Using agentic AI for Operational Technology Service Management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using agentic AI for Operational Technology Service Management

    Operational Technology Service Management (OTSM) leverages agentic AI to autonomously complete tasks, enhancing efficiency and accuracy in managing operational technology incidents and knowledge. This capability is delivered via the OTSM AI agent collection, which automates workflows such as generating knowledge base (KB) articles after incident resolution.

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    Key Features

    • Agentic Workflows: Predefined workflows like "Generate OT KB articles" automatically create relevant knowledge base content upon incident resolution using the OT knowledge generator AI agent.
    • Customization: Default agentic workflows are inactive and read-only. Customers can duplicate these workflows, modify settings to meet specific requirements, and activate the customized versions. The minimum role required for duplication is snaia.admin.
    • AI Model Support: Supports multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) including Now LLM Service, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude on AWS. Configuration and preferences are managed via AI Control Tower and Now Assist Admin console.
    • Security and Access Control: Execution of AI agents and workflows is governed by Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities to ensure secure operations. Role masking controls which users can access and manage agentic workflows, with specific roles provided by the Now Assist application.
    • Activation Process: To enable autonomous AI agents, customers must duplicate the workflow, activate it, enable all associated agents, and activate a unique trigger for automatic invocation. Manual invocation is also supported without trigger activation.
    • Standalone AI Agents: Some AI agents installed with Now Assist may not be part of agentic workflows but remain available for use.

    Practical Benefits

    ServiceNow customers using OTSM with agentic AI can expect streamlined incident resolution processes through automatic KB article generation, improved knowledge management, and enhanced operational efficiency. The ability to customize and securely manage these AI workflows ensures alignment with organizational policies and specific operational needs.

    Use the Operational Technology Service Management (OTSM) AI agent collection to complete tasks autonomously.

    Table 1. Table 1. Available agentic workflows for OTSM AI agent collection
    Agentic workflow name Description Available AI agents
    Generate OT KB articles Upon OT Incident resolution, the AI agent automatically creates a KB article with relevant contextual information. OT knowledge generator AI agent
    Important:
    If you want to change this agentic workflow, you can duplicate it, adjust the settings to suit your specific needs, and activate the duplicated version of the agentic workflow instead.

    The minimum role needed to duplicate an agentic workflow is the sn_aia.admin role. By default, the OTSM agentic workflow is inactive. If you want to use the OOB agentic workflow, you can activate the OOB trigger. But if you want to customize the agentic workflow, you must duplicate it.

    Important:
    Some generative AI skills, AI agents, and agentic workflows are turned on by default. For more information, see Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows on by default.

    Supported Large Language Models

    Note:

    You can use Now LLM Service, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini or Anthropic Claude on AWS as the AI model provider for all generative AI skills and AI agents. Use the Configuration Controls in AI Control Tower to define which options are available, then set the skill-level preferences in the Now Assist Admin console. For more information, see Large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform®.

    Security implementation considerations

    Enable security implementation to execute AI agents and agentic workflows through Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities. For more information, see Implement access control in Now Assist AI agents

    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.

    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.

    Role masking

    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.