Playbook generation from text prompt or image
Summarize
Summary of Playbook generation from text prompt or image
ServiceNow’s Playbook generation feature, available through the Now Assist for Creator application, enables users to create detailed playbooks using AI by providing either text prompts or images. This capability helps playbook authors quickly generate structured workflows for various business processes such as customer support, employee onboarding, travel expense reimbursement, and more.
Show less
The feature is integrated into the Workflow Studio interface, allowing easy access during playbook creation. It leverages Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to incorporate active actions, subflows, flows, and activity definitions from your ServiceNow instance, ensuring generated playbooks align with your specific environment.
Key Features
- AI-driven playbook creation: Generate playbooks by inputting descriptive text or clear, high-resolution images (up to 10 MB in JPG, JPEG, PNG, or WEBP formats).
- Prompt guidelines: Craft meaningful playbook names and provide precise, detailed descriptions of stages, activities, and their sequence. Specify concurrent activities when needed.
- Image support: Use clear diagrams or images to help AI accurately capture workflow steps.
- Prompt experimentation and saving: Save and compare different prompt versions to optimize results; prompts used for saved playbooks are stored in the playbook’s Properties setting.
- Playbook review and refinement: Review generated content for accuracy and efficiency; configure placeholder activities with recommended definitions before activation.
- Integration with Workflow Studio: Access playbook generation within the Workflow Studio environment, leveraging updated lists of active workflow components refreshed hourly.
- Example prompts: Predefined prompt examples for common scenarios like employee onboarding, customer support, travel reimbursement, control document management, supplier evaluation, and hardware inventory management help users get started quickly.
Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers
By enabling Playbook generation, your organization can accelerate the creation of consistent, accurate, and comprehensive playbooks tailored to your business processes without manually designing each workflow step. This reduces time-to-value and helps maintain alignment with your existing ServiceNow workflows and activity definitions.
Use detailed, structured prompts or clear images to guide the AI in producing actionable playbook outlines, then review and refine these playbooks within Workflow Studio. Placeholder activities can be configured to ensure all automated or manual tasks are properly defined before deployment.
Monitoring Now Assist usage is important, as generating or regenerating playbook previews consumes usage credits (10 assists per preview), so plan prompt testing accordingly.
Generate a playbook using AI from text prompt or image inputs. For example, you can enter a text description to generate a playbook for managing customer support cases.
Now Assist for Creator activates the playbook generation skill. Playbook generation gives generative AI capabilities to playbook authors.
Activation
Playbook generation is a skill that is installed with the Now Assist for Creator (sn_now_creator) application. You can install this application from the ServiceNow Store website. You must enable the Playbook generation skill to generate playbooks using AI.
Supported user interfaces
Access the Playbook generation skill when you’re creating a playbook in Workflow Studio.
Writing prompts
Follow these guidelines when writing prompts to generate playbooks.
- Provide a meaningful name for the playbook
- The more descriptive the playbook name is, the better the playbook that Now Assist can create.
- Be precise and descriptive in the directions
-
-
Describe each stage and activity in as much detail as you can.
-
Specify the order that stages and activities run in.
-
Specify if any stages or activities run at the same time.
-
- Use clear images
- Use high resolution images with clear shapes, text, and arrows. Avoid using blurred screenshots and images of unclear whiteboard diagrams.
You can use one image of up to 10 MB, in JPG, JPEG, PNG, or WEBP format.
- Experiment with prompts
- Save your prompts somewhere, including any modified versions. Saving your prompts enables easy comparison of results.Note:Prompts used only to generate a preview aren't saved, but prompts used for a saved playbook outline are in the playbook's Properties setting.
Reviewing playbooks
Follow these guidelines to review the generated playbooks.
- Check for accuracy
- Review each stage and activity in a generated playbook to determine accuracy, efficiency, and how well it outlines your business process.
- Configure placeholder activities
-
Configure placeholder activities before you activate your playbook. Use playbook recommendations to help choose activity definitions.
Figure 1. Configure the activity definition in the activity side panel
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) support
Playbook generation uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to include the names of active actions, subflows, flows, and activity definitions available on your instance. Workflow Studio updates the list of active actions, subflows, flows, and activity definitions every hour to make them available to playbook generation. You can refer to active actions, subflows, flows, and activity definitions by name in your playbook generation inputs.
Example prompts
The following examples can help you to generate playbook outlines:
- Example playbook prompt 1: Employee onboarding
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook for the onboarding process of new hires.
Create an employee onboarding playbook that integrates new hires into the organization. HR initiates it upon job offer acceptance, gathering documents, assigning mentors, providing orientation, setting up IT access, ensuring compliance, and job-specific training. The playbook ends with feedback from the employee and HR, resulting in an onboarding checklist. - Example playbook prompt 2: Customer support
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook with the steps that an agent takes for customer support
cases.
Create a customer support playbook which is the primary point of contact for handling customer inquiries, problems, and requests. It starts by receiving and categorizing customer inquiries based on urgency and complexity. Support tickets are then assigned to agents who troubleshoot and resolve them, with the option to escalate to higher support tiers if needed. After resolution, follow-up with the customer is crucial. A satisfaction survey gathers feedback for improvement, and all interactions are documented, updating the knowledge base for future reference. - Example playbook prompt 3: Travel reimbursement
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook to manage employee travel expenses.
Create a travel expense reimbursement playbook for managing employee travel expenses efficiently. Employees submit expense reports with valid receipts. Finance verifies expenses against policies, ensuring budget compliance. Managers approve expenses, initiating payment processing. - Example playbook prompt 4: Control document
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook to manage a control document.
Create a playbook for generating, reviewing, and approving a control document. Suppliers and Quality managers collaborate to upload documents and conduct appropriate refinement before a final document is approved. - Example playbook prompt 5: Supplier evaluation
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook to evaluate whether potential suppliers meet qualification
standards.
Create a playbook for qualifying a new supplier. Suppliers request qualification. Quality managers review and approve qualification requests, plan qualification deliverables, execute qualification activities, and summarize qualification findings in a report. The playbook concludes by determining if the supplier has achieved the requested qualification. - Example playbook prompt 6: Hardware inventory
- You can use this prompt to create a playbook to manage hardware inventory.
Create a playbook that manages hardware inventory. This playbook should efficiently track stock levels, update in real-time, and generate alerts for low inventory. It must support categorization, bar codes, and seamless integration with sales and procurement systems.