Important considerations for using Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) agentic AI

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Important Considerations for Using Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) Agentic AI

    Now Assist for ITSM enables the use of AI agents within agentic workflows to autonomously complete tasks, enhancing efficiency in IT service management. You can utilize various large language models (LLMs) such as Now LLM Service, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude for these AI capabilities.

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    Key Features

    • Supported AI Models: Choose from a range of LLMs to power Now Assist skills and AI agents.
    • Configuration Controls: Use the AI Control Tower to manage available options and set skill-level preferences.
    • Security Implementation: Implement Access Control Lists (ACLs) to enable AI agents and workflows, ensuring proper user identity management.
    • Role Masking: Control access to AI agents and workflows based on user roles, with specific roles included with the Now Assist applications.
    • Autonomous Execution: Activate workflows and agents to run autonomously, with specific steps required for setup.
    • Standalone AI Agents: Some AI agents may exist outside of agentic workflows; learn how to locate all available agents.

    Key Outcomes

    By effectively implementing Now Assist for ITSM, organizations can expect improved task automation, enhanced security through controlled access, and streamlined workflows. The ability to leverage various LLMs allows for flexibility in meeting specific operational needs, ultimately driving greater efficiency in IT service management processes.

    Use the IT Service Management AI agents within an agentic workflow to complete tasks autonomously.

    Supported Large Language Models

    Note:

    Security implementation considerations

    Enable security implementation to execute AI agents and agentic workflows through Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities. ACLs provide the Run As capability to let agents and agentic workflows execute actions either as a dynamic user or as an AI user. For more information, see Implement access control in Now Assist AI agents

    Agentic workflows and their AI agents use role masking to determine which users can access them. Ones installed with Now Assist applications have specific roles that come included with the application. If you select Users with specific roles for user access, you must configure the security controls to include these roles. For the instructions to change the security controls, see Define security controls for an agentic workflow.

    AI agents use role masking to determine which users can access them. Ones installed with Now Assist applications have specific roles that come included with the application. If you select Users with specific roles for user access, you must configure the security controls to include these roles. For the instructions to change the security controls, see Define security controls for an AI agent.

    Considerations for running the autonomous AI Agents

    Important:
    By default, all agent workflow and AI agent records are read-only.

    To run the AI agents autonomously, you must first duplicate the agentic workflow, and then proceed with the following steps:

    • Activate the agentic workflow.
    • Activate all agents within the agentic workflow.
    • Activate the trigger to invoke the agentic workflow automatically. The triggers for each agentic workflow must be unique. If you prefer to invoke it manually, activating the trigger isn’t necessary.
    • Azure OpenAI is recommended for ITSM agentic workflows. For information on Large Language Models (LLMs) for AI agents and agentic workflows, see Large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform®.

    Standalone AI agents

    There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available to you, see Find AI agents.