Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) release notes
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Summary of Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) Release Notes - Australia Release
The Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) application integrates agentic AI capabilities into ITSM workflows, enhancing agent productivity and user experience. The Australia release introduces significant improvements including AI-driven incident clustering, enhanced virtual agent analytics, voice AI agents for password resets and account unlocks, advanced knowledge article editing, and new dashboards for insights and conversational analytics. These updates enable ServiceNow customers to leverage AI for faster incident resolution, better knowledge management, and improved virtual agent effectiveness.
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Key Features
- Insights and Opportunities for Incident Dashboard (Australia Patch 3): Automatically clusters incidents into trend categories with AI-generated summaries, offering insights into SLA performance, sentiment, channel adoption, and geographic distribution directly within Service Operations Workspace.
- ITSM Virtual Agent Analytics (Australia Patch 2): Tracks which knowledge articles and catalog items successfully deflect virtual agent interactions from escalating to human agents, providing visibility into virtual agent usage and effectiveness.
- Password Reset and Account Unlock Voice AI Agents: Enables users to reset passwords or submit account unlock requests through voice AI agents, streamlining common support tasks.
- Incident Assist Agentic Workflow (Australia Patch 1): Offers context-aware AI agents to answer incident-related questions and provide detailed incident information, replacing the deprecated Incident Assist skill with enhanced capabilities.
- Knowledge Article Advanced Editor: Allows creation and editing of knowledge articles using open prompts, improving knowledge content management.
- ITSM Conversational Analytics Dashboard: Provides metrics on virtual agent adoption and usage trends to help monitor performance.
- Request Management AI Skills: Enables admins to configure AI-generated summaries and responses for requests, requested items, and catalog tasks to improve request handling efficiency.
- DEX Issue Diagnosis and Resolution Workflow: Integrates Zoom-specific diagnostics to identify and resolve Zoom call quality issues, supported by AI-driven root cause analysis and real-time guidance.
- Boot Time Performance Insights: Monitors device startup performance, with AI suggestions for root cause analysis and remediation.
- ServiceNow AI Licensing Tiers: Introduces Foundation, Advanced, and Prime tiers, each providing different levels of AI capabilities based on customer entitlements.
Important Upgrade and Activation Information
- The Knowledge Article Advanced Editor requires activation of the knowledge content recommendation skill via the Now Assist Admin console.
- The deprecated Incident Assist skill is replaced by the incident assist agentic workflow, which is active by default; customers are advised to deactivate the deprecated skill upon upgrade.
- Some skills are automatically enabled for new customers or unconfigured skills during upgrade, improving initial setup.
- Now Assist for ITSM is available through the ServiceNow Store and requires installation from there.
Deprecations and Changes
- The Incident Assist skill is deprecated starting Australia Patch 2 and moved to archive; it is no longer available for use.
- The Suggested Steps skill is being phased out starting Australia Patch 3, replaced by the Learning Enhanced Automation Platform (LEAP), for which customers must install the LEAP plugin.
- Voice AI demo agents have been renamed as primers, and Virtual Agent demo topics have been updated accordingly.
- Certain Now Assist skills such as resolution notes generation and knowledge generation are enabled by default for new users to enhance out-of-the-box experience.
Related Tools and Applications
- Now Assist Admin Console: Centralized interface to configure and monitor Now Assist features.
- Now Assist Panel: Conversational UI in Service Operations Workspace for summarizing chats, incidents, and resolution notes efficiently.
- Now Assist Skills: Generative AI capabilities supporting incident summarization, chat summarization, resolution notes, and other workflow enhancements.
These updates empower ServiceNow customers to improve ITSM efficiency, automate routine tasks, and gain actionable AI-driven insights for better incident and request management.
The ServiceNow® Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) application brings agentic AI to IT Service Management. Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.
Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) highlights for the Australia release
Australia Patch 2
- Track which knowledge articles and catalog items support successful virtual agent deflections instead of transferring to human agents using the ITSM Virtual Agent Analytics dashboard.
- Use the Password reset with voice AI agent to reset your password.
- Answer incident-related questions with context-aware agents using the incident assist agentic workflow.
- Submit a catalog item for an account unlock using the voice AI agent.
- Generate summaries and responses for Request Management records.
- Use the Knowledge Article Advanced Editor page to create and edit articles.
- Use the ITSM Conversational Analytics dashboard that provides usage adoption performance metrics in Now Assist in Virtual Agent.
See Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) for more information.
Important:
Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
Important information for upgrading Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) to Australia
To use the Knowledge Article Advanced Editor page in the generate a knowledge article skill, you must activate the knowledge content recommendation skill. Follow these steps to activate the skill.
- Go to .
- Select Now Assist Skills.
- Select Platform.
- Select Knowledge.
- Make sure the knowledge content recommendation skill is active.
The incident assist agentic workflow is active by default and includes all the capabilities of the [DEPRECATED] incident assist skill, with enhancements. When you upgrade to Australia Patch 1, if you have the [DEPRECATED] incident assist skill activated, consider deactivating it to avoid redundancy. For more information, see Incident assist skill.
Starting with the Australia Patch 2, the Incident assist skill has been deprecated, moved to the Archive section, and is no longer available for use.
New in the Australia release
- Australia Patch 2
- ITSM Virtual Agent resources analytics
- Identify which knowledge article or catalog item resources support successful deflections and which ones are unable in preventing the transfer to a live agent using the Resources tab in the ITSM Virtual Agent dashboard to gain visibility into the ITSM Virtual Agent usage and effectiveness.
- Password reset voice AI agent
- Use the Password reset with voice AI agent to reset your password by receiving instructions from a knowledge article via email, a reset link via SMS, or having the reset URL read out by voice.
- Australia Patch 1
- ServiceNow product tiers
- The ServiceNow AI Platform now brings you a new AI experience with three licensing tiers available:
- Foundation: AI basics to deliver insights
- Advanced: AI to boost productivity across relevant use cases
- Prime: Act autonomously with all AI assets and create your own
Depending on your entitlements, you will have access to certain application features, generative AI skills, agentic workflows, and AI agents.
- ITSM Virtual Agent resources analytics
- Identify which knowledge article or catalog item resources support successful deflections and which ones are unable in preventing the transfer to a live agent using the Resources tab in the ITSM Virtual Agent dashboard to gain visibility into the ITSM Virtual Agent usage and effectiveness.
- Incident assist agentic workflow
- Answer incident-related questions using context-aware agents. Handle queries about incident details and get information about related records.
- Enhancements to the Incident assist skill
- The features in the [DEPRECATED] incident assist skill are available in the incident assist agentic workflow. You may turn off this skill and use the agentic workflow that has enhanced capabilities.
- Creating a catalog item for unlocking accounts using the voice AI agent
- Use the Submit account unlock catalog with the voice AI agent, which is a primer, to create a catalog item to unlock the specified account when a user calls the help desk.
- Enhancements to Troubleshoot Outlook issue with voice AI agent
- Email relevant troubleshooting articles and instructions to users when you troubleshoot Outlook issues for them.
- Knowledge Article Advanced Editor page
- Use the new Knowledge Article Advanced Editor page to create or edit Knowledge articles using open prompts.
- ITSM Conversational analytics dashboard
- Get insights into virtual agent adoption, usage trends, and track metrics in Now Assist in Virtual Agent.
- Getting summary of an incident in the Details tab
- Resolve incidents faster by getting the incident summary in the Details tab of the incident.
- Configure summaries and responses for Request Management records
- As an admin, you can configure the following Request Management skills:
- Request summarization
- Requested item summarization
- Catalog task summarization
- Request activity response generation
- Requested item activity response generation
- Catalog task activity response generation
- Summarize Request Management records
- View an aggregate of all relevant updates and progress indicators in a single, dynamic summary.
- Generate a response to request activity
- Generate a response in record activity streams of requests, requested items, and catalog tasks.
- DEX issue diagnosis and resolution agentic workflow
- Service desk agents can diagnose and resolve Zoom call quality issues using the Digital End-User Experience (DEX) issue diagnosis and resolution agentic workflow, which integrates Zoom- specific diagnostics that correlate device, network, and application data.
- AI-powered root cause analysis for Zoom call quality issues
- Use Now Assist for Zoom call issues to identify the root cause of call quality degradation and review the supporting metric evidence for deeper insight. The analysis highlights the contributing device and network factors directly in the Zoom call quality view. Get the real-time guidance, including device ready remedial actions, contextual self-help instructions, and relevant Knowledge articles to help resolve the issue efficiently.
- Get AI driven insights for boot time performance
- Monitor device boot time to identify slow start-up issues and use Now Assist to investigate the root cause and get suggested resolutions, including remedial actions, self-help instructions, and Knowledge articles to resolve boot performance problems quickly.
Changed in this release
- Some Now Assist skills are turned on by default
- The new default behavior works as follows:
- New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills are turned on automatically.
- Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Australia Early Access): Any previously unconfigured skill is turned on automatically (the skill was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
- Renaming the Incident assist skill
- The incident assist skill has been renamed to [DEPRECATED] Incident assist.
- Renaming demo voice AI agents
- The voice AI demo agents have been renamed as primers.
- Skills activated by default in Now Assist for ITSM
- For new Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) users, the following skills are activated by default:
- Resolution notes generation
- Knowledge generation
- Chat reply recommendation
- Editing change request skills using Now Assist Skill Kit (NASK)
- Easily edit the change request risk explanation and change request summarization skill prompts and inputs directly in the Now Assist Skill Kit (NASK).
- Configuration item details for suggest configuration items for a change request workflow
- Provide details such as class, location, and environment to find configuration items (CIs) relevant to a change request while using the suggest configuration items for a change request agentic workflow from the Now Assist panel.
- Role masking for change risk explanation skill
- Enhance security for the change request risk explanation skill by enabling admins to limit roles that are inherited by the user.
- Virtual agent topics available as demo data
- The Virtual Agent topics listed in this table have been renamed and are now available as demo data.
Existing name Updated name Add Comment To incident (DEMO) Add Comment To incident-LLM Approve Sysapproval Approver (DEMO) Approve Sysapproval Approver-LLM Change Password (DEMO) Change Password (Template) - LLM Check IT Ticket Status (DEMO) Check IT Ticket Status (Template) Close incident (DEMO) Close incident-LLM Explain change risk (DEMO) Explain change risk Mark incident Unresolved (DEMO) Mark incident Unresolved-LLM Open IT Ticket (DEMO) Open IT Ticket (Template)-LLM Reject Sysapproval Approver (DEMO) Reject Sysapproval Approver-LLM Reset Password (DEMO) Reset Password (Template) - LLM Resolve incident (DEMO) Resolve incident-LLM Unlock Account (DEMO) Unlock Account (Template) - LLM View And Add Comments (DEMO) View And Add Comments-LLM
Deprecated features
- Starting with the Australia Patch 2 release, the Incident assist skill is deprecated, moved to the Archived folder and is no longer available for use.
Activation information
Install Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.