Enhanced chat

Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhanced chat is a conversational support experience within a dynamic window that also includes the ability to have multiple active conversations and superior search capabilities. Turning on enhanced chat's full-page experience further intertwines chat and search capabilities by redirecting you into a full-page chat after entering a query into a portal's search bar.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhances the user experience by combining AI Search with generative AI chat skills. These skills can speed up issue resolution and reduce deflection to a live agent.

Note:

For more information about selecting a chat experience in the admin guided setup, see Display your assistant on a portal or channel.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent provides your users with an interactive generative AI experience. A friendly, natural language conversation is easier to understand and helps users to be more comfortable with chatting to a bot.

The following sections highlight how a conversation powered by generative AI might look in Virtual Agent.

Note:

This content's primary focus is on enhanced chat's default chat window rather than on the optional full-page experience. The conversational fluidity and citation behavior between the enhanced chat and enhanced chat's full-page experience remains the same regardless of which chat experience you use. The conversations that you have either through the enhanced chat's window or full-page experience remain in synchronization, and the conversational history is retained in both mediums. For more information about the full-page experience, see that relevant section in Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

Starting the conversation

With enhanced chat, chat and search capabilities are intertwined. Suggested conversational prompts and searches may appear in a drop-down list on the portal's search bar. The Ask Now Assist section header may appear at the top of the portal search bar's drop-down list. When you select one of these Virtual Agent topics or conversational catalogs, you’re redirected into a conversation within the chat window or full-page experience. Selecting the conversational type-ahead prompt begins the conversational catalog request or Virtual Agent topic so no synthesized response appears within the conversation. If you select a suggested type-ahead search outside of the Ask Now Assist header, that search query begins in either the portal's search results page or within the full-page experience's Search tab.

Figure 1. Example of type-ahead portal search

Note:

For more information about how Now Assist in Virtual Agent and Now Assist in AI Search intertwine to include these suggestion type-ahead searches, see Auto-complete suggestion types included with Now Assist in AI Search.

When you're using enhanced chat and you enter a search query through your portal's search bar, you’re redirected to the portal's search results page. At the top of the search results page, you see Genius Results in a synthesized response generated by Now Assist. This synthesized response answer provides inline citations that appear at the end of each sentence. You can select citations and if applicable, such as for conversational catalog items, select whether to Request with form or Request in chat. Similar options also appear in the regular search results area, as indicated by the request in chat icon ( ) and request with form icon (). Depending on your selection, the catalog request flow launches within either the Virtual Agent chat or a form.

Figure 2. Example of enhanced chat synthesized response on the portal's search results page

You can start the chat experience either through the chat icon on the portal's search results page or through the portal's chat widget button.

Figure 3. Example of chat entry points on the portal's search results page

Figure 4. Example of a chat widget button

After selecting the chat widget button on the portal, the floating chat window opens and replaces the chat button. A greeting message appears, and a chat is created only after you have entered an initial utterance. If you have an active chat ongoing, the current active chat appears instead of a greeting message. You can select a predefined action or start a new conversation.

Figure 5. Example of the start of an enhanced chat conversation

If language detection is turned on and the initial utterance entered into the portal's search bar or chat differs from the user's profile language preference, the conversational language automatically switches to the detected language. For more information and examples of language detection in enhanced chat conversations, see Using language detection and dynamic machine translation in Virtual Agent enhanced chat conversations.

Navigating the chat window resizing options and controls toolbar

After selecting the chat widget button, the floating chat window opens and replaces the chat button. You can move the chat window by selecting the header and dragging the chat window to the desired location. You can resize the chat window by using the window's edges to resize to your desired size or use the toolbar icons. The following list details the chat window adjustment icons:

• : Selecting the expand icon expands the chat into a 90% screen-size window. The 90% screen-size window can’t be resized or moved. Selecting outside of the 90% screen-size chat window resizes the chat back into the floating window.
• : Selecting the pin icon pins the chat to the side of the browser but you can still resize this window to fill half the browser, if desired. When you duplicate a browser tab, open a new tab, or use the browser back button, the chat window state persists as long as you have not minimized the chat.
  Important:

  By default, pinning a chat window is enabled for Service Portal. For all other portals, an admin needs to create a system property to enable pinning a chat window. For more information, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent system properties.
• : Selecting the down arrow minimizes the chat and the chat widget button reappears.

Figure 6. Example of a 90% screen-size window

Figure 7. Example of a pinned chat

Depending on how you resize the chat window, the chat controls appear either at the top of the chat or at the side of the chat. The navigation area consists of four icons that represent the following tasks: New chat, Chats, Support, and Settings.

Figure 8. Example of chat controls

New chat ()

Select New chat () to open a new conversation. You may be prompted with a greeting message along with any promoted conversational assets such as topics, subflows, and/or actions. If you select a promoted asset, that asset's title appears as the chat name in the navigation area. If instead you enter an utterance into the Reply to Now Assist field, your utterance becomes the chat name in the Chats > Active section in the navigation area.

Chats ()

All chats are organized with the most recent conversations at the top. Selecting a chat opens the chat in the conversation area. If there are unread chats or notifications, a badge number appears on the Chats icon. Any unread chat or notification appears with a red dot next to it and the chat title appears in bold. Additionally, if you switch to a new chat while another active chat is ongoing, a pop-up message on the chats icon appears: Your previous chat was saved. You can revisit all of your past chats and continue ones that are still active. The following list includes the chat sections that you may see in the Chats navigation area.

• Active: Chats where you can continue the conversation. If applicable, active chats move to the Closed chats section after two hours of inactivity. This 2 hour time limit can be configured within the Messaging Channels {sys_cs_channel.list} table. To change the inactivity time limit, from the Messaging Channels {sys_cs_channel.list} table, select the NASS record and populate the Conversation Idle Timeout field with your preferred active chat time limit. If you have no active chats, No chatter at the moment is displayed. If more than 12 active chats are running, a Show more link appears to view more chats. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10 chats.
• Updates: Updates for important notifications and reminders can be configured to display. When sn_nowassist_va.nass_notification_enabled is set to true (the default), simple (nonactionable) Virtual Agent notifications appear on your portal home page. After selecting a notification, you’re redirected to this Updates section. If you have no updates, You're all caught up is displayed. If more than four updates are available, a Show more link appears to view more updates. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10 updates.
  Note:

  If sn_nowassist_va.nass_notification_enabled is set to false, the Updates section doesn't appear.
• Closed: Closed chats can be configured to display. You know that a message has closed when the designated time has passed (2 hours of inactivity) or you receive the following response in the chat: It looks like you're finished with this chat, so I'll go ahead and close it. Turn on closed chats by selecting the Show closed chats check box within Conversational Interfaces > Assistants > [Selected Assistant Name] > Chat experience > Closed chats. After being turned on, closed chats are displayed for as long as they’re available within the Conversations (sys_cs_conversation) table. Closed chats appear in a read-only mode and can’t become active again. If more than four closed chats are available, a Show more link appears to view more closed chats. Selecting Show more displays an additional 10 closed chats. After a conversation has closed, you can’t reopen it.

Support ()

Support contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses are listed. If live agents are available, an active Contact Live Agent button is displayed. Although multiple active conversations are possible, you can only have one live agent conversation at a time. Selecting Contact Live Agent begins a chat with a live agent. After a live agent enters the chat, the Contact Live Agent button becomes inactive. If live agents are unavailable, an inactive No live agents currently available button is displayed.

Settings ()

Toggles for Audio notifications and Notifications appear. By default, audio notifications are turned on and notifications are turned off. If admins have enabled notifications within the guided setup, users can turn on the notifications.

Chatting with Virtual Agent

After the user enters an utterance and a search result is found, a synthesized response may appear. A synthesized response includes a brief summary of the requested information and search results along with Genius Results. For more information on how these search results are found, see Now Assist Actions Genius Results and Now Assist Q&A Genius Results.

If multiple results are found, you can follow inline citations to either begin an action or learn more. The option to Show sources appears at the end of the synthesized response for internal and external Knowledge Base articles. Virtual Agent can only return available catalog items that match a user's request when the Now Assist Multi-Turn Catalog Ordering skill is enabled.

Note:

For full catalog functionality, enable the generative AI experience for catalog item request submissions. For more information, see Configure Now Assist in Conversational Catalog Request.

Whenever only a single search result for topics is found, the synthesized response and options are bypassed by default and users are brought directly into that action's flow. You may consider bypassing the synthesized response and options by automatically launching catalog items, too. For more information on automatically launching single search result actions, search for the sn_nowassist_va.synthesized_autostart_items system property in Available system properties.

You can create a new query from within a Now Assist conversation using mid-topic discovery. For more information, see Mid-topic switching during Now Assist in Virtual Agent conversations.

If your request is too ambiguous on the portal search, a synthesized response appears along with an Ask a follow up option. Selecting the Ask a follow up option redirects you to a Virtual Agent chat. If your request is too ambiguous in a Virtual Agent chat, Virtual Agent asks a clarifying question and displays the go to search results icon () in the feedback panel.

Each Virtual Agent response includes a feedback icons panel. The feedback icons panel appears on the latest Virtual Agent response and whenever you hover over any Virtual Agent response. You can indicate if the response was helpful by selecting the like thumbs up icon (). If the response wasn't helpful, select the dislike thumbs down icon (). Depending on the context of the response, an additional go to search results icon () may appear in the feedback icons panel. This icon appears alongside synthesized responses in Virtual Agent, clarifying questions in Virtual Agent, and regular search results or Virtual Agent fallback topics whenever a synthesized response is unavailable. Selecting the go to search results icon () redirects you to the search results page and begins a search query using the last five chat utterances you entered.

Figure 9. Example of feedback panel in enhanced chat

Responses generated in Now Assist in Virtual Agent can come from a combination of catalog items, Virtual Agent topics, subflows and actions, knowledge articles, attachments, external content sources, and people citations. Inline citations appear at the end of the relevant synthesized response sentence. Selecting an inline citation results in a popover containing either a link to an article or source, or a description and action to start the action. The following options may appear as synthesized response in-line citations depending on what search results are returned:

• Catalog
• Topic, subflows, or actions
• Q&A Knowledge Base articles
• External content connections
• People

Note:

Q&A Knowledge Base and external content connection citations also appear within the expandable Show sources option.

Catalog citation

If you're accessing the catalog citation through the synthesized response popover, the popover options vary depending on where you’re located. The only popover option when in chat is the Start request option which begins the catalog action within the chat. There are two popover options when you select the synthesized response through the portal's search bar: Request with form and Request in chat. Similar options also appear in the regular search results area, as indicated by the request in chat icon ( ) and request with form icon (). Depending on your selection, the catalog request flow launches within either the Virtual Agent chat or a form.

Figure 10. Example of synthesized response popover on the portal's search results page

Figure 11. Example of a synthesized response with catalog and knowledge base citations

If you chose to complete the catalog request through chat, after the catalog order is complete, Virtual Agent displays a summary card for the order.

Figure 12. Example of summary card for catalog order in chat

Topic, subflows, or actions citations

These assets are associated with the chat icon () and if selected, that flow begins within Virtual Agent. The popover is not applicable to these types of assets.

Q&A Knowledge Base citations

The answer is shown with the option to view your sources through the numbered inline citations icon () and in the Show sources section. These Knowledge Base inline citations show which ServiceNow knowledge articles were used to generate the response.

Note:

If you have activated Knowledge Graph, you may get more personalized Q&A Knowledge Base responses depending on whether the user schema attributes were triggered. For more information about receiving these personalized responses, see Access Knowledge Graph Schemas.

Figure 13. Example of Knowledge Base inline citation, popover, and Show sources expanded

External content connections citations

The answer is shown with the option to view your sources through the numbered inline citations icon () and in the Show sources section. If external search sources are added to your information sources when Configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent, you can search through external content connections. This can include information from attachments and knowledge blocks, or from the following list of content connections:

• Atlassian Confluence Cloud external content connector
• Atlassian Jira Cloud external content connector
• Google Drive external content connector
• Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector
• Microsoft Teams external content connector
• Predefined web sources external content connector
  Note:

  For the list of predefined web sources you can crawl using this external connector, see Available sources for the predefined web sources external content connector.
• Slack external content connector
• ServiceNow documentation external content connector

For more information about external content connections, see External Content Connectors.

People citations

Information about people in your organization can be found if you have activated Knowledge Graph.

Note:

To enable Knowledge Graph for Now Assist in Virtual Agent, set the sn_vad_genai.knowledge_graph.enabled and sn_ais_assist.enable_knowledge_graph_nlq system properties to true. For more information about this system property, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent system properties.

Information about the person you're searching for appears in the synthesized response, along with an inline people citation. If a direct match doesn't occur and multiple people are found, try providing more information to narrow down the people search results. Up to three people can appear in a synthesized response. You may be asked a clarifying question, such as Are you asking about [user_1], the programmer, or [user_2], the faculty member? to yield better results. Selecting the person's name redirects you to the portal's user profile landing page.

Figure 14. Example of synthesized response for people on the portal's search results page

Figure 15. Example of synthesized response with people inline citations in chat

Selecting the person's name presents a popover. The information in the popover can include the following information:

Note:

The following popover details can be customized through EVAM. For more information about customizing the data details, see Define an EVAM view template.

• Manager
• Location
• Email
• Teams
• Phone
• Shared files
  Important:

  Shared Microsoft SharePoint files only appear if a Knowledge Graph admin has activated the sn_kg_conn_user_shared_files record in the Knowledge Graph Related Data Map [sn_kg_related_data_map_list] table. Shared Microsoft SharePoint files between you and the person found appear only on the people popover. These shared files only appear after you have completed the prompt to Log in, signed in successfully, and have entered a new search query for that person. A new search query is necessary after you have signed in so that up to three shared Microsoft SharePoint files can appear. You’re automatically logged out of your Microsoft account every three months and must repeat the Log in prompt again to see shared files.

  If you do not have a valid token, you are prompted to sign in and are redirected to the Microsoft login page. If you have not configured the Microsoft OneDrive application, see Configure Microsoft OneDrive application for Knowledge Graph.

Figure 16. Example of people citation's popover

Although rare, when you receive a synthesized response that includes a person, you may also receive other citations associated with that person. For example, a Knowledge Base article that was authored by the person you searched for may also appear.

Note:

If you have activated Knowledge Graph, you may get more personalized Q&A Knowledge Base responses depending on whether the user schema attributes were triggered. For more information about receiving these personalized responses, see Leverage Knowledge Graph prebuilt integration with Virtual Agent.

Chatting with a live agent in Virtual Agent

You can chat with a live agent if you need more support. Select the Contact Live Agent button found on the Support () screen, or enter a request such as Chat with live agent into the chat. After an agent has accepted your chat, the agent's name and avatar appears at the top of the chat in a banner. Only one live agent chat at a time is permitted. To exit the live chat, select End live chat. The chat history then moves to the Closed chat section.

Figure 17. Example of the live chat banner