Configuring assistants overview

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated April 21, 2025
  • 1 minute to read

    • Use Assistant Designer to build and optimize large language model (LLM) assistants for your conversational needs. Assistant Designer is a centralized assistant administrator experience that allows you to create and manage both chat and voice assistants.

    Before you begin

    See Assistant Designer.

    Role required: virtual_agent_admin or admin

    About this task

    An admin can create and configure more than one chat or voice assistant within Assistant Designer.

    For chat assistants, a primary assistant can be linked to one or more secondary assistants. The linkage enables a primary assistant to use search sources from secondary assistants, enhancing its functionality and efficiency. For more information on primary and secondary assistants, see LLM assistants. If multiple assistants are created, users can chat simultaneously with multiple assistants. Conversations are independent from each other.

    Each assistant can have more than one display experience, using either the standard chat or enhanced chat experience, depending on the display experience that's configured. Enhanced chat offers a conversational search experience that seamlessly integrates Virtual Agent chat with search results. For more information, see Standard chat or Enhanced chat. For a comparison of the two, see Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent.
    Note:
    Opt into premium chat if your instance meets certain criteria. For more information, see Display your chat assistant on a portal, channel, or mobile app or Display your assistant on Platform or ServiceNow Studio.

    When configuring a chat assistant, notes throughout the procedures show where there are differences between the setup for Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants and the setup for Now Assist panel assistants. You can't create additional Now Assist panel assistants.

    For voice assistants, a voice assistant can be mapped to one or more AI agents. The linkage enables a voice assistant to leverage agentic capabilities to resolve user queries over phone.

    Procedure

    1. To access assistants in Assistant Designer, navigate to All > Assistant Designer > Assistants tab.
      The Assistants tab in Assistant Designer can also be accessed from different entry points.
      Table 1. Entry points to create and manage a chat or voice assistant
      Entry point Accessing assistants
      All > Conversational Interfaces > Assistants Select Manage assistants.
      Figure 1. CI Admin view
      Manage assistants links to Assistant Designer.
      All > Now Assist Admin > Now Assist Skills > Platform Select the Set up Now Assist in Virtual Agent link.
      Figure 2. Now Assist Admin console > Platform view
      Now Assist skills for Platform.
    2. To view and create chat or voice assistants, see View assistants.

    What to do next

    See View assistants.