Activating Virtual Agent and getting started

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Activating Virtual Agent and Getting Started

    This guide helps ServiceNow customers quickly activate and start using Virtual Agent, a conversational interface that enhances portal interactions. It covers enabling the Virtual Agent plugin, adding chat capabilities to portals, customizing branding, and leveraging prebuilt ITSM conversations. Customers with Now Assist licenses can also deploy generative AI-powered skills rapidly for advanced conversational experiences.

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    Key Features

    • Activation and Plugin Installation: Admin users can activate the Glide Virtual Agent plugin, which automatically enables all required dependencies.
    • Predefined Conversations: Install ready-to-use conversations suited for business applications, natural language understanding (NLU), and analytics.
    • Portal Integration: Add Virtual Agent as a chat option in one or more portals, enhancing user engagement.
    • Branding Customization: Personalize the Virtual Agent’s appearance by modifying colors, logos, and chat icons to align with company branding.
    • Now Assist Integration: For customers with Now Assist licenses, enable AI-driven skills within Virtual Agent and customize their look and feel.
    • Topic Recommendations: Use the Topic Recommendations app to find and implement prebuilt conversation topics suitable for your organization quickly.

    Next Steps for Expansion

    After initial setup, customers can enhance Virtual Agent capabilities by:

    • Configuring Now Assist further within Virtual Agent for AI-powered interactions.
    • Creating customized chat experiences and new conversation topics.
    • Adjusting system messages for both Virtual Agent and Agent Chat.
    • Enabling AI Search and integrating Natural Language Understanding (NLU).
    • Utilizing Virtual Agent alongside live agents for hybrid support models.
    • Implementing language detection, dynamic machine translation, and localization to support multi-language environments.

    Using the Conversational Interfaces console, you can quickly add Virtual Agent to a portal, configure branding, personalize the greeting, and begin to use pre-built ITSM Virtual Agent conversations.

    If you have a license for a Now Assist product, you can also quickly deploy Now Assist skills in Virtual Agent in a matter of minutes. For details, see Configuring assistants overview.

    Before you begin

    If you have a license for Virtual Agent, the following sections will help you get started and create conversations for your organization quickly.

    If you do not have a license for Virtual Agent, you can try Virtual Agent Lite, which comes preinstalled. For information about getting started with Virtual Agent Lite, see Quick start for Virtual Agent Lite.

    Get started with Virtual Agent

    1. Activate Virtual Agent

      You can activate the Glide Virtual Agent plugin (com.glide.cs.chatbot) if you have the admin role. This plugin automatically activates other necessary plugins if they are not already active.

    2. Install Virtual Agent plugins

      Install predefined conversations for your business applications, NLU tools, and the Conversational Analytics dashboard.

    3. Add your bot to a portal

      Add a chat entry to the menu of your web portal. You can add Virtual Agent to additional portals later.

      For conversations based on generative AI large language models (LLMs), you can quickly set up Now Assist in Virtual Agent and add it to a portal. For information about adding Now Assist in Virtual Agent to a portal, see Configuring assistants overview.

    4. Set up your Virtual Agent bot's branding

      Change the way Virtual Agent looks to the end user. You can change the colors, add your company logo, and change the icon that represents your bot.

      If you're using Now Assist in Virtual Agent, you can customize the look and feel during the configuration process. For more information, see Configuring assistants overview.

    5. Get recommended topics for your instance

      Use the Topic Recommendations app to identify prebuilt Virtual Agent topics that can be quickly implemented in your organization.

    Explore further

    As you work with Virtual Agent, you can expand its capabilities by implementing other features. For example, you can do the following: