Platform Approval assistance AI agent

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated October 21, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Platform Approval assistance AI agent

    The Approval assistance AI agent streamlines the approval process by allowing ServiceNow users to view, approve, or reject their pending approval requests directly within Virtual Agent, including interfaces like ServiceNow Otto® and Microsoft Teams. It eliminates the need to navigate to specific approval pages by providing an interactive conversational experience with context-aware follow-up questions.

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    This AI agent accesses approval data from the Approvals [sysapprovalapprover] table and requires users to have appropriate roles such as approveruser and snrequestapproverread. Additional roles may be necessary to read other related tables, for example, snchangeread for Change Requests.

    Key Features

    • Approval Management: View lists of pending approvals, obtain detailed information, and perform approve or reject actions with optional rejection comments.
    • Context-Aware Interaction: The AI agent asks follow-up questions and uses a Gen AI checklist based on configured knowledge base articles and policies to assist decision-making.
    • Role Masking and Security Controls: Access is controlled through role masking; administrators can configure security settings and cross-scope privileges to ensure the AI agent can read necessary records from various tables.
    • Configuration Requirements: Administrator roles (approvaladmin and admin) are needed to configure display fields and knowledge base search fields, enhancing the AI agent's decision support capabilities.
    • Integration: Accessible via AI Agent Studio under the AI Agents tab, and usable in Virtual Agent, ServiceNow Otto panel, or Microsoft Teams, providing flexible options for end users.

    Using the Approval assistance AI agent

    • Users can ask for their pending approvals, filter approvals by categories such as request type or priority, and request details about specific approval records using natural language queries.
    • After the agent provides approval requests, users can approve or reject items directly, with the option to add rejection reasons.
    • Administrators should ensure proper role assignments and configure necessary security and cross-scope privileges to allow the AI agent to access all relevant approval-related data.

    Practical Benefits

    This AI agent enhances productivity by simplifying and accelerating the approval workflow, reducing the need to manually search for approval requests. It provides a user-friendly conversational interface that improves decision efficiency by leveraging knowledge base articles and organizational policies.

    The Approval assistance AI agent enables you to see your list of pending approvals and the details about your pending approvals. You can then approve or reject requests and tickets from ServiceNow Otto® in Virtual Agent.

    Approval assistance AI agent overview

    Roles required: approver_user, sn_request_approver_read

    Note:
    Add the necessary roles to enable reading of other tables whose records go through the approval process. For example, you can add the sn_change_read role to read Change Request records.

    The benefit of using the Approval assistance AI agent is that you don't have to navigate to a specific page to approve your tickets. You can ask the AI agent about your pending approval requests and then tell the AI agent to approve or reject those approvals. The AI agent will ask follow-up questions and offer context-aware responses to simplify your experience.

    Ask you administrator to configure the display fields and the knowledge base (KB) search fields to generate a Gen AI checklist to assist the Approval assistance AI agent in making targeted decisions. The checklist uses KB articles and policies to assist the Approval assistance AI agent in decision making. The checklist fetches information from knowledge base articles about specific requester approval tickets. An approval_admin and admin role are required to configure the Approval assistance AI agent. For more information, see Configure Service Portal Approval Configuration record.
    Note:
    Provide cross-scope privileges to the ServiceNow Otto Agents for Requester plugin for tables whose records are restricted within the scope of an application. For more information, see Define cross-scope access to an application resource.

    Prerequisites and setup

    This AI agent is installed with certain applications. Check your entitlements for details.

    The Approval assistance AI agent displays data from the Approvals [sysapproval_approver] table. If the user has been assigned to approve a request, the approval record is shown.

    Role masking

    AI agents use role masking to determine which users can access them. Ones installed with your 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.

    In the data access settings, you must also add the necessary roles to enable reading of the tables for the records you want to evaluate for readiness. For example, you can add the itil role to the AI agent's list of approved roles so that it can access Incident records.

    Accessing the Approval assistance AI agent

    To access the AI agent:
    1. Navigate to All > AI Agent Studio > Create and manage.
    2. Go to the AI Agents tab.
    3. Select Approval assistance AI agent.

    Sample utterances

    After the agent has been activated in AI Agent Studio, enter phrases such as the following or similar queries to run the AI Agent in Virtual Agent, the ServiceNow Otto panel, or Microsoft Teams.

    • Can you give me a list of pending approvals?
    • What are the pending approvals for time off requests?
    • Show me a list of pending approval requests by priority.
    • Give me details about my approval request?

    Performing approval action on an approval record

    The Approval assistance AI agent shows approval requests that require an action on your part. After the approval information is provided by the agent, select Approve or Reject for a specific approval record, or type Approve or Reject. If you reject an approval request, then add a comment about the rejection reason.
    Figure 1. Approve or reject an approval record
    ServiceNow Otto Approve or Reject options for an Approval.