Use email agentic workflow

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated November 20, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Use email agentic workflow

    Email agentic workflows enable ServiceNow customers to automate the processing of inbound emails by intelligently analyzing their content, extracting relevant information, executing necessary actions, and drafting appropriate email responses. This capability enhances email notifications by integrating AI-driven intent identification and action execution, streamlining task triage and response generation.

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    Key Features

    • Intent to Action Workflow: Automatically triages tasks created from inbound emails by identifying the sender’s intent, executing corresponding actions, and drafting email replies.
    • AI Agents Involved: Utilizes multiple AI agents including Intent Identification Agent, Intent Executor Agent, and Email Generator Agent to perform different stages of email processing intelligently.
    • Role Masking and Permissions: Enables restriction of agentic workflow roles and privileges to ensure security. Role permissions such as notificationaiadmin, notificationaireader, and intentexecutor define access levels for reading, creating, and executing intents and actions.
    • Execution Role Requirements: Workflows require the execution role with appropriate permissions to run successfully. Additional permissions can be granted by adding child roles to snnotifagents.intentexecutor as needed.
    • Email Generation for Reply: When connected to an AI Search profile, the workflow can generate reply content based on permitted data accessible to the sender, respecting role-based permission checks.
    • Agent Discovery and Marketplace: Customers can identify installed AI agents via the Now Assist application or explore additional agents available in the ServiceNow Store's AI Agent Marketplace.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By configuring email agentic workflows within Notifications, customers can automate inbound email handling to reduce manual intervention, improve response times, and ensure accurate task routing. Properly configuring security controls and role permissions is crucial to enable execution without permission errors. Leveraging AI Search integration enhances the quality and relevance of automated email replies, ensuring responses align with the sender’s access rights and organizational data policies.

    This functionality is essential for organizations looking to optimize email-driven processes, improve service desk efficiency, and maintain secure, role-based access to automated actions and information.

    Use email agentic workflow to intelligently analyze inbound emails, extract information, perform necessary actions, and draft responses.

    Email agentic workflows in email notifications

    Table 1. Available email agentic workflows
    Agentic workflow name Description Available AI agents
    Intent to action Triages tasks that are created via inbound emails by identifying intent, executing actions, and drafting appropriate email responses.
    • Intent Identification Agent
    • Intent Executor Agent
    • Email Generator Agent

    Role masking enables users to limit the roles and privileges of agentic workflows during tool execution. Agentic workflows and their AI agents that get installed with Now Assist applications are assigned pre-defined roles. If you select Users with specific roles for user access, you must configure the security controls to include these roles. Data access settings must also include these roles. For the instructions to change the security controls, see Define security controls for an agentic workflow.

    Role permissions and access

    The execution role provides the minimum required permissions to execute intents. Additional intent execution roles can be added as needed to extend permissions for specific actions. Without these, the execution may fail due to insufficient permissions.

    Table 2. Roles for action execution
    Role Description
    sn_notif_agents.notification_ai_admin Has permission to read and create intents, actions and map actions.
    sn_notif_agents.notification_ai_reader Has permission to read intents and actions.
    sn_notif_agents.intent_executor Has permission to execute intents.
    Note:
    When an action runs, it uses the sender’s permission, guest users use the guest_email_agent role which is limited by default to sn_notif_agents.intent_executor. If the execution action needs more access, those permissions must be added under the sn_notif_agents.intent_executor role as a child role so it can run properly. The system masks the role based on user permissions, revealing only the roles common to both the user and the sn_notif_agents.intent_executor roles.

    Email Generation for Reply Email Action

    After you connect an AI Search profile to the reply-email action, users can submit queries that can be answered using the profile’s content. AI Search check the sender’s permissions and returns only the information permitted for their role.

    Looking for an AI agent?
    • There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available on your instance, see Find AI agents.
    • To find agents that might not be installed on your instance, visit the AI Agent Marketplace on the ServiceNow Store.