time
Building on that foundation, this session introduced two new capabilities â the SmartDocs Redaction Agent and Doc2Voice.
SmartDocs Redaction Agent
What is redaction?
Redaction means removing sensitive information from a document while retaining its context, so the document can be safely shared without disclosing sensitive details. In the example shown, an original Version 1 document containing a name, an account number, and an email address was redacted and published as Version 2 with a set of redaction codes â and both versions still convey the overall context of the document.
Why redaction is hard today
- You must manually read through every page to identify all sensitive information.
- Missing any sensitive detail creates a bigger risk of sharing it with the wrong person.
- There is a risk of over-redaction, which can dilute or reduce the context of the document.
How the Redaction Agent works
Once a document is available in the ServiceNow instance, you open it in the document viewer. From a record (for example, an incident), you click an attachment or a document in the documents component, and it opens in the viewer. You then use the Ask Otto button (formerly branded "Ask Now Assist") to invoke the SmartDocs agent.
The agent presents four pills to choose from:
Summarize the documentCreate a concise summary.
Generate FAQsProduce FAQs from the content.
Ask a questionQuery the document directly.
Redact document contentThe new capability in focus.
When you select Redact document content, the tools fire up, the document is analyzed, and all sensitive information is identified â with the number of instances marked next to each item. You can scroll through, select checkboxes for the information you want redacted, and also search for a specific keyword and select those instances as well.
After selecting, you click Submit. You can then add redaction codes that explain why a piece of information was redacted â for example, the person receiving the document can see that a name was present and that is why it was redacted. In the demo, this was configured with a FOIR configuration; these configurations are custom-made, so based on your use cases you can configure the tables and provide different redaction codes.
Once applied, sensitive information is highlighted on the actual document with red boxes. Hovering over a red box shows a pop-up indicating which redaction code the sensitive information is tagged to, and you can add additional redaction codes as needed. Any repeated keyword within the document is updated as well. You can preview the redacted document before saving â showing black boxes over the sensitive information along with the redaction codes.
Saving the result
When you save, if the item is a document, a new version is published and can be shared with a number of users. If the item is an attachment, a new attachment is created and saved in the ServiceNow instance. Importantly, once a redacted document is saved, the redacted sensitive information is completely removed â it is not hidden, and it cannot be retrieved again.
Doc to Voice
Doc to Voice lets a user interact with a document in real time â without typing a question. It provides two functionalities:
Doc to Voice SummaryA concise spoken summary of the document.
Voice-based Q&AInteract with the document in real time and get spoken answers.
From a record, you open a document or attachment in the document viewer and click the Show Voices option on the viewer. You then get two options â one to generate an audio summary (with the ability to enable a transcript), and the voice-based Q&A experience where a document voice assistant answers your spoken questions.
As shown in the demo, the assistant answered a series of spoken questions in real time, including follow-up questions. The capability is not restricted to text â it can also analyze images and tables within the document to answer questions, and it can explain how it arrived at a calculation.
Availability & Licensing
- Both capabilities are generally available (GA) today, released in 2026.
- The Redaction Agent is part of the SmartDocs capability within the Document Management plugin â it is not a free platform utility and requires GenAI entitlements. It consumes assists.
- Using these capabilities requires ServiceNow Now Assist (Otto) for Platform installed. Once installed, Now Assist (Otto) in Document Management and for Document Voice are installed along with it, and can be used with the required SKUs.
- Available on Zurich Patch 12+ (ZP12+) and AP5+.
- A set of ACLs must be defined in order to use the feature.
- These capabilities are part of all tiers â check with your account executive if you are unsure about entitlement.
What the Audience Told Us
During the session, we polled attendees on how many pages a typical document their team reviews contains:
|
~67%
review 1â20 page documents
|
~25%
review 21â50 page documents
|
Questions & Answers
Q: Is the Redaction Agent out-of-the-box or a licensed feature, and in which release is it available?
A: It is part of the SmartDocs capability within the Document Management plugin. It is not a free platform utility and requires GenAI entitlements (Now Assist / Otto for Platform), and it consumes assists. It is available on Zurich Patch 12+ (ZP12+) and AP5+.
Q: If there is an error while redacting, can the steps be redone?
A: Yes â you can perform the redaction steps again before saving. However, once a redacted document is saved, the redacted sensitive information is completely removed and cannot be retrieved. It is not hidden; it is removed.
Q: Does SmartDocs natively integrate with document intelligence?
A: SmartDocs is an agent that you can use out of the box, directly.
Q: What criteria determine what sensitive information is? Can this be adjusted as needed?
A: Prompts are provided in the backend, so based on your use case you can adjust those prompts to capture any particular sensitive information you want. It is configurable.
Q: The content of the document is passed to an LLM to determine what needs to be redacted â how does data privacy work?
A: Multiple layers are integrated so that a minimum amount of sensitive information reaches the LLM. The architecture is designed to identify most sensitive information before it reaches the LLM and to mask the data before it reaches the LLM, so there is the least chance of sensitive information reaching the model. After masking, the document gets redacted.
Q: Wouldn't the original document still be in the ticket?
A: With the Document Management System, Version 1 is converted to Version 2. The previous version is only accessible to the owner of the document, while the published Version 2 is available to any other user consuming that document.
Q: Can we use this feature for AI use cases where we want to supply raw data but mask sensitive data?
A: Yes â that is exactly what this capability is for: removing sensitive data before it is shared.
Q: If an account number is updated in the document, will the AI agent redact it?
A: Yes â it identifies that a piece of information is an account number and redacts it automatically.
Q: After adding a redaction code, how does it look for the actual users who see it?
A: Once the document is redacted, users see redaction codes alongside a blacked-out box, which helps them understand what sensitive information was redacted and against which code the redaction happened.
Q: Is there training available for SmartDocs?
A: Yes â there is an on-demand ServiceNow University course for SmartDocs available in the catalog. It currently covers the doc summary and Q&A capabilities; redaction and Doc2Voice are on the roadmap to be added afterward.
Note: Some features or applications mentioned may not yet be released. In line with Safe Harbor principles, this content is shared to communicate innovation and should not be relied upon when making purchasing decisions.
Explore more SmartDocs and Doc2Voice resources, use cases, and articles on the community hub, and sign up for upcoming AI Academy sessions.
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