What are Now Assist Skills and what benefits does GenAI provide?

ServiceNow Now Assist Skills provide a wide range of capabilities within the Now platform. They are designed to enhance various aspects of IT Service Management (ITSM), Operations, Employee and Customer Services. Each skill caters to specific functions within the Now Assist ecosystem, such as improving efficiency, enhancing user experiences, and streamlining processes across different domains like ITSM, ITOM and customer service management, as well as platform development.

Let’s take a look at some core elements and concepts of Now Assist Skills in the following article.

So, skills are basically Generative AI capabilities that extend critical ServiceNow applications and platform features.

These skills are designed to offer more specialized, context-aware intelligence for different types of records and interactions within the platform.

You can compare the skills with members of a F1 team, where each team mate — from the driver to engineers, mechanics, strategists, and beyond — provides specific skills essential for the team’s overall performance and success.
Same with Now Assist Skills.

Each skill addresses specific needs within the digital workflow environment. Skills like incident summarisation, code generation, or chat summarisation make sure the user can perform a wide range of tasks efficiently and effectively.

As of April 2024, ServiceNow provides following Gen AI skills in the major product lines:

Incident Overview Summarisation

Incident Overview Summarisation is a skill that leverages advanced AI technology to automatically summarize incident details, providing a concise and structured overview of incidents. This capability is crucial in the context of IT Service Management (ITSM) as it helps streamline incident resolution processes by condensing complex incident information into easily digestible summaries.

By utilizing Generative AI for incident overview summarisation, organizations can enhance operational efficiency, accelerate incident response times, and improve the overall quality of service delivery.

This technology-driven approach optimizes resource allocation and contributes to better decision-making because it presents key incident details in a clear and actionable format.

Case Summarisation

The Now Assist “Case Summarisation” skill within ServiceNow is a Gen Ai driven capability that summarizes employee-related cases automatically and ad-hoc. It is similar to Incident Summarisation but operates within employee operations.

You can summarize a case if it contains at least 200 words in the fields that are used for the input data. If the case has less than 200-word then it simply has low value but still generates costs of using ServiceNow LLM (see Assists). The summary is based on the following fields: short description, description, work notes and additional comments.

This capability shortens the time it takes to handover the case to a new HR agent or to onboard someone to a new complex case by up to 90% (from 10 minutes to less than 1 minute).

Chat and Agent Hand-Off Summarisation

Chat and Agent Hand-Off Summarisation is a Now Assist capability of summarizing chat interactions between customers and virtual agents and support staff. This feature utilizes advanced ServiceNow LLM to analyze chat conversations and hand-off details into concise summaries.You can summarize the chat interaction when the chat ends or when an incident is created for further troubleshooting before or after the chat ends. The summary includes all points of the handoff, including the Virtual Agent conversation, and provides a context of the interaction to you and the other agents who might want to refer to it.

This skill enables seamless transitions between (virtual) agents and ensures that critical information is retained throughout the customer service process.

When using Chat and Agent Hand-Off Summarisation, several risks can be mitigated to ensure the effectiveness and reliability of the system incl. misinterpretation of questions, inconsistent answers, lack of empathy when handing over from one agent to another.

Resolution Notes Generation

By leveraging Now Assist Skill “Resolution Notes Generation”, organizations can enhance their incident management processes, improve knowledge sharing among team members, and maintain a consistent record of actions taken to resolve issues. These factors lead to more effective and reliable IT service operations and business operations as a result.

This skill streamlines the documentation process by creating comprehensive and structured notes that capture key information related to incident resolution, ensuring that important details are recorded accurately and efficiently. It does what people normally avoid to do: documenting work and sharing information across organizations. Either because of lack of time or understanding how it’s crucial for operations and service management.

Well documented resolution notes contain information that has been collected during the incident process. This can include Incident Details, Impact Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Resolution Steps or Workarounds, Lessons Learned, Future Preventative Measures, Recovery Time, and Attachments like relevant logs, screenshots, or other documentation that supports the resolution process. Generative AI can easily collect these details and generate valuable resolution notes.

Alert Summarisation (ITOM Event Management)

One of the latest Now Assist Skills is Alert Summarisation as part of the ServiceNow ITOM Event Management. It is a capability of condensing and processing raw events generated by monitoring tools to produce more refined and qualified alerts associated with Configuration Items (CIs).
The Now Assist generates alert summaries in a human-readable format. The alerts are enhanced by additional technical information that help users investigate an alert more effectively.

The Alert summary by Now Assist can be accessed and executed on demand within the ServiceNow Alert record when ServiceNow Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus are subscribed.

Flow Assist

As part of the Now Assist for Creator application it enables process owners to automate work and build multi-step flows from reusable components without having to code.
The Now Assist Recommendation skill provides flow authors with recommendations for the next step in their flow.
The Flow generation skill on the other hand lets flow authors create or edit a flow from text prompts. It provides these benefits.

• Build a multi-step flow outline from a flow description in Workflow Studio. Flow outlines require configuration to add input values and data references.
• Train the large language model (LLM) to generate better flow structures.
• Use standard flow design patterns.

Flow generation from the Workflow Studio user interface

Code Generation

This skill helps writing scripts quickly with AI-generated code. It provides text-to-code and code-complete suggestions in the JavaScript editor on forms in the Now Platform and in Script steps in Flow Designer. Developers with varying levels of experience in scripting on the Now Platform can benefit from using code generation to get started writing custom scripts or iterate on scripts more efficiently.

The code suggestion appears in the lines following your prompt but isn’t added to your script until it’s accepted.

Prompt type	Example
Text-to-code Text in a code comment that describes the goal of the code.	In this example, the prompt is: // Validate emails using regex.
Code complete The beginning of a function to be automatically completed.	In this example, the prompt is: var email = current.getValue(’email’); var regex =
Single-shot (combination of text and code) A combination of text in a code comment that describes the goal of the code followed by an example of how you want the code to start.	In this example, the prompt is: // Validate emails using regex var email = current.getValue(’email’); var regex =

Code generation workflow

1. A developer provides a prompt in the form of text in a code comment, code, or combination of text and code.

2. The developer triggers generating a code suggestion. If automatic code suggestions are enabled on the instance, the developer receives code suggestions when they stop typing or moving the cursor for 2.5 seconds.
In the following example, the prompt is // Validate email using regex in line 3. The code suggestion appears in the lines following your prompt but is not added to your script until you accept it.AI-generated code suggestion.

3. The developer reviews the AI-generated code suggestion and either accepts or rejects it.

• If they accept it, the code is added to the script, and they can make any necessary edits based on their review.
• If they reject it, the code isn’t added to the script, and they can rephrase their prompt to generate a new code suggestion.

4. In the following example, a line next to the line numbers indicates which code was created by AI and hasn’t been edited. If you edit AI-generated code, the line indicator doesn’t appear for those lines of code. AI-generated code lines

Using code generation to create useful and accurate scripts depends on writing strong prompts, experimenting with revising prompts, documenting prompt guidance, and reviewing AI-generated code. As you refine and experiment, the Now LLM uses this feedback to learn and improve.

In conclusion, Now Assist Skills are pivotal Generative AI capabilities embedded within the ServiceNow platform, designed to optimize various functions across IT Service Management, Operations, Employee, and Customer Services. These skills are specialized to specific needs within digital workflow environments. They enhance efficiency and user experiences 24/7, tireless, and multilingual. They are able to summarize text, generate content, support code development, and find information reliable. 

With features like Case Summarisation and Chat Hand-Off Summarization, organizations can significantly reduce time spent on manual tasks, ensuring seamless transitions and better customer service.

Moreover, Now Assist Skills like Resolution Notes Generation and Alert Summarisation further augment incident management and IT operations by facilitating documentation and refining alert processing.

By leveraging these capabilities, organizations can unlock new levels of productivity and effectiveness in their service delivery and operational processes.

Kostya Bazanov, Managing Director, Apr 18, 2024

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