Configuring AI Search

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Configuring AI Search

    This guide explains how to plan and configure AI Search within the ServiceNow AI Platform®, enabling customers to implement powerful, customizable search experiences across their applications. AI Search indexes content from ServiceNow tables and external documents, providing enhanced search functionality including synonyms, typo handling, and fuzzy numeric search.

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    Key Configuration Steps

    • Assign Roles: Grant appropriate roles such as aisadmin, aishighsecurityadmin, and searchapplicationadmin to users who manage AI Search settings, content indexing, and application configurations.
    • Define Indexed Sources: Configure indexed sources for each relevant ServiceNow AI Platform table to specify the content made searchable. The system includes default indexed sources for Catalog Item, Knowledge, and User tables.
    • Define Search Sources: Apply filters to indexed sources to create search sources that define the searchable content accessible by users in various search experiences.
    • Create Search Profiles: Develop search profiles to customize search behavior by linking search sources with settings for synonyms, stop words, typo handling, Genius Results, and result improvement rules. Pre-configured profiles are available for Service Portal, Now Mobile, and AI Search Assist widgets.
    • Configure Search Application Settings: Establish configurations for each AI Platform application supporting AI Search, selecting search profiles and tailoring application-specific search options.
    • Enable AI Search in Applications: Specify AI Search as the search engine in supported applications such as Customer Service Management, Now Mobile, Service Portal, and Virtual Agent, and configure user experience settings.
    • Optional Customization: Create custom search matchers for exact-match global searches targeting specific table columns, enhancing precision for queries like ticket numbers or formatted numeric strings.
    • Activate Platform Multimodal Service: Enable automatic generation of descriptive captions for images, charts, and other visuals in indexed attachments to improve searchability of non-text content.

    Additional Features and Considerations

    • Fuzzy Numeric Search: Allows users to find records by number fields without needing to input prefixes or leading zeros.
    • Search Result Display Customization: Configure visual settings such as borders around search result cards for both portal and global search interfaces.
    • Domain Separation: While domain separation is not supported for AI Search application tables, search queries respect domain restrictions on indexed records, ensuring appropriate data visibility.
    • Indexing External Content: With the External Content for AI Search plugin, you can index and search documents and metadata from external repositories, broadening your searchable content scope.

    Using Guided Setup

    ServiceNow provides a guided setup interface to streamline AI Search configuration. Access it via All > AI Search > Guided Setup to follow recommended tasks and ensure correct setup of roles, indexed sources, search profiles, and applications.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By configuring AI Search as described, customers can offer tailored, efficient search experiences across ServiceNow applications, improving content discoverability and user productivity. The solution supports complex search requirements, including external content integration and advanced search behavior tuning, all manageable through defined roles and guided configuration workflows.

    Plan and configure your AI Search implementation.

    AI Search configuration overview

    Configuration stage Description
    Assign roles to AI Search administrators and users Assign the ais_admin role to users who need to create, read, update, and delete content indexing and search settings for AI Search.

    Assign the ais_high_security_admin elevated privilege role to users who need to access High Security settings for AI Search.

    Assign the search_application_admin to users who need to create, read, update, and delete search application configurations.
    Define indexed sources Create and configure an indexed source for each ServiceNow AI Platform® table that has content you want to make searchable. Index source tables to add their searchable content to the AI Search index.

    The base system includes pre-configured indexed sources for the Catalog Item, Knowledge, and User tables.
    Define search sources Apply filter conditions to indexed sources to define search sources that users can access in your search experiences.

    The base system includes pre-configured search sources that reference the default indexed sources.
    Define search profiles Create and publish a search profile for each distinct search experience that you want to offer in search applications. Specify the data that users can search by linking search sources to the search profile. Control search behavior by configuring synonyms, stop words, typo handling settings, Genius Results, and result improvement rules.

    The base system includes pre-configured search profiles for use with Service Portal, Now Mobile, and the AI Search Assist Service Portal widget.
    Define search application configurations Create a configuration for each ServiceNow AI Platform application that supports AI Search. Select a search profile for the application to use. Configure application-specific search settings.

    The base system includes pre-configured search application configurations for Service Portal, Virtual Agent, and the AI Search Assist Service Portal widget.
    Enable and configure AI Search in ServiceNow AI Platform applications Specify AI Search as the search engine in supported ServiceNow AI Platform applications. Select a search application configuration for each application to use and configure available search UX settings.
    Create a custom search matcher for global search Optionally configure exact-match global searches that only match results from a specified column (field) on a particular ServiceNow AI Platform table.

    Using guided setup to implement AI Search

    Guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help you configure AI Search on your ServiceNow instance. To open AI Search guided setup, navigate to All > AI Search > Guided Setup.

    For more information about using the guided setup interface, see Using guided setup.