Standard chat

Now Assist in Virtual Agent standard chat is a conversational support experience within a static chat window.

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 with a bot.

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

Starting the conversation

The following figure shows an example of the beginning of a new conversation.

Figure 1. Now Assist greeting

Table 1. Now Assist greeting elements

Element	Description
1: Bot greeting	Note: The Answers generated by AI. Review for accuracy. message prior to the greeting can't be edited or turned off. After greeting the user, the bot provides an explanation of what the user can expect. Because the large language model (LLM) is still learning, the bot indicates that it may make mistakes, and that the user should check answers for accuracy.
2: User request	The user can enter any utterance.
3: Response indicator	While the LLM processes the utterance, an animated avatar appears alongside latency feedback messages in the chat window to let the user know that the bot is working.

Chatting with the 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, they are presented to users, and users can view inline citations and/or the Sources section at the bottom of the synthesized response. Users can view Knowledge Base articles, Virtual Agent topics, subflows or actions, external content, people citations, and complete catalog request items. 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. Users can follow up on a synthesized response and receive an answer that considers the previous context. For example, if you previously were chatting about the company's travel policy and then enter International, the system recognizes that you’re wanting additional information on the company's international travel policy.

Note:

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

Whenever a single Virtual Agent topic is found within a synthesized response, 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.

Responses generated in Now Assist in Virtual Agent can come from a combination of catalog items, Virtual Agent topics, subflows and actions, Knowledge Base articles, attachments, external content, and people sources. The following citations may appear inline and/or within the expandable Sources section depending on what search results are returned:

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

If you select an inline citation, a popover appears containing either additional information or an action to start a request.

Figure 2. An inline citation popover example linking to a source or action

Responses can also be generated based on content from the catalog item description and the Virtual Agent topic description. When this occurs, citations lead the user to one of the items in the Here's what you can do next section of the response.

Each Virtual Agent response includes a feedback icons panel. The user can indicate if the response was helpful by selecting the like thumbs up icon (). If the response wasn't helpful, the user can select the dislike thumbs down icon (). This feedback is used to train the LLM model and improve responses over time.

If your request is too ambiguous in a Virtual Agent chat, Virtual Agent asks a clarifying question and displays a citation with an action. Citations are presented starting from the second clarifying question. Select a citation to start the request. If there are no actions relative to the request, citations aren’t shown.

Note:

If you need something else, the View other options option appears and if selected, a list of standard search results in list formatting appears along with one fallback topic. If there are no standard search results, only the fallback topic appears.

If you need more help, Now Assist in Virtual Agent directs you to either a live agent, resets the conversation, or creates an incident. The option is determined by the admin in the Now Assist in Virtual Agent guided setup. For more information, see Configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

1. Live agent support routes the user to an available agent when configured.
2. Reset the conversation restarts the conversation to the beginning to ask another question.
3. Record producer directs the user to a catalog record producer to create an incident or case.

If an administrator didn’t configure any skills, no available skills are shown. However, the chat bar remains available for the user to enter an utterance. This triggers AI Search for a Knowledge Base article or catalog item.

Figure 3. Example of a chat with no skills activated

For information about configuring a Now Assist skill, see Activate a Now Assist skill.

Catalog citations

For conversational catalogs, the Start request option appears, and if selected, the catalog request flow launches within the Virtual Agent. For non-conversational catalogs, the Go to request option appears with an external link that if selected, either redirects you to a new browser or pop-up window to order the catalog item.

Figure 4. Example of a synthesized response with conversational and non-conversational catalog options

Figure 5. Example of a conversational catalog response flow

Figure 6. Example an LLM-generated message before auto-executing the first step in the action

When the catalog order is complete, Virtual Agent displays a card for the order.

Figure 7. Example of a summary confirmation for a completed catalog request

Topic, subflows, or actions citations

The [Asset's name] option appears, and if selected, the asset flow begins in Virtual Agent.

Q&A Knowledge Base citations

The answer is shown with the option to view your sources through the numbered inline citations icon (). 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.

External content connections citations

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 connection:

• Microsoft SharePoint
• Confluence
• Atlassian Jira Cloud
• Google Drive
• Microsoft Teams
• Predefined web sources
• ServiceNow® documentation
• Slack

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

Figure 8. Example of an inline citation with external content source popover

People citations

Information about people in your organization can be found if you have activated Knowledge Graph. Information about the person you're searching for appears in the synthesized response, along with an in-line numbered citation and people citation in the Sources section. 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 in the Sources section redirects you to the portal's user profile landing page.

Figure 9. Example of a synthesized response with people results

Selecting the person's inline numbered citation 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 10. Example of a 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.