Now Assist in Virtual Agent release notes
The ServiceNow® Now Assist in Virtual Agent application uses generative AI skills in your conversational experiences. Now Assist in Virtual Agent uses large language models (LLMs) to create a natural-language conversational experience that can improve the success of your self-service workflows. Now Assist in Virtual Agent was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.
Now Assist in Virtual Agent highlights for the Yokohama release
Yokohama Patch 11
- Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement.
- Some Now Assist skills, agents, and agentic workflows are on by default.
- Create and manage LLM-based chat and voice assistants within Assistant Designer, a centralized assistant administrator experience.
- View a people citation's org chart in the interactive view. The interactive view opens to the right of the chat conversation area.
- Notice several UI improvements to enhanced chat and enhanced chat's full-page experience, including an updated input bar, gradient borders, copy message icon for received messages, and more.
- Enable voice input to allow users to use a microphone to type the input. Voice input is only available for Now Assist panel Platform assistant.
Yokohama Patch 6
- Use Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude on AWS as AI model providers for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
- Use agentic conversations and view agentic conversational processing flow steps.
- View extended entities and records in standard and enhanced chat conversations if they’re associated with the Knowledge Graph natural language query (NLQ) schema.
- View suggested search queries previously performed in the portal's search bar within enhanced chat conversations.
- Work with the simplified subheader of enhanced chat.
- Delete closed enhanced chat conversations.
- Expand the fallback options.
- Enter into web search mode manually via the input bar.
Yokohama Patch 3
- Use enhanced chat to provide users with a conversational experience within a resizable and movable chat window that includes the ability to have multiple active conversations. Enhanced chat enables users to choose their way of engaging with Now Assist on their ServiceNow portals from a variety of entry points. Enhanced chat includes synthesized responses after entering a search query into a portal's search bar. If Now Assist in AI Search is turned on, enhanced chat also offers an optional full-page experience where your users can enter into a full-page chat experience after entering a search query into a portal's search bar. Enhanced chat also offers an updated, modern look and feel along with chat controls to resize and move the chat window.
- View an expanded list of inline citations for both standard and enhanced chat. New inline citations for external content and people searches are available.
- View and work with suggested actions after completing an action in Now Assist in Virtual Agent.
- Stream responses for Now Assist LLM - enhanced chat conversations.
- Upload or drag documents and images into a standard or enhanced chat.
- Automatically switch to the user's detected language in enhanced chat conversations when language detection is turned on.
- Use the Web Search custom skill to search for an answer on the internet.
Yokohama Patch 1
- Stream responses for Now Assist LLM chat conversations.
See for more information.
New in the Yokohama release
- Yokohama Patch 11
- Create and manage LLM-based chat and voice assistants within Assistant Designer, a centralized assistant administrator experience. Assistant Designer is comprised of three main areas: Assistants, Asset library, and Analytics.
- Copy received messages
- Use the copy message icon in the feedback panel to copy received Virtual Agent responses.
- New system properties
-
- Set the com.glide.cs.nass.synthesized_response.disabled_popover.hide to true to hide the popover for disabled catalog items for Now Assist in Virtual Agent and Now Assist panel's enhanced chat.
- Set the sn_ais_assist.enable_pi_in_nba property to true to allow conversational history-based suggested actions and fill multiple suggested action slot options.
- View the sn_nowassist_va.enable_nass_show_all_options property to decide whether to allow the View all options link in an enhanced chat conversation's greeting topic.
- The com.glide.interactive_view.enabled property opens an interactive side panel view next to the chat window. The default value is true to activate AI Engagement Experience on your instance.
- View org chart in the interactive view
- Select View org chart from the people citation's popover in Now Assist panel's enhanced chat or Now Assist in Virtual Agent enhanced chat/enhanced chat's full-page experience. The person's organizational chart appears to the right of the chat conversation in an area known as the interactive view. You can switch between multiple organizational charts via a drop-down in the interactive view if you open multiple people citations' org charts in the same conversation.
- Yokohama Patch 8
- Select continue or move to next task button
- The Continue to next task button appears in the new Ready to move on to your next task card whenever multiple questions are found in a single standard chat user's message. The Move on to the next task citation appears at the end of an enhanced chat's synthesized response whenever multiple questions or requests are found along with an action in the user's single message. Whenever either Continue to next task (standard chat) or Move on to the next task (enhanced chat) is selected, the second question or request is reviewed and a synthesized response is sent back regarding the user's second question or request.
- Multiple questions in a single user message are answered consecutively
- Virtual Agent can answer multiple questions that were submitted in a single message query. Now Assist panel or Now Assist in Virtual Agent answers the multiple questions consecutively in a response.
- Use sn_aia.use_agents_in_planner to configure AI agent discovery behavior. The default value is true, preferring AI agents over assets including catalogs, topics, Q&A knowledge base articles, workflows, and sub-workflows. When set to false, there’s no preference for AI agents. AI agents and assets are treated the same.
- Yokohama Patch 6
- Configure additional user interface and experience options for enhanced chat
- Customize and configure the Search Toggle Button Label for enhanced chat's full-page experience. Additionally, you can configure the Enable Unread Conversation Count Display and Left Panel Header Label for enhanced chat and enhanced chat's full-page experience.
- New third-party AI model provider options available for all Now Assist applications
- Google Gemini and AWS Claude are available for Now Assist skills and AI agents in addition to Now LLM Service and Azure OpenAI.
- View agentic conversations processing steps
- View agentic conversational processing steps and stop the flow, if needed.
- View extended entities and records
- View extended entities and records in standard and enhanced chat conversations that come from the additional custom tables associated with the Knowledge Graph natural language query (NLQ) schema such as:
- Assets
- Incidents
- Recently viewed knowledge base articles
- Requests
- Tasks
- View suggested queries in the portal’s search bar and chat window
- View the most frequently asked queries in the portal’s search bar and enhanced chat’s Virtual Agent. Any search query entered into the portal’s search bar or Virtual Agent is incorporated into the greeting topic for future conversations as a suggested query. Suggested queries are only included in the Virtual Agent greeting topic whenever no promoted assets are designated.
- Work with suggested queries
- Two system properties were added to enable the suggested queries feature: sn_nowassist_va.enable_suggested_queries and sn_nowassist_va.max_suggested_queries.
- Configure AI search answers OneExtend capability for web search
- Configure the AI Search answers capability via sys_one_extend_capability.list to establish the web search AI provider and work with API keys, if needed.
- Expanding AI provider support for web search
- OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google Gemini support web search.
- Configuring assistants overview
- Enhancements to Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants and Now Assist panel Platform and Developer assistants. Options vary for Now Assist panel assistants.
- Now Assist panel
- Use the enhanced Now Assist panel for a more intuitive and personalized experience. The updated Now Assist panel is re-sizable and can be moved anywhere on the ServiceNow AI platform.
- Yokohama Patch 4
- Enable pinning a chat window on a portal by using the sn_nowassist_va.enhanced_chat_pin_enabled.<portal-url> system property.
- Yokohama Patch 3
- Use enhanced chat
- Enhanced chat is a conversational support experience within a resizable and moveable window that also includes the ability to have multiple active conversations and superior search capabilities. Using enhanced chat's full-page experience further intertwines chat and search capabilities by redirecting users into a full-page chat after entering a query into a portal's search bar.
- View inline citations
- View the expanded list of inline citations for standard and enhanced chat:
- Catalog
- Topic, subflows, or actions
- Q&A Knowledge Base articles
- External content connectionsNote:External content connections now include the following connection types:
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Confluence
- Atlassian Jira Cloud
- Google Drive
- Microsoft Teams
- Predefined web sources
- ServiceNow® documentation
- Slack
- PeopleNote:If Knowledge Graph is turned on, you can view information about a person. The people information in the Virtual Agent response typically includes their title, department, location, and email address. The people popover shows additional information.
- Use suggested actions
- View suggested actions that were related to your prior conversation and that you consider doing next. After completing a conversational catalog request, conversational subflow, or Virtual Agent topic, two suggested actions appear after a Here's what you can do next header.
- Stream enhanced chat responses
- Stream LLM response messages as they’re generated instead of the response text appearing all at once to end users. Responses stream in either one letter or one word at a time.
- Use language detection to automatically switch the conversational language for enhanced chat conversations
- Automatically switch the conversational language to the user's detected language during LLM enhanced chat conversations when language detection is turned on. This automatic switch can occur when a user enters an utterance at the start of a new conversation or within the portal home page’s search field.
- Recognize the Boolean user input control during dynamic translation
- Recognize the Boolean user input control in chat conversations during dynamic translation.
- Adjust Shorten responses toggle to impact Show more option in chat
- For bot text responses, adjust the Shorten responses toggle in Virtual Agent Designer to turn off the Show more option on the user side. When Shorten responses is turned off, the Show more option does not appear in the chat to the user and the full answer is displayed rather than a truncated response.
- Configuring assistants overview
- In addition to configuring Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistants, admins can configure the default Now Assist panel assistants. Options may vary for Now Assist panel assistants.
- Upload or drag and drop files to Now Assist in Virtual Agent (standard chat or enhanced chat). The assistant analyzes and understands the content of the files, and a user can ask questions about the content of the files or get a summary.
- Enable suggested actions in Now Assist in Virtual Agent so that users are offered options for what they can do after completing a prior action. Suggested actions is applicable to standard and enhanced chat, mobile, and Microsoft Teams.
- Web Search custom skill
- Use the Web Search custom skill to query the internet for information using a third-party AI. The skill triggers when the LLM and AI Search cannot provide an answer. Both values are shown in the System Properties [sys_properties] table item sn_nowassist_va.websearch_fallback_enabled. Set a chosen definition (such as Perplexity) to true in the AI Search answers OneExtend capability along with its matching API in the Credentials list. You can set one definition and credential to true at any one time.
- Yokohama Patch 1
- Stream chat responses
- Stream LLM response messages as they’re generated instead of the response text appearing all at once to end users. Responses stream in either one letter or one word at a time.
- Benefit from Knowledge Graph integration
- Receive fewer Virtual Agent slot-fill questions during conversations whenever Knowledge Graph is activated.
- Receive personalized synthesized response answers with Knowledge Graph integration
- Discover more personalized conversational catalog, topic, subflows, or action responses and receive more personalized answers for Q&A Knowledge Base synthesized responses. Personalized responses may appear depending on whether the questions or requests sent to Virtual Agent trigger the Knowledge Graph user profile schema. These personalized responses are slot-filled based on the following table and column attributes:
- sys_user table's columns:
- Name
- First name
- Last name
- Username
- Employee number
- Business phone
- Mobile phone
- Title
- Preferred language
- Time format
- Date format
- Time zone
- Zip code
- City
- State
- cmn_location table's columns:
- City
- State
- Country
- cmn_department table's column:
- Name
- Headcount
- core_company table's column:
- Name
- manager table's columns:
- Name
- First name
- Last name
- Username
- Employee number
- Business phone
- Mobile phone
- Title
- Preferred language
- Time format
- Date format
- Time zone
- Zip code
- City
- State
- reportees table's columns:
- Name
- First name
- Last name
- Username
- Employee number
- Business phone
- Mobile phone
- Title
- Preferred language
- Time format
- Date format
- Time zone
- Zip code
- City
- State
- assets table's columns:
- Display name
- Purchase date
- Retired date
- sys_user table's columns:
- Configuring assistants overview'
-
Now Assist skills:
- An alert appears, at the assistant level, if a global level skill is turned off.
- By default, all global level skills are turned on in the Now Assist Admin console, except for subflows and actions.
- Custom skill is a new skill that has been added to the list of Now Assist skills.
- Search through external content connections such as Microsoft SharePoint or Confluence if external search sources are added to information sources when Configuring assistants overview.
UI changes
- Yokohama Patch 11
- UI Virtual Agent Designer updates
-
- Use a new option in the Actions on row icon to remove an LLM assistant from a given asset.
- View a tooltip if you try to promote more than six topics for a given LLM assistant.
- View a list of available asset types and their descriptions when you select Create asset in the Asset library tab.
- UI chat assistant updates
-
- Configuring a chat or voice assistant is done in tab. contains a Manage assistants button that directs you to Assistant Designer.
- Chat and voice assistants are shown in both card and map views.
- Pages within the chat assistant setup have been removed, added, or moved to a different spot within the create or edit flow.
- The Overview page has been replaced by the Basic details page.
- Assign Now Assist skills page has been removed. Admins no longer need to turn on/off Now Assist skill types at the assistant level in Now Assist Admin console and no longer need to assign Now Assist skill types at the assistant level.
- When adding search sources, an External Content Connectors link directs you to create or configure external sources. (This replaces the External Content Connectors card.) The following sections have been removed from the search sources page: Now Assist topics, Custom skills, AI agents, and Conversational subflows and actions. They are now within the Assets page.
- Knowledge Graph was moved from the Information sources page to its own page.
- Assets such as topics, subflows and actions, custom skills, and AI agents are added on the Assets page. In the display experience for Now Assist panel assistants, a ServiceNow platforms header is shown.
- Minor enhancements to the standard chat preview pane when branding an assistant.
- Promoted assets tab within the Chat experience page has been moved to the while in edit mode.
- Web search mode, response streaming, document uploads, and closed chats have been moved to its own Chat features page.
- Testing a chat assistant is no longer part of the Review page. Access it from the tab, or on each page while in edit mode.
- Editing a chat assistant is done from the tab.
- UI enhanced chat updates
-
- Dynamic processing messages for agentic conversations are now consolidated under one View AI Steps header rather than under several View AI Steps headers.
- The View all options link shows below the suggested or promoted topics cards on the greeting topic in Now Assist in Virtual Agent and Now Assist panel's enhanced chat. At least one suggested or promoted asset has to be enabled for this link to show.
- The auto-complete suggestion type in the Ask Now Assist header appears at the top of the portal search bar's drop-down list. The results in the Ask Now Assist header can now show more targeted search results from AI Search rather than the GlideRecord. The entered search term can appear highlighted in bold after you have configured AI Search as the source for Ask Now Assist suggestions. For more information about this configuration, see Configure AI Search as the source for Ask Now Assist suggestions.
- The static and dynamic choice nodes now appear differently in standard and enhanced chat depending on the number of choices for single-select options. For example:
- 2-5 choices appear as pills
- 6 or more choices appear as a choice list with a scroll bar
- The input bar for enhanced chat has moved all icons below any inputted text. Uploaded documents appear above any inputted text.
- The float, pinned, and 90% screen views of enhanced chat now have a gradient border around them.
- The enhanced chat full-page experience was updated so that the Now Assist and Search button tabs that were originally center-aligned buttons are now left-aligned tabs that no longer look like buttons.
- Yokohama Patch 8
- Agentic conversation processing messages for Now Assist panel and Now Assist in Virtual Agent
- Before receiving a response, you receive acknowledgment messages from the Virtual Agent and on-screen processing messages to let you know where the agent is at in the agentic processing flow. The on-screen processing messages appear in present tense until the processing flow is complete. After the processing flow is complete, then the on-screen messages change to past tense and a View AI Steps section header appears above the processed messages. You can expand the collapsed View AI Steps section header to view the processed messages.
- Yokohama Patch 6
- UI chat updates
-
- The enhanced chat navigation area was updated. The New Chat, Chats, Support, and Settings icons were reworked into a simplified subheader. Additionally, each chat title now appears in the simplified subheader.
- The enhanced chat's subheader reflects conversational modes in a banner whenever you enter into a specific mode, such as web search, live agent, or document upload.
- In the enhanced chat's section, hover over a chat to view the delete option and complete the delete confirmation prompts.
- Minor animations occur in the following five enhanced chat transitions:
- Hovering over the chat icon.
- Minimizing and opening the chat icon.
- Transitioning from a floating chat window to a pinned chat window and vice versa.
- Transitioning from a floating chat window to a 90% modal and vice versa.
- Transitioning from a pinned chat window to a 90% modal and vice versa.
Note:Transition animation doesn’t apply to custom icons.
- UI admin guided setup updates
-
- Manage search profile button replaces the search profile text link.
- Add external search sources drop-down list has been replaced with Add search sources drop-down list to include internal and external search sources.
- The simple and advanced views within the Chat experience page are consolidated into a single view.
- Copy existing configuration button is featured more prominently, and it's shown with information about its use.
- Yokohama Patch 3
- UI chat updates
-
- The summary card in a Now Assist in Virtual Agent conversation was updated to a more modern look and feel.
- The default chat widget button for enhanced chat and standard chat now differs on the portal.
- An Ask Now Assist header now appears with suggested searches in a drop-down on the portal's search bar.
- The Boolean choice, static choice, and dynamic choice controls were updated to a more modern look and feel for requesters.
- Yokohama Patch 1
- UI chat updates
-
- The New messages below button in Virtual Agent was replaced with a simplified down-arrow indicator.
- The New messages above button was deprecated because Virtual Agent now auto-scrolls to the top of the oldest new message.
- The Input text bar was updated to a more modern look and feel.
- The start a new conversation icon was updated.
Changed in this release
- Yokohama Patch 11
- Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
- Starting with Yokohama 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.
- Conversational Platform Now Assist skills are active by default
- The following Platform Now Assist skills are active by default and no longer visible in Now Assist Admin console:
- Now Assist Multi-Turn Catalog Ordering
- Now Assist Q&A Genius Results
- Now Assist Topics
- Subflows and actions
- Custom skills
- AI agents
- Yokohama Patch 6
- Additional fallback options
- There are up to five fallback options that can be presented to end users:
- Search the web: Triggers web search mode and uses the internet to search for the results.Note:Only the last query entered into the conversation is considered when entering web search mode via the fallback option.
- Request a live chat: Triggers live agent mode and routes you to a human support representative.
- Create a generic ticket: Creates a record.
- End this chat: Ends the chat.Note:This option is only available to standard chat conversations.
- Custom fallback option: Presents a fallback Virtual Agent topic.
- Search the web: Triggers web search mode and uses the internet to search for the results.
- Web search mode enhancements
- Manually enter into web search mode via the input bar for standard and enhanced chat conversations. Web search mode includes in-line citations and the associated sources. A web search mode banner appears in enhanced chat conversations that end users can use to end the mode.
- Profanity recognition response
- If Now Assist Guardian is enabled and the end user's request contains profane content, the Virtual Agent responds with a message prompt to re-enter an appropriate request without profanity or offensive content.
- Yokohama Patch 3
- The existing Now Assist in Virtual Agent LLM conversational behavior received a terminology update and is now referred to as standard chat.
- Yokohama Early Availability
- Dynamic Translation calls
- If native translation is enabled, a Dynamic Translation call is only made if an unsupported language for native translation is used.
Deprecations
- In Patch 11, sn_aia.use_agents_in_planner system property has been removed. The system property was used for configuring AI agent discovery behavior.
- In Patch 11, Now Assist skills page in the assistant admin guided setup has been removed due to the skills being turned on by default.
- In Patch 6, Bing support for the searching and scraping search result type is no longer supported when adding a web search tool in Now Assist Skill Kit.
- In Patch 4, support for Now Assist in Conversational IVR was removed.
Activation information
Note:
Now Assist features are available with activation of any Now Assist plugin from the ServiceNow Store. The following products are available:When you upgrade to Yokohama Patch 8 or later, agentic AI is the primary orchestration in Virtual Agent. For more information about agentic AI, see .
- Now Assist for Accounts Payable Operations (APO)
- Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
- Now Assist for Employee Experience
- Now Assist for Operational Sustainability (formerly ESG)
- Now Assist for Field Service Management (FSM)
- Now Assist for Financial Services Operations (FSO)
- Now Assist for Hardware Asset Management (HAM)
- Now Assist for Health and Safety
- Now Assist for HR Service Delivery (HRSD)
- Now Assist for Legal Service Delivery (LSD)
- Now Assist for Operational Technology Manager (OTM)
- Now Assist for Order Management
- Now Assist for PSDS
- Now Assist for Security Incident Response
- Now Assist for Software Asset Management (SAM)
- Now Assist for Supplier Lifecycle Operations (SLO)
- Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)
- Now Assist for Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT)
- Now Assist for Workplace Service Delivery (WSD)
- Now Assist for Vulnerability Response
For more information, see Configuring assistants overview.
Additional requirements
requires a license for Virtual Agent and at least one Now Assist product.
Browser requirements
Now Assist in Virtual Agent supports various browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. For more information, see Browser support.
Localization information
Dynamic Translation is supported for non-streaming Now Assist Virtual Agent conversations. For details, see Configure multilingual service for Now Assist applications and .