AI Search in Service Portal
Summarize
Summary of AI Search in Service Portal
AI Search in Service Portal enhances the search experience by providing intelligent query features that help portal users quickly find relevant answers. This feature offers a more powerful, faster, and assistive search compared to the legacy Zing search, supporting natural language queries, auto-completion, and typo handling.
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Key Features
- Powerful and Flexible Search: Supports natural language, auto-complete suggestions, and typo correction to improve search accuracy and ease of use.
- Relevant and Actionable Results: Uses user context such as role, location, department, assets, and search history to personalize results. Includes "genius results" which allow users to perform actions directly from search results.
- Intelligent Search Refinement: Enables users to filter results dynamically or statically using facets and tabs, improving result relevance (e.g., filtering Mac search by hardware or user profiles).
- Customizable Search Widgets: AI Search powers several widgets including Homepage Search, Typeahead Search, Faceted Search, Catalog Homepage Search, and Knowledge Breadcrumbs.
- Theming and Branding: Search appearance can be customized through CSS variables to align with company branding.
- Browser Support: Requires users to log in with modern browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge (Chromium), or Apple Safari.
Activation and Configuration
- AI Search is enabled by default for new and zBoot customers in the Zurich release. Existing customers upgrading must manually enable it in the portal record.
- Cloned or customized search widgets may need reclassification via a fix script for compatibility.
- Configuration involves defining:
- Search Application Configuration: Controls search engine settings, result limits, and suggestion limits.
- Search Results Configuration: Determines how results are displayed using composite datasets.
- Configurations can be updated at the portal record level or widget instance level for specific use cases.
- Define AI Search Results Actions to control navigation and display of portal pages when users select search results.
- Customize genius result action buttons via Entity View Action Mapping (EVAM).
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Enables faster, more accurate, and personalized search experiences for portal users.
- Improves user productivity by allowing direct actions from search results.
- Supports refined searching with facets and tabs to quickly narrow down results.
- Offers flexibility to tailor search behavior and appearance to organizational needs.
- Ensures compatibility and optimal performance with modern web browsers.
Configure the ServiceNow AI Search application for Service Portal so that portal users can take advantage of intelligent query features and quickly find the answers they need.
AI Search features
- Powerful and flexible search
Unlike the legacy Zing search that was used in previous releases, AI Search is faster and more assistive. Portal users can find answers more quickly and easily with features like auto-complete search queries, natural language support, and typo handling.
Figure 1. Search suggestions Figure 2. Typo handling - Relevant and actionable search results
With AI Search enabled in Service Portal, the portal search engine captures information about the user — such as their role, location, department, assets, and search history — and returns search results that are relevant and personalized.
AI Search also includes genius results that enable users to take action directly from the search results list.
Figure 3. Genius result - Intelligent search refinement
Portal users can refine their search results using dynamic and static filters. For example, if a user searches Mac, they can use facets to filter search results by hardware or user profiles.
Figure 4. Search facets Figure 5. Tab filters 
For more information on using facets and tabs, see Faceted Search widget.
For more information on AI Search features, see Exploring AI Search.
Activation information
AI Search is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.
AI Search is enabled in Service Portal for all new and zBoot customers by default.
If you are upgrading to Zurich as an existing customer, AI Search is disabled in Service Portal by default. You can enable it by updating the portal record. For more information, see Enable and configure AI Search in Service Portal.
Configuring AI Search for Service Portal
- Search application configuration
- Defines search experience settings, such as the search engine, search results limit, and suggestions limit. For more information on defining a search application configuration, see Defining search application configurations.
- Search results configuration
- Defines how search results are displayed. For more information on defining a search results configuration, see Define a composite dataset.
You can change the search application configuration or search results configuration that your portal uses by updating the portal record. For more information, see Enable and configure AI Search in Service Portal.
To configure the search results payload to navigate to and display the appropriate portal page for a selected data source, define an AI Search results action. For more information, see Define an AI Search Results Action.
You can configure the action buttons in genius results by defining an Entity View Action Mapping (EVAM) action. For more information, see Define an EVAM action.
You can customize the look and feel of the AI Search experience in Service Portal by updating the relevant CSS variables. For more information on these variables, see Theming for AI Search in Service Portal.
Browser support
With AI Search enabled in Service Portal, users must log in with a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge (Chromium), or Apple Safari.