Configuring the employee experience in Simplified IT Service Management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 5 minutes to read
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    Summary of Configuring the employee experience in Simplified IT Service Management

    This configuration guide enables ServiceNow customers to deliver an AI-first, streamlined employee experience through a simplified portal integrated with AI chat capabilities. It allows employees to find answers, order items, check request statuses, and create incidents efficiently. The solution includes a Simplified Employee Center portal, enhanced Virtual Agent capabilities, and prebuilt content such as taxonomy and catalog items designed to resolve common IT issues.

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    Employee Experience Components

    • Employee Slate: A unified AI-driven interface combining search, requests, tasks, knowledge, and communications to help employees work faster and stay informed. It integrates with AI assistants like Moveworks and Now Assist for conversational and contextual support.
    • Service Channels: Automated routing of incoming employee requests via chat, email, and phone, with configurable routing conditions, agent capacity, and inbox layouts to optimize support workflows.
    • Virtual Agent: An intelligent messaging interface preconfigured for employee support, including integrations with collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack for effortless request creation.
    • Taxonomy: Predefined hierarchical mapping of product and service content to simplify discovery of catalog items and knowledge articles in the Employee Center. Customizable to align with organizational structures.
    • Catalog Items: Prebuilt service and product offerings with fulfillment workflows for common IT requests, editable and extendable through the native catalog builder.
    • Surveys: Preconfigured employee satisfaction surveys to capture feedback post-incident resolution and request fulfillment, customizable via Survey Designer for continuous improvement.

    Why This Matters

    By configuring these components, ServiceNow customers can enhance employee engagement, reduce resolution times, and improve service quality through AI-driven automation and intuitive self-service options. The integration with popular communication tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack enables employees to interact with IT services seamlessly within their existing workflows.

    What to Expect

    • A comprehensive, AI-first employee portal experience that centralizes access to IT services and knowledge.
    • Improved request handling through automated routing and intelligent Virtual Agent conversations.
    • Prebuilt and customizable content components that accelerate deployment and align with business needs.
    • Enhanced feedback mechanisms via surveys to monitor and improve employee satisfaction.

    Enable an AI-first comprehensive employee experience focused on a simplified portal with an AI-first chat approach to find answers, order items, check status, and create incidents.

    The following experiences are available after configuring the employee experience:
    • Simplified Employee Center portal supporting AI chat, catalog, and knowledge content.
    • Now Assist Virtual Agent enhanced with prebuilt AI agents for requesters, enabling incident creation, status checks, and approvals in their preferred channels such as Microsoft Teams.
    • Prebuilt content such as taxonomy, catalog items, and record producers to resolve common IT issues and requests.

    For information about available AI agents for employee configurations, see AI agents and agentic workflows in Simplified IT Service Management.

    Employee Slate

    Employee Slate provides an AI-first employee experience that brings search, requests, tasks, knowledge, and communications together in one intuitive destination. Employees can easily find information, manage requests and tasks, stay informed through communications and news, connect with teams, and get work done faster.
    Note:
    For upgrading instances, if the Employee Slate is installed, the Taxonomy section is hidden from the employee experience configuration.
    Table 1. Employee Slate configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    Employee Slate Moveworks Employee Slate and Moveworks integration combines the Moveworks AI assistant with key Employee Slate features such as conversation-first home page, the interactive split view, Enterprise Search, and Inbox. Enables employees to handle work tasks, find information, and get things done faster with the Moveworks AI assistant. None Configure the branding, the Moveworks AI Assistant connection, the canvas configuration, email notifications for request and incident updates, and the update set package that promotes configurations between environments. For information about Employee Slate for Moveworks, see Employee Slate for Moveworks.
    Employee Slate Now Assist Employee Slate and Now Assist integration provides intelligent assistance throughout the Employee Slate experience. The AI assistant offers proactive suggestions, automates routine tasks, and provides contextual help based on your chat conversations and activities. Enable employees to get AI-powered assistance for everyday work tasks through intelligent suggestions, automated workflows, and contextual support. None Configure the branding and data sources, internal and external search sources, conversational assistant configurations, canvas, email notifications for request and incident updates, and other features. For information about Employee Slate for Now Assist, see Employee Slate for Now Assist.

    Service channels

    Service channels provide customer support by automatically routing incoming work to agents. You can specify additional conditions to filter the work items that are handled in the channel, change the agent capacity (workload) for the channel, set the inbox layouts that your agents use in Workspace, and view associated work item queues.

    Table 2. Service intake channel configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    Chat Routing and assigning chat interactions Live Agent chat is auto-configured post installation. It includes routing condition, work item size, maximum wait time, routing group, and so on. Manage and configure the live agent chat experience. For information about configuring this channel, see Create or configure a service channel.
    Email Routing requests from emails. Email action helps in registering requests or issues when an employee sends an email to registered email accounts. Email accounts can be configured from the Platform module in Product Configuration Console. Email actions are preconfigured with Simplified ITSM. Review the email actions available in the base system and update them based on the business process and requirement. For information about inbound email actions, see Inbound email actions.
    Phone Routing requests from phone interactions by integrating your ServiceNow instance with a third-party phone provider such as Amazon Connect and Genesys. None For information about integrating ServiceNow Voice with Amazon Connect, see Integrate ServiceNow Voice with Amazon Connect.

    For information about integrating ServiceNow voice assistant with Genesys, see Integrate ServiceNow voice assistant with Genesys Cloud service (Audio Connector).

    Virtual Agent

    The Virtual Agent platform provides user assistance through conversations within an intelligent messaging interface. You can design and build automated conversations that help your users quickly obtain information, decide, and perform common work tasks with Virtual Agent.

    Table 3. Virtual Agent configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    VA configuration Virtual Agent features, components, and integrations that are essential to provide support to your employees, IT teams, and customers. ServiceNow Virtual Agent is preconfigured with default general settings and branding, live agent chat configuration, and Now Assist Virtual Agent configurations. Review and configure settings to align the run-time experience of Virtual Agent with your requirements. For information about these configurations, see Configuring Virtual Agent.
    VA for MS Teams Integrating Virtual Agent with Microsoft Teams to enable users create their requests from within Microsoft Teams. None For information about Microsoft Teams integration, see Configure Virtual Agent for Microsoft Teams.
    VA for Slack Integrating Virtual Agent with Slack to enable users create their requests from within Slack. None For information about Slack integration, see Integrating ServiceNow Virtual Agent with Slack.

    Taxonomy

    Table 4. Taxonomy configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    Taxonomy Taxonomy for employee content maps the content of your product or services to the taxonomy hierarchy. Predefined set of taxonomies for easy discovery of catalog items and knowledge on Employee Center. Review, edit, remove, or add taxonomies that align with the business hierarchy of your organization. For information about taxonomy, see Create taxonomy.

    Catalog items

    Table 5. Catalog item configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    Catalog items Services or product offerings available for your users. Prebuilt catalog items and record producer with fulfillment workflows covering common IT issues and requests are active. For information about prebuilt catalog items, see Catalog items installed with Simplified IT Service Management. Review and edit a catalog item or create a catalog item using the native catalog builder experience. For information about adding a catalog item using Catalog Builder, see Create a catalog item using a template.

    Surveys

    Table 6. Survey configurations
    Configuration Description Default configuration Optional configurations
    Surveys Surveys help you create, send, and collect responses from your users to improve their experience. Preconfigured employee satisfaction surveys to gather feedback post incident resolution and request fulfillment. Create or edit an existing survey using Survey Designer. For information about configuring surveys, see Survey designer.

    For information about the Implementation Plan Manager Agent that provides conversational AI-native experience for survey configuration, see AI agents and agentic workflows in Simplified IT Service Management.