Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) release notes

Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) highlights for the Australia release

Australia Patch 4

Resolve issues directly within the Create incident form using in-form deflection in Now Assist for ITSM.
Generate answers and reasoning for change risk assessment questions by using Now Assist for ITSM. Review, adjust, or accept the suggested answers, or complete the assessment manually.
Analyze topic-specific performance and identify improvement areas using enhanced Topics analytics in the ITSM Virtual Agent dashboard.

Australia Patch 3

Automatically cluster incidents into trend categories and get AI-generated summaries of incident patterns using the Insights and Opportunities for Incident dashboard in Service Operations Workspace.

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.

Australia Patch 1

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 Admin > Now Assist admin.
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 4
In-form deflection: In-form deflection enables end users to find resolutions without creating an incident. When a user describes an issue in the Short description field, Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) searches the knowledge base and returns relevant solutions tailored to that specific user's context.
Generate change risk assessment answers: Generate answers and reasoning for each supported question in a change risk assessment, directly from a change request in Core UI or Service Operations Workspace (SOW). This Now Assist skill is turned on by default. When you select Generate Answers, Now Assist reviews the change request, related records, and knowledge articles, and then suggests an answer and a reasoning for each supported question. The Reasoning field explains why Now Assist selected each answer, so you can review and adjust the answers before you submit, or complete the assessment manually. The skill supports Likert-scale questions only. In SOW, this skill is available in version 9.2 or later.
ITSM Virtual Agent topics analytics: Analyze topic-specific performance and user interaction patterns using the enhanced Topics analytics in the ITSM Virtual Agent dashboard. View detailed per-topic drill-downs showing key performance indicators. Track topic trends and failure rates with sortable columns, and identify areas for improvement.

Australia Patch 3
Insights and Opportunities for Incident dashboard: Automatically cluster incidents into trend categories and get AI-generated summaries of incident patterns, along with insights into SLA performance, sentiment, channel adoption, and geographic distribution using the Insights and Opportunities for Incident dashboard in Service Operations Workspace.

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 license, 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

Australia Patch 4

Large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform®

The Now LLM Service is no longer the default model provider for new or inactive AI assets. A third-party LLM is now selected by default, while existing configurations using the Now LLM Service continue unchanged. The Now LLM Service is still available for manual selection.

Customize the change risk assessment answer generator skill

Control the data that the change risk assessment answer generator skill uses to suggest answers. Create, modify, or deactivate AI Risk Data Sources to change which related records and knowledge articles the skill receives. Six data sources are available out of the box, including related affected CIs, impacted services, impacted business applications, service offerings, active change tasks, and outages. To change which change request fields the skill reads, update the sn_itsm_gen_ai.com.snc.asmt_answer_generator.change_request_fields system property.

IT Service Management AI agent collection assess quality of a change request agentic workflow

Use the assess quality of a change request agentic workflow to rate a change request and get field improvement suggestions. The change quality assessor AI agent rates the request against an active change policy document, suggesting values only for fields the policy defines. If no policy applies, the agent rates the request against similar closed change requests.
The agent scores the short description, description, implementation plan, backout plan, test plan, risk and impact analysis, and justification. Results are recorded in the AI Change Quality Scores table.
Track change quality trends in Platform Analytics on the ai_change_quality_score table. A line chart shows the average score by month.
To change how the agent evaluates a field, or to assess a custom field, override the POLICY_EXTRACTION_KEYS entries in the ChangeQualityUtil script rather than the protected ChangeQualityUtilSNC script. This ensures your changes remain after you upgrade. Use the u_custom_field entry to assess a custom field, and use the overall_chg_policy entry to set policies for the whole change request.

Some generative AI skills are turned on by default

The new default behavior works as follows:

New customers: When you install an AI 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 3 release, the Suggested steps skill is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer installed on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base. This feature is being replaced with Learning Enhanced Automation Platform (LEAP). To transition to LEAP, you must install the LEAP (sn_itom_leap) plugin. For information on the Suggested steps skill, see Suggested steps generation in Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) and How to get started with LEAP.
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.