Prerequisites
- ServiceNow Washington DC release or later
- Now Assist entitlement in your contract — verify with your ServiceNow account team before starting
- Admin role on your instance
- Pro or Enterprise Plus licence tier (some features require higher tier)
Step 1: Activate the base plugin
Navigate to System Applications > All Available Applications > All. Search for "Now Assist" and activate Now Assist Platform (com.sn_now_assist). This is the required base for all Now Assist features. Activation takes several minutes — wait for it to complete before proceeding.
Step 2: Activate feature-specific plugins
Each Now Assist feature area has its own plugin. Activate only the ones covered by your entitlement:
- Now Assist for ITSM: com.sn_now_assist_itsm
- Now Assist for Developers: com.sn_now_assist_developers
- AI Search / Unified Search: com.sn_unified_search
- Now Assist for HR: com.sn_now_assist_hr
- Now Assist for Customer Service: com.sn_now_assist_csm
Step 3: Verify AI Model connections
Navigate to Now Assist > Administration > AI Model Configurations. ServiceNow instances connect to Microsoft Azure OpenAI by default. Verify the connection status shows Active and the entitlement is validated. If it shows an error, contact your ServiceNow account team — the entitlement configuration on the ServiceNow side may need to be updated.
Step 4: Enable specific capabilities
For each Now Assist feature, navigate to its specific configuration page and enable capabilities individually:
- For ITSM: Now Assist > Settings > ITSM — enable Incident Summarisation, Resolution Notes, etc.
- For Developers: Now Assist > Settings > Developer — enable Code Generation, Code Explanation
- For AI Search: System Definition > AI Search Administration
Step 5: Assign the now_assist_user role
Users need the now_assist_user role to access Now Assist features. Assign this role to agents and developers who should have AI capabilities. You can assign it directly or via group membership.
Testing activation
Open an existing incident with several work notes. Look for a "Summarize" or "Now Assist" button in the incident header or activity section. Click it — if Now Assist is correctly activated and the user has the now_assist_user role, a summary generates within seconds. If nothing appears, check: plugin activation status, AI Model configuration connection, role assignment on the test user.
Related guides: Now Assist overview · Now Assist for ITSM · Code generation
Plugin activation walkthrough
Activating Now Assist requires admin rights and the correct entitlement on your ServiceNow contract. Navigate to System Applications > All Available Applications, search for "Now Assist Platform" (plugin ID: com.sn_now_assist), and click Activate. This base plugin must be active before any feature-specific plugins will work. After activation completes — typically 5–15 minutes — activate the feature plugins relevant to your use case: com.sn_now_assist_itsm for ITSM features, com.sn_now_assist_dev for code generation, com.sn_now_assist_search for AI Search.
If a plugin does not appear in search results, your instance may not have the entitlement provisioned. Contact your ServiceNow account team to verify — this is the most common activation blocker and is resolved on the ServiceNow side, not through instance configuration.
Post-activation configuration
After plugin activation, configure which users can access Now Assist features. Navigate to Now Assist > Administration > Settings. The now_assist_user role controls access — assign it to a pilot group before rolling out broadly. Configure the AI model settings (data residency, content filtering) to match your organisation's data handling requirements before making features available to end users. For ITSM specifically, configure which incident states show the summarisation UI and whether resolution note generation is opt-in (user clicks to generate) or auto-populated.
Verifying activation is working
// Verify Now Assist plugin status programmatically (Scripts - Background)
var plugin = new GlideRecord('v_plugin');
plugin.addQuery('id', 'com.sn_now_assist');
plugin.query();
if (plugin.next()) {
gs.log('Plugin state: ' + plugin.getValue('active')); // should be "true"
gs.log('Version: ' + plugin.getValue('version'));
}Alternatively, navigate to System Applications > Applications and filter by "Now Assist" — all active plugins show with a green Active status badge. If any show as inactive after activation, try re-running the activation from the All Available Applications view.
Related: Now Assist overview · ITSM features · Code generation · AI Search · Implementation strategy · Xanadu — minimum required release
Activation for specific environments
If your organisation has separate development, test, and production instances, you should activate and validate Now Assist on your test instance before production. The plugin activation process is identical on each instance — but the entitlement must be provisioned for each instance by ServiceNow. Many organisations discover that their Now Assist entitlement only covers production and one sub-production instance; contact your account team to clarify before activating broadly.
For development instances (PDIs), Now Assist features are available through the ServiceNow Developer Program — check nowlearning.servicenow.com for current PDI entitlements. PDI Now Assist may have token/usage limits that production instances do not. This is expected — use the PDI for learning and development, not for testing production volumes.
After activation on each instance, run a quick functional test: open an incident with several work notes, click Summarise, verify a summary is generated. If the button does not appear, check that the now_assist_user role is assigned to your user on that instance — role assignments are instance-specific and do not transfer between instances automatically. See Now Assist for ITSM for the full feature behaviour reference.
Common activation errors and fixes
| Error | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Plugin not visible in search | Entitlement not provisioned | Contact ServiceNow account team |
| Activation fails with dependency error | Base plugin not active first | Activate com.sn_now_assist before feature plugins |
| AI button not visible on incident form | User missing now_assist_user role | Assign now_assist_user role to user |
| Summarise returns empty result | Incident has no work notes | Add work notes first; summarisation requires content |
| Code generation panel not appearing | Developer plugin not active | Activate com.sn_now_assist_dev |
Entitlement verification before starting
The single biggest time-waster in Now Assist activations is starting the technical work before confirming entitlement. Symptoms of unprovisioned entitlement: the plugin appears in search but activation fails with a licensing error, or the plugin activates but AI features never appear in the UI regardless of role assignments. Verify with your ServiceNow account team that Now Assist entitlement is active on your contract and provisioned to your specific instance before starting activation. Ask them to confirm: which Now Assist features are included, which instances (prod, sub-prod) are entitled, and whether there are any usage limits or token quotas you should be aware of before enabling broadly.
Rolling back Now Assist activation
If you need to disable Now Assist after activation — because of quality issues, organisational concerns, or compliance review — you can deactivate the feature-specific plugins (ITSM, Dev, Search) without deactivating the base Now Assist Platform plugin. This removes the AI buttons from the UI without affecting other platform functionality. To prevent specific users from accessing Now Assist without full deactivation, remove the now_assist_user role from their profile or from the role assignment that grants it. There is no data to clean up when deactivating — Now Assist does not store user interaction data in the instance (interactions go to ServiceNow's AI infrastructure), so deactivation is clean.
Activation timeline expectations
Plugin activation typically takes 5–15 minutes per plugin. The Now Assist Platform base plugin takes longer than feature plugins — plan for 20–30 minutes for the full activation sequence including the base plugin and two or three feature plugins. Do not navigate away from the activation screen during this time. After all plugins show Active status, wait 5 minutes before testing — background initialisation continues after the status shows Active. If testing immediately after activation shows features not working, wait a few minutes and test again before starting a troubleshooting process. See the complete implementation guide for the full rollout sequence.
Multi-instance activation strategy
For organisations with development, test, and production instances, activate Now Assist in sequence: test instance first, validate quality and configuration for two weeks, then production. Keep the feature configuration (which states show AI buttons, whether notes are auto-populated or click-to-insert) identical across instances to avoid behaviour surprises when promoting Update Sets. Document your configuration decisions in a runbook so that if you need to rebuild a sub-production instance from scratch, the Now Assist configuration is reproducible without trial-and-error. See cloning instances to understand how Now Assist configuration transfers (or does not) through clones.
Activation is the beginning, not the end. Plan for at least two weeks of pilot testing with a small user group before broad rollout, and budget ongoing time for quality review and configuration tuning. The implementation strategy guide covers the full phased rollout approach with metrics to track at each stage.
After all plugins are active and the first test validates as expected, assign the now_assist_user role to your pilot group through a group-based role assignment (rather than individual user assignment) so you can expand access later by adding users to the group rather than running individual role assignments across hundreds of users. Configure the group before activating broadly. See roles vs groups for the role assignment pattern that scales cleanly.
After your pilot group validates quality and configuration, expanding access is a single step: add more users to the now_assist_user role, either directly or through group-based role assignments. No plugin changes, no reconfiguration — just role assignment. Plan your expansion in waves (pilot group → all IT agents → extended IT → business users) with a brief validation pause between each wave to verify quality holds as usage volume increases.
Now Assist activation is a one-time technical task that enables a long-term operational capability. The time spent getting activation right — confirming entitlement, activating in the correct sequence, testing with a pilot group before broad rollout — is repaid many times over by avoiding the rework of a botched activation and the trust damage of rolling out a misconfigured feature to all users at once. Budget two to three hours for a careful activation and pilot validation, not thirty minutes for a rushed one.