Now Assist context menu

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Now Assist context menu

    The Now Assist context menu leverages generative AI to help ServiceNow agents efficiently summarize, create, and edit written content such as emails, chat replies, knowledge base articles, and change request explanations. It is designed to streamline writing tasks across multiple ServiceNow applications within the Next Experience interface, including Customer Service Management, Human Resources, IT Service Management, Strategic Portfolio Management, and IT Operations Management.

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    This AI-powered feature is accessible from any enabled field in a ServiceNow workspace where the floating Now Assist button appears, providing quick contextual assistance without leaving the current workflow. However, it is not available in Core UI or Service Portal environments.

    Key Features

    • Content Creation and Editing: Agents can summarize, elaborate, shorten, and refine text in emails, chat replies, knowledge base articles, and change requests using generative AI.
    • Chat Integration: Supports AI-assisted content generation within Agent Chat conversations, with error handling if AI services are unavailable.
    • Change Request Risk Explanation: Offers AI-generated risk explanations in change request forms and workspaces after risk assessment and calculation.
    • Knowledge Base Authoring: Enables inline editing with options to elaborate or shorten selected content, and to insert AI-refined text directly into articles.
    • Tone Adjustment: Allows users to modify the tone of content to casual, formal, or sympathetic styles for enhanced communication.
    • Content Refinement Limits: Administrators can configure limits on the number of AI content refinements per session to manage usage and control costs.
    • Customization Options: Includes settings to define minimum word counts for AI suggestions, and supports deployment of custom AI skills created with the Now Assist skill kit.
    • Email Recommendations: Provides AI-generated templates and responses for composing or replying to emails, supporting various email actions.
    • Record Summarization: Generates concise summaries of records with options to expand, collapse, share, regenerate, or copy the summary.
    • Strategic Portfolio Management Support: Facilitates AI-driven conversations and queries to improve documentation and decision-making.
    • Usage Monitoring: Includes a dashboard to track and analyze Now Assist context menu usage across different ServiceNow applications.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By integrating the Now Assist context menu into your ServiceNow workspaces, you can significantly reduce the time agents spend on drafting and refining communications and documentation. This tool enhances accuracy and consistency across customer interactions and internal workflows, such as change management and knowledge base maintenance. The ability to adjust tone and limit refinement calls helps maintain quality and control AI usage. Additionally, the support for custom skills and usage monitoring allows organizations to tailor the AI experience and optimize its effectiveness based on real usage patterns.

    The Now Assist context menu uses generative AI to help agents summarize, create, and edit written content, thus streamlining their writing tasks.

    Agents produce various types of content, including emails and chat replies. The Now Assist context menu uses generative AI to assist agents in summarizing, creating, and editing emails and chat replies. Agents can preview AI generated content, scroll through previously created content, and refine the text using the AI. The Now Assist context menu can be triggered from any application or field in a ServiceNow workspace where the Now Assist context menu is enabled.

    The Now Assist context menu unlocks the power of generative AI and is available in Next Experience for:
    • Customer Service Management (CSM)
    • Human Resources (HR)
    • IT Service Management (ITSM)
    • Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)
    • IT Operations Management (ITOM)

    The Now Assist context menu isn't available for Core UI or in any Service Portal, whether you use custom or built-in skills.

    Using the Now Assist context menu

    The Now Assist context menu is available on any field where the floating Now Assist button (Now Assist context menu icon) appears. If you start typing in the field, a menu appears with the available Now Assist context menu actions. The Now Assist context menu helps you summarize, create or modify existing documentation.

    You can configure the Advanced filter to hide or show the Now Assist Context Menu quick actions option using the wwna_quick_actions table. To view more variable set configuration options, see nacm-variable-set-description.html.

    Chat window using the Now Assist context menu

    You can use the Now Assist context menu when communicating with users in Agent Chat:

    If it takes too long to generate text or the Now LLM Service isn't available, an error message appears.

    Agent Chat window with the Now Assist context menu icon

    Change request risk explanation using the Now Assist context menu

    The Now Assist context menu makes the change request risk explanation available on the workspace and on UI16 after assessment and calculation.

    When the risk is assessed and calculated, you’ll see the Explain risk button with the Now Assist The Now Assist icon. icon on the workspace showing the risk explanation in a dialogue box in the Record information section.

    The change request risk explanation powered by Now Assist.

    When the risk is assessed and calculated, you’ll see the Now Assist The Now Assist icon. icon against the Risk field on UI16, showing the risk explanation in a dialogue box.

    Now Assist showing the change risk explanation.

    Note:
    The risk explanation that is presented in the dialogue box is assessed and calculated on the change request form.

    For more information about risk assessment and calculation, see Risk assessment.

    Content editing in Knowledge Base articles using the Now Assist content menu
    The Now Assist context menu enables generative AI assisted content editing capabilities for Knowledge Base authoring and to provide resolution notes in workspaces and UI16.

    When you open a knowledge article and select the content in it, you’ll see the Now Assist The Now Assist icon. icon pop-up and float along with your mouse device.

    When you hover over the Now Assist icon, you’ll see the following menu options to help you edit the content:
    • Elaborate: Generative AI details the selected text.
    • Shorten: Generative AI shortens the selected text.

    Now Assist context menu options for the selected text.

    You can insert the generative AI elaborated or shortened content into the Knowledge Base articles, using the Insert button and update or publish them.

    Insert the AI generated text into the Knowledge Base article.

    For more information about generating Knowledge Base articles using the Now Assist context menu, see Edit an article using the Now Assist context menu.

    Change Tone using Now Assist context menu
    The Now Assist context menu enables users to change the tone of their content. Users can choose between casual, formal, and sympathetic tone to enhance their content further, using the generative AI capabilities.
    When you hover over the Now Assist icon or select Refine menu, you see Change Tone menu option.
    You can further choose a preferred tone and select Formal, Casual, and Sympathetic. Review the changes and select Insert to finalize the new text.

    Now Assist change tone selections.

    Note:
    If you do not see the change tone option for your application or product, reach out to ServiceNow.
    Limit the number of content refinement calls using the Now Assist context menu
    Configure and limit the number of content refinements to the skill per session using the Now Assist context menu. By default, the maximum number of refinements isn’t set and you can configure to limit it.
    You can configure the refinement calls limitation at the Recommendations Dialog Props field in the Limit refinements record using the refineCount property.
    Note:
    The Limit refinements record is available in the Now Assist config var set record in the Now Assist Skill context menu application.

    Configure the content refine limits to using the refineCount property.

    You can set the refineCount as follows:
    • The default value of the property is -1. If the value is less than 0, then the number of refinements to the skill are unlimited.
    • If you provide 0 as the value, then the refine button will be disabled and the You reached the limit for refining content. message is displayed.

      The content refinement limited to zero or the refinements reached the maximum count.

    • If you configure it with a value greater than 0, you’ll be able to refine the content according to the set value. For example, if you set the refineCount to 2, then you will be able to refine the content only twice.

      The content refinement limit value set to two.

    Create knowledge article with open prompt
    Use NAcm to create inline knowledge article using open prompts. See Generate KB article with Now Assist context menu.
    Set the minimum word count for the Now Assist icon
    You can set a minimum word count required for the Now Assist icon to appear, to control when the icon is displayed based on content length. To set the minimum word count, update the value for the minSelectedWordCount property.