Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated April 16, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Reusing intents from prebuilt NLU models

    ServiceNow enables customers to reuse Natural Language Understanding (NLU) intents by importing them from prebuilt NLU models into their own models. This capability significantly reduces the time and effort required to build language understanding for Virtual Agent chatbots, especially for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Human Resources (HR) topics.

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    The prebuilt NLU models contain validated, read-only intents that correspond to common Virtual Agent conversation topics tailored to specific business units (BUs). These intents map directly to chatbot conversation flows designed to handle BU-specific user requests.

    Key Features

    • Prebuilt Virtual Agent Models: Provide context-aware language understanding based on a large word corpus relevant to ITSM, CSM, and HR domains.
    • Intent Reuse: Import validated intents from these models into your custom NLU models to quickly support common chatbot interactions without starting from scratch.
    • Read-Only Models: Prebuilt models cannot be edited, but their intents can be imported or copied as a foundation for new models.
    • Application Scope: NLU models and their components are tied to a fixed application scope. Confirm your target scope before importing intents as it cannot be changed later.
    • Required Plugins and Roles: Access to prebuilt Virtual Agent models requires activating specific plugins for CSM, HR, and ITSM Virtual Agent conversations, as well as the Glide Virtual Agent and NLU Workbench plugins, all managed by an admin role.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Accelerates chatbot deployment by leveraging pre-validated, domain-specific intents.
    • Ensures chatbot conversations align with ServiceNow best practices and terminology for ITSM, CSM, and HR.
    • Reduces maintenance by building on stable, read-only prebuilt models while allowing customization through new intents.
    • Facilitates consistent user experiences across Virtual Agent implementations within your organization.

    Reuse Natural Language Understanding (NLU) intents by importing them from a prebuilt NLU model to other models. Reusing intents saves time when building your models.

    Prebuilt Virtual Agent NLU models provide language understanding needed for chatbot conversation flows in ITSM, CSM, and HR topics. Each NLU intent in these models maps to a single Virtual Agent conversation topic created in Virtual Agent Designer accordingly.

    The prebuilt models are read-only, but contain validated intents that you can reuse in your NLU models. For example, the prebuilt HR model for Virtual Agent contains several intents regarding HR requests. Adding the intents to one of your models makes that model ready to respond to user inputs regarding HR.

    Prebuilt Virtual Agent model content

    Each of the prebuilt Virtual Agent models uses language that's pertinent to their respective business unit (BU). The NLU that processes this language, built from a word corpus of 3 million words, is context-aware of general linguistic patterns and both ServiceNow and user-defined vocabularies.

    The prebuilt models map to common conversation topics used by Virtual Agent chatbots across each of the three BUs. Those topics correspond with intents that perform BU-specific actions.

    For more NLU and Virtual Agent context, refer to the following product documentation:

    Virtual Agent and NLU plugins and roles

    To access the prebuilt Virtual Agent models in the NLU Workbench, you must install and activate these plugins using the admin role.

    Plugins Descriptions
    • CSM Virtual Agent conversations [com.sn_csm.virtualagent]
    • Human Resources Scoped App: Virtual Agent Conversations [com.sn_hr_virtual_agent]
    • ITSM Virtual Agent conversations [com.snc.itsm.virtualagent]

    Enables Pre-built Virtual Agent topics, topic blocks, and ServiceNow NLU models for the Customer Service Management, HR Service Delivery, and IT Service Management applications.

    • Requires the Glide Virtual Agent (com.glide.cs.chatbot) plugin to be activated.
    • Automatically activates the NLU Workbench (com.snc.nlu_studio) plugin.

    Creating NLU models that reuse predefined Virtual Agent intents

    The prebuilt Virtual Agent models are set to read-only and can't be edited. However, the intents in these models can be imported into your new model, alongside any new intents you've created in your model. You can also copy the prebuilt model and use the intents as a foundation for a new model.

    To reuse the intents from a prebuilt Virtual Agent model, choose the prebuilt model when importing intents. See Import an NLU intent.

    NLU models and their intents and entities are associated to an application scope. The scope can't be changed later, so verify your target application scope before you begin.