Now Assist for Operational Sustainability Management Management release notes
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Summary of Now Assist for Operational Sustainability Management Management release notes
The Now Assist for Operational Sustainability Management application leverages generative AI to streamline and enhance sustainability efforts, particularly focusing on carbon accounting and ESG metric data collection. The Zurich release introduces enhancements that automate and simplify key sustainability workflows, enabling teams to improve accuracy, efficiency, and compliance.
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Key Features
- Agentic AI for Carbon Accounting (Zurich Patch 4): Introduces an AI-driven copilot workflow that assists sustainability teams by selecting appropriate metric definitions and emission factors, generating calculated metrics, and supporting user review and adjustments before finalizing carbon calculations.
- AI-Powered Document Intelligence for Utility Invoices (Zurich Patch 1): Automates extraction of ESG metric data such as electricity, gas, and water usage from utility bills. This reduces manual entry, minimizes errors, ensures data integration with ESG workflows, and supports enterprise-scale operations with audit capabilities for compliance.
- Default Activation of Skills and Workflows (Zurich Patch 4): Certain Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows are now enabled by default for appropriate user roles (e.g., ITIL roles), facilitating immediate access without manual activation. Existing customers upgrading to Zurich Patch 4 will see unconfigured skills activated automatically, while previously turned-off skills remain inactive.
- Updated Usage Measurement (Zurich Patch 5): Now Assist usage tracking changes from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model with reset at contract anniversary, providing clearer and more predictable usage metrics.
- Role and Security Configuration: Agentic workflows and AI agents require specific role assignments and data access settings for execution, ensuring secure and controlled use. Customers must configure required roles to enable these AI features properly.
Activation and Related Applications
Now Assist for Operational Sustainability is available through the ServiceNow Store and requires installation via a request. Customers can view cumulative release notes and version history on the store website.
Related ServiceNow tools complement this application:
- Now Assist: Enhances productivity and self-service with generative AI skills across workflows such as incident and case summarization.
- Now Assist Admin Console: Facilitates setup, configuration, and monitoring of Now Assist applications.
- AI Agent Studio: Allows creation and management of AI agents and agentic workflows for automating business processes.
- Now Assist Panel: Provides a conversational AI interface within ServiceNow Software Asset Workspace for user assistance.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Accelerate and automate sustainability reporting and carbon accounting with AI-enhanced workflows.
- Reduce manual data entry errors and improve data accuracy via AI document intelligence for utility invoices.
- Gain immediate access to AI capabilities through default activation of skills tailored to user roles.
- Maintain security and compliance by properly configuring roles required for AI agent and workflow execution.
- Benefit from transparent and predictable usage tracking aligned with contract terms.
The ServiceNow® Now Assist for Operational Sustainability Management application brings generative AI to Operational Sustainability Management. Now Assist for Operational Sustainability was enhanced and updated in the Zurich release.
Now Assist for Operational Sustainability highlights for the Zurich release
Zurich Patch 5
- Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement.
- Some Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows are turned on by default
- The skills are automatically available to appropriate role users for the application, such as ITIL roles on incident forms or change forms. This change simply activates the skill and does not touch the roles that may be
needed to use the skill. The new default behavior works as follows:
- New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills and agentic workflows are turned on automatically.
- Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Zurich Patch 4): Any previously unconfigured skill, agent, or agentic workflow is turned on automatically (the AI asset was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills and agentic workflows that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
Accelerate carbon reporting with AI-powered calculations, validation, and insights for Scope 3 emissions.
Zurich Patch 1Automate metric data collection from utility invoices by extracting key information using the AI-driven document intelligence for utility invoices.
See Now Assist for Operational Sustainability Management for more information.
Important:
Now Assist for Operational Sustainability is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
New in the Zurich release
- Zurich Patch 4
- Use agentic AI in Now Assist for Operational Sustainability
- The carbon calculations agentic workflow acts as a copilot for sustainability teams, streamlining carbon accounting workflows. It intelligently selects metric definitions and emission factors from the library, generates calculated metric definitions, and enables user review and adjustments before final use.
- Zurich Patch 1
- Extract data from utility invoices
- Now Assist for Operational Sustainability with document intelligence for utility bills, designed to streamline your ESG metric data collection and reporting. Here are the key highlights:
- Extract ESG metric data with Gen AI-Powered Document Intelligence from utility bills, like electricity, gas, and water, with accuracy and efficiency.
- Automate data collection by eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors.
- Integrate extracted data with ESG metric workflows for a seamless experience.
- Scale your operations with an enterprise-scale solution that handles large volumes of data.
- Confirm compliance and transparency with built-in audit features that support reporting requirements.
Changed in this release
- Zurich Patch 5
- Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
- Starting with Zurich Patch 5, Now Assist usage measurement is transitioning from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model, with usage resetting at the contract anniversary date. For more information, refer to KB KB2704710: Now Assist Usage - Overview & New Measurement Logic.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Some Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows are turned on by default
- The skills are automatically available to appropriate role users for the application, such as ITIL roles on incident forms or change forms. This change simply activates the skill and does not touch the roles that may be
needed to use the skill. The new default behavior works as follows:
- New customers: When you install a Now Assist product, designated skills and agentic workflows are turned on automatically.
- Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Zurich Patch 4): Any previously unconfigured skill, agent, or agentic workflow is turned on automatically (the AI asset was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills and agentic workflows that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
- Role configuration required for agentic workflows and AI agents
- Agentic workflows and AI agents included with Now Assist applications require additional security configuration. If you select Users with selected roles for your user access security controls for an agentic workflow or AI agent, you must add the installed roles, or they won't execute. Data access settings must also include these roles. See the documentation for the agentic workflow or AI agent for the specific roles you must add. After the roles are configured, users must have the specified role to invoke the agentic workflow or AI agent.
Activation information
Install Now Assist for Operational Sustainability by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website 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.