ServiceNow Otto: how to open the Otto panel to interact with agents after triggering an agentic work

akshatbari
Tera Contributor

Friday - last edited Friday

Hi everyone,

I’m on an Australia release instance and I’m building a custom agentic workflow for ITAM in AI Agent Studio. I’d like to know how the user is supposed to interact with the agents after the workflow is started from a UI action on a record.

Setup

  • Custom Workflow: “Hardware Asset Review Workflow”, with two custom agents. The first assesses the refresh risk of a hardware asset, and the second creates an ITAM review task after asking the user for an assignment group.
  • Under “Select channels and status” I have two channels:
    • Engage via the Otto panel: Display is on.
    • Engage via UI actions on specific records: UI action “Assess asset & Create review task”, table alm_hardware, condition “Sys ID is not empty”, Display on.
  • Plugins installed: ServiceNow Otto core, ServiceNow Otto for HAM, ServiceNow Otto for SAM and the other ITAM-related Otto/Now Assist plugins. I have also used the out-of-the-box ITAM agentic workflows, and they work.
  • Roles: the user has the roles needed for ServiceNow Otto and the ITAM modules.

What works

  • When I start the workflow by typing a message in the Otto panel at the top right, it runs correctly. The agents show the group options, I reply, and the task is created.

What doesn’t work

  • When I click the generated UI action `Assess asset & Create review task` on an alm_hardware record, in both the core UI form and the Hardware Asset Workspace, the workflow starts. The Otto icon on record's header shows “At least 1 or more AI activity is paused or running”, with a Review activity button.
  • Clicking Review activity does nothing. No panel opens and I can’t reply to the agents.

What I noticed

  • On an incident in Service Operations Workspace, the right-hand sidebar shows an AI Activity panel and an Agentic Processes icon.
  • On an asset in Hardware Asset Workspace, the right-hand sidebar shows only Asset lifecycle events and a few other panels. There is no AI Activity panel or Agentic Processes entry.
  • So I suspect the asset workspace has nowhere to show the AI activity, which would explain why Review activity does nothing.

My questions

  1. After a workflow is started from a UI action, which component is supposed to open so the user can interact with the agents? Should the Otto panel open automatically?
  2. Is the AI Activity panel something I have to add to the Hardware Asset Workspace side panel myself, or should the ITAM plugins have done this? If I add it, which component or configuration should I use or configure and how?
  3. Is there a setting that enables the AI Activity panel for alm_hardware and alm_asset?
  4. Is there a supported way to make the UI action open the Otto panel and start the conversation in it, so the user can reply to the agents?

 

Screenshots for reference:

1. UI Action enabled for the agentic workflow in AI Agent Studio.

akshatbari_4-1793355366420.png

 

2. Record's page with Otto/Now Assist icon on header in native form view

akshatbari_3-1793355305243.png

 

 

3. Hardware asset workspace view for same record with no options to interact with agent

akshatbari_5-1793355458726.png

 

I’m happy to share more screenshots. Thanks in advance for any help.

0 Helpfuls
  • 511 Views
6 REPLIES 6

akshatbari
Tera Contributor

Monday

I have tested the UI action in Core UI, the workflow is triggering. An indicator of AI activity is coming on header of the form and clicking on it is showing the "Review Activity" button and then nothing is happening on clicking that "Review Activity" button. 
This behavior is already displayed in the screenshots attached in the above post.


com.glide.agentic_processes_view.enabled is already enabled.

0 Helpfuls

Michael Domke
Tera Guru
In response to akshatbari

13 hours ago

I had the same issue and submitted a support case to ServiceNow. Pretty easy fix actually. Here is the case and solution:

 

ISSUE: A custom Agentic Workflow, "Assess Quality of a Change Request," was configured to launch from a UI Action on the change_request form in the Core UI (UI16). While the workflow started successfully and the agentic icon appeared, clicking "Review Activity" from the icon produced no response, and the Agentic Processes panel failed to display. This behavior was not observed in Service Operations Workspace, where the panel worked as expected.

SOLUTION PROPOSED:
Investigation confirmed that for the Agentic Processes panel to display correctly in UI16, a specific UI component must be present on the form from which the workflow is launched. The root cause was the absence of the "AI Activity Inline Experience" or "AI Activity Sidebar Experience" field on the change_request form layout. Adding either of these fields to the form layout resolves the issue, allowing the "Review Activity" button to correctly open the Agentic Processes panel.

 

Thanks,

Michael

0 Helpfuls