IT Service Management AI agent collection Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of IT Service Management AI agent collection Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow

    The Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow in ServiceNow helps ITSM users quickly generate recommendations and resolution steps for incidents using AI. By inputting an incident number, the workflow identifies related catalog items, Knowledge articles, and similar resolved incidents to create a resolution plan. This workflow is designed to streamline incident investigation and resolution, enhancing efficiency for IT service agents.

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    Key Features

    • Related Content Discovery: Automatically finds relevant catalog items, Knowledge base articles, and similar incidents linked to the incident.
    • AI-Driven Recommendations: The ITSM Incident Resolution Plan Investigation AI agent generates a resolution plan based on gathered information and adds it to the incident’s Work notes.
    • Manual Triggering: The workflow is manually triggered when an incident’s state is updated to In Progress and an assignee is defined.
    • Integration with Now Assist Panel: Users can enter an incident number in Now Assist to invoke the workflow and receive resolution guidance directly.
    • Customizability: Administrators can duplicate and modify the agentic workflow and AI agent settings to tailor recommendations according to organizational requirements.
    • Access Control: The workflow output can be configured to be visible to specific roles, with the itil role included by default.

    Practical Use and Outcomes

    When a ServiceNow user inputs an incident number, the AI agent collects the top 10 most relevant catalog items and other contextual information. These recommendations and the incident resolution plan are appended to the incident’s Work notes, providing actionable guidance for service agents to resolve the issue effectively. This process helps reduce manual research time, improves consistency in incident handling, and leverages past resolved cases and knowledge articles to enhance resolution quality.

    If the AI agent cannot generate a resolution plan, it will notify the user accordingly.

    Getting Started and Maintenance

    • Access the workflow via All > AI Agent Studio > Create and manage, then select the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents workflow.
    • Ensure AI agents involved have their status enabled for activation.
    • When modifying workflows or AI agents, update all related instructions to maintain accuracy.

    Use the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents AI agent team to get recommendations to resolve an incident based on the incident number. Check for related catalog items, Knowledge articles, and similar resolved incidents to generate resolution steps for the incident.

    Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow overview

    Using the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow:
    1. Check for related catalog items and select the most relevant item.
    2. Check for Knowledge articles and similar incidents.
    3. Get recommended steps for incident resolution.

    To modify the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow, duplicate it, and adjust the settings according to your requirements.

    Important:
    When you modify an agentic workflow, AI agent, or a tool, make sure that you update all instructions accordingly.

    Link catalog items and Knowledge articles to incidents

    When you make a query or a request in the Now Assist panel, you can get recommendations for relevant catalog items. The recommendations get automatically added to the incident's Work notes section. The workflow uses relevant Knowledge articles and similar incidents to get the recommended steps for incident resolution that gets added to the incident's Work notes section.

    To access the agentic workflow:
    1. Navigate to All > AI Agent Studio > Create and manage.
    2. Select Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents.

    Setting manual triggers for the agentic workflow

    The Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow is triggered manually based on the following conditions:
    Note:
    In the Define trigger screen, the value in the Run as field must be set to Assigned to.
    • State is updated to In progress
    • Assigned to isn’t empty

    AI agents used in the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow

    In the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow, use specific AI agents for each type of resolution to generate the desired recommendations.

    Important:
    In the Define availability screen for the AI agent, make sure that the Status field is enabled to activate the AI agent.
    Table 1. AI agent and their role in the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow
    AI agent AI agent role
    ITSM incident resolution plan investigation AI agent
    1. Recommends catalog items related to the selected incident.
    2. Looks up similar incidents and provides an incident resolution. The resolution can also include information from knowledge articles.

    Generating a recommendation using the Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow

    In the agentic workflow record:
    1. Review the information in the Describe and connect screen and in the Define trigger screen, make any necessary updates, and then select Save and Continue.
    2. In the Select display screen:
      1. Choose where you want the agentic workflow output to be displayed.
      2. Use the arrow next to it to add roles that can access the agentic workflow.
        Note:
        The itil role is added by default.
      3. Select Save and test.

        The agent executes the request for the agentic workflow.

      Example of Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow output in the ServiceNow AI Agent Studio

    Investigate and resolve ITSM incidents agentic workflow output.

    In the AI Agent Studio, the human agent gets notified as soon as the recommendations to resolve incidents get generated so that they can follow the on-screen instructions and complete the task. For more information, see Request the generative AI capabilities in ITSM by using the ServiceNow Otto panel.

    Generating the incident resolution steps in the Otto panel

    As a user, do the following in the Now Assist panel:
    1. Open the Now Assist panel and enter the incident number for which you want to generate the incident resolution steps.

      The Investigate and Resolve ITSM incidents workflow gets triggered and the ITSM Incident Resolution Plan Investigation AI agent takes over the issue resolution.

    2. Using AI search, the AI agent retrieves the top 10 most relevant catalog items related to the incident.

      The URLs to these catalog items are added to the Work notes section in the incident.Now Assist for ITSM Investigate and Resolve ITSM incidents workflow catalog comments

    3. The AI agent gathers all relevant information required for the investigation.

      The retrieved data includes similar resolved incidents, relevant knowledge base articles, and other contextual information. The AI agent generates a resolution plan based on this information.

    4. The resolution plan is added to the incident's work notes.

      If the AI agent was unable to create a resolution plan, then it displays a message indicating the failure.

      Now Assist for ITSM Investigate and Resolve ITSM incidents workflow plan comments