Quick start for Topic Recommendations

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Quick start for Topic Recommendations

    The Topic Recommendations feature in ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent helps you identify and add relevant topics based on your existing ServiceNow data. By configuring and running analysis reports on your data sources, you can obtain topic suggestions that improve your Virtual Agent’s conversational capabilities. This process enables you to either create new topics or link recommendations to existing ones, enhancing user interactions efficiently.

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    Key Features

    • Configurable Analysis Reports: Define reports based on ServiceNow data tables such as Incident, Request, Live Agent chat transcripts, or Virtual Agent fallback utterances. Select specific string fields (e.g., Short description) for analysis and apply conditions or scheduling to automate report runs.
    • Intent Discovery Integration: The analysis uses Intent Discovery to map your data fields to intents in the business application taxonomy, which corresponds to your installed applications like ITSM Virtual Agent Conversations.
    • Topic Recommendations Output: Results show topic cards sorted by relevance, including pre-built topics that can be duplicated and customized, and intents requiring new topic flows to be created.
    • Notification and Access: When new recommendations are available, notifications appear in the Assistant Designer Asset library under Topics, streamlining the topic management workflow.

    How to Use

    • Step 1 - Configure Reports: Set up analysis reports in Virtual Agent settings by choosing data sources, fields, and taxonomy relevant to your business applications.
    • Step 2 - Run Reports: Run all or selected analysis reports from the Topic Recommendations page. The system processes your data, matches intents, and generates topic suggestions.
    • Step 3 - Review and Apply Recommendations: Examine the topic cards grouped by those handled by existing pre-built topics and those needing new topic flows. Add recommended topics by duplicating or creating empty topics linked to matched intents. Modify and publish these topics via Assistant Designer Asset library.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This feature enables you to leverage your ServiceNow data to continuously enhance your Virtual Agent’s conversational topics, ensuring responses stay relevant and comprehensive. It simplifies topic creation by recommending frequently requested intents and helps maintain an up-to-date, user-centric Virtual Agent experience without extensive manual topic development.

    To get recommended topics based on your data, configure analysis reports, run the reports, and then review the results. You can either add new topics to Virtual Agent or link a recommendation to an existing topic.

    The Topic Recommendations page appears in your instance at All > Conversational Interfaces > Virtual Agent > Topic Recommendations.

    Step 1: Configure analysis reports based on ServiceNow data

    Until you define analysis reports, the Topic Recommendations page is empty.

    Figure 1. Topic Recommendations page with no reports defined
    The Topic Recommendations page with no analysis reports defined.
    Each analysis report is based on the following:
    • Data source: The ServiceNow data that you want to analyze. The options are: Incident [incident] table, Request [sc_request] table, Live Agent chat transcripts, and Virtual Agent fallback utterances.
    • The field to analyze: A selected field (with a string data type) in the data source table to analyze. For example, the Short description field.
    • Taxonomy: The business application that includes the data sets. When you install ITSM Virtual Agent Conversations, the Incident and Request data sets are installed by default. As additional data sets for applications become available, the data sets are displayed as a taxonomy on the page after they’re installed on an instance.

    You can also add conditions to your analysis reports and configure them to run on a schedule. When new recommendations are available, a notification appears in the Assistant Designer Asset library Topics page.

    Configure analysis reports for Topic Recommendations in Virtual Agent settings. For details, see Configure analysis reports for Topic Recommendations.

    Step 2: Run an analysis report

    Run all configured analysis reports together or selectively run one at a time from the Topic Recommendations page.

    During analysis, the Topic Recommendations app does the following:
    • Uses Intent Discovery to review your data source, comparing your data source against the related taxonomy for your business application. Intent Discovery matches the data field specified in your data set to intents in the taxonomy.
    • Maps the matched intents to pre-built topics in Virtual Agent. If intents don’t have associated pre-built topics, the app recommends them as new topics that you can build because they were requested frequently enough by your users.
    • Displays the analysis results as topic cards in the Topic Recommendations page.

    For more information, see Run a Topic Recommendation analysis.

    Step 3: Review report results and add or link topics and intents

    Results are sorted into the following groups:
    • Topics that Virtual Agent can handle: Recommendations in this group can be addressed with a pre-built topic.

      When you add this type of recommendation to Virtual Agent, the matched pre-built topic is duplicated in your instance. You can then modify, test, and publish the added topic using Assistant Designer Asset library.

    • User intents that need topic flows: Recommendations in this group match a ServiceNow NLU intent.

      When you add this type of recommendation to Virtual Agent, an empty topic is created and mapped to the matched intent in the model that you specify. You can then open the topic in Assistant Designer Asset library and create a flow for the new topic.

    The results are displayed in descending order of matches to your data source. The top 20 intent matches are displayed. If there are more than 20 intents, you can view them in NLU Workbench.

    For more information about adding a recommendation to Virtual Agent, see Add recommended topics and intents to Virtual Agent. You can also link a recommendation to an existing topic.