Virtual Agent release notes

The ServiceNow® Virtual Agent application provides user assistance through a conversational interface to help users to quickly obtain information and to perform common work tasks. Virtual Agent was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.

Virtual Agent highlights for the Australia release

Australia Patch 4

• Prompts help users ask better questions and get more accurate answers. Admins can turn prompt library on or off and further configure the default recommended prompts for users.

See Virtual Agent for more information.

New in the Australia release

Australia Patch 4

Assign search sources to a chat assistant

Premium chat prefills messages with legacy messages that were previously configured in your standard or enhanced chat experiences.

By default, portals and mobile apps that have enhanced chat with a dynamic, movable, and resizable window use the assistant search profile for both portal/mobile search and the assistant search. Admins can now turn off this behavior and continue to use the portal/mobile search profile independently.

The Include AI Responses column shows whether the search source is included in the synthesized response. Within Assistant Designer, the setting is read-only. However, it can be modified in AI Search Admin console.

Display your assistant on a portal, channel, or mobile app

Mobile custom apps support configuration of enhanced chat and premium chat display options, with availability dependent on the widget's current configuration.

Manage an assistant chat experience

If you configured legacy messages and legacy fallbacks, your premium messages and premium fallbacks are prefilled with what you had in your legacy messages and legacy fallbacks. In this release, closing topics, closing messages, and survey topic are now prefilled.

Closing topic, closing message, and survey topic are available for standard, enhanced, and premium chat for Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

Edit a chat assistant

When editing an assistant with premium chat, create, edit, or delete prompts from the prompt library. Prompts help users ask better questions and get more accurate answers. Use the prompt library to manage prompts that users see in premium chat. Create your own prompts or use the default prompts.

Prompt library

Browse and select from promoted prompt templates or save your own custom prompts, eliminating the need to retype frequently-used prompts within your chats. Access your reusable templates instantly from the omnibar for faster, more consistent conversations.

Australia Patch 3

Assign search sources to a chat assistant

For premium chat, catalog items have improved fluidity; however, some of them are no longer conversational. They’ll open in a catalog form instead. This applies to Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants and Now Assist panel – Platform assistant.

Display your assistant on a portal, channel, or mobile app

• If your instance is eligible, you can opt into the premium chat experience. ServiceNow performs a set of readiness checks to see if your instance is eligible for premium chat. Premium chat is a contextual chat experience that appears throughout the platform, adapting its behavior and interface based on where users are and what they're doing.
• An alert is shown when the instance is eligible for premium chat or when there is a possible delay for premium chat to appear as an option on your instance.
• When editing the display experience of an existing portal or mobile widget, chat experience options depend on the existing configuration.
• For channels, select channels from the Add channels drop-down list that integrate with the assistant.
• For Microsoft Teams, edit the channel to toggle between standard and premium chat.

Display your assistant on Platform or ServiceNow Studio

An alert is shown when the instance is eligible for premium chat or when there is a possible delay for premium chat to appear as an option on your instance.

Brand and personalize an assistant

Customize an assistant’s tone, response length, and persona in the Personalization section when branding your assistant. By default, personalization is hidden.

To enable personalization, set the appropriate values in the sn_nowassist_va.assistant_personalization system property. For more information, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent system properties.

Enable additional chat features

For Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants, voice input is available for premium chat.

For Now Assist panel – Platform assistant, voice input is available for standard, enhanced, and premium chat.

Manage an assistant chat experience

For premium chat, you can select a topic for fallback options.

For premium messages, select the default greeting message, static greeting message, or select a custom topic. The static greeting message allows you to customize message.

For premium chat, your premium messages and premium fallbacks are pre-filled with your legacy messages and legacy fallbacks.

Edit a chat assistant

View All assets to see the assets that are assigned to an assistant.

There is no limit to the number of assets that can be promoted.

If an active asset is promoted, and later is set to inactive, the asset is not shown in the Discoverable, Visible, and Promoted lists.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent system properties

Use the sn_nowassist_va.assistant_personalization system property to show or hide chat personalization when branding an assistant. Personalization determines the tone of the assistant, response length, and persona.

Now Assist deployment configuration properties

Manage the behavior of suggestions that users see when typing in the input box.

Australia Patch 2

View assistants

If you have the com.snc.ex_ai_portal (Employee Slate) app installed, the default Employee Slate assistant is shown, and Employee Slate is mapped to it by default. The default Employee Slate assistant can be activated, deactivated, edited, and tested. It can’t be deleted.

Display your assistant on a portal, channel, or mobile app

The default Employee Slate assistant comes with premium chat. Premium chat is a contextual chat experience that appears throughout the platform, adapting its behavior and interface based on where users are and what they’re doing.

Brand and personalize an assistant

For the default Employee Slate assistant, configure premium chat branding. Select and configure the chat header, chat logo, and chat menu items such as a phone number, email, and link.

A Channels section is shown for Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants and the default Employee Slate assistant if a channel is configured in the display experience.

Manage an assistant chat experience

Depending on your configuration, different greeting, closing, and fallback options may appear. Legacy messages (chat messages) and legacy fallbacks (chat fallbacks) are shown when at least one display experience has standard chat or enhanced chat. Premium messages and premium fallbacks are shown when at least one display experience has premium chat.

Test a chat assistant

Test your chat assistant (standard, enhanced, or premium chat) to simulate an end-to-end conversation before moving your experience into a production environment.

Assistant Designer Asset library

Use the Test Assistant button to test your LLM assistant in Standard, Enhanced, and Premium Chat, after adding chat experiences in Assistant Designer's Assistants tab.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent on mobile

Use the modified version of Now Assist in Virtual Agent on your mobile device. This redesigned version adapts to smaller screens without losing functionality or clarity.

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.

Premium chat experience for Now Assist Panel - Platform (default) assistant

The Now Assist Panel - Platform (default) assistant now has the premium chat experience configured by default.

Activation information

Virtual Agent is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.