Incident Summarisation
When an incident has multiple work notes, Now Assist can generate a plain-language summary of the incident history. To trigger a summary: open any incident with work notes, look for the Now Assist icon or Summarize button in the activity section header. Click it. ServiceNow sends the work notes to the underlying AI model and returns a summary within a few seconds. The summary typically covers what the issue is, what has been tried so far, current status, and suggested next steps — most valuable for L2/L3 engineers taking over a ticket from L1, managers reviewing a major incident in progress, and end users who want a status update without scrolling through the full activity stream.
Summarisation in practice
Now Assist summarises what is in the work notes. If work notes are vague, abbreviated, or incomplete, the summary will be vague and incomplete. "Checked it, doesn't work" generates a useless summary. "Verified printer connectivity — confirmed network connection active. Tested print job — job queued but not printing. Identified spooler service had crashed. Restarted spooler — job completed successfully" generates a useful one. The biggest lever for improving Now Assist summarisation quality is improving work note quality standards — not the AI configuration.
This is often the most impactful process change that Now Assist activation drives — not the AI feature itself, but the coaching of agents to write better work notes because they know the AI (and other agents) will read them. Invest in that coaching as part of your rollout, not as an afterthought.
Resolution note generation
When an agent sets state to Resolved, Now Assist can auto-generate a draft resolution note based on the incident activity. The agent reviews and edits before saving — it is a starting point, not a finished product. The most common configuration: the generated note populates the resolution notes field as draft text that the agent must actively keep or replace. Avoid auto-populating without agent review — AI-generated text that goes directly into resolution notes without a human check can introduce inaccuracies that affect downstream reporting and customer communications.
Configuration options
Navigate to Now Assist > ITSM Settings to configure: which incident states show the summarise button, whether resolution notes are auto-populated or click-to-insert, the length of generated summaries (brief vs detailed), and which roles can access Now Assist features — controlled via the now_assist_user role assignment. The ACL layer on the Now Assist UI components respects this role assignment — users without the role do not see the AI buttons regardless of incident access.
Limitations
Now Assist for ITSM does not have access to information outside the work notes and incident fields. It cannot query related records, look up similar incidents, or access attachments. It is a text summarisation tool operating on the incident's own data — not a knowledge base query engine or an incident correlation tool.
Related: Now Assist overview · Activation guide · AI Search · Implementation strategy · ITSM for developers
Metrics to track for Now Assist ITSM ROI
Three metrics that directly measure Now Assist ITSM value: Average Handle Time (AHT) per ticket before vs after activation — AI summarisation and resolution note generation should reduce this measurably for complex, multi-note tickets. Resolution Note Quality Score — establish a rubric (does the note describe what was found, what was done, and what the outcome was?) and score a random sample before and after activation to verify AI-generated notes meet quality standards. Knowledge Article Deflection Rate — track what percentage of portal searches result in a knowledge article view without the user creating a ticket. AI Search improvements should increase this rate.
Build these metrics into Performance Analytics indicators before activation so you have baselines to compare against. Reporting ROI with data is more effective for sustaining organisational commitment to the programme than anecdotal evidence, particularly when competing for IT budget against other initiatives.
Now Assist ITSM and agent experience design
How you introduce Now Assist to agents matters as much as how you configure it. Agents who are told "AI is going to write your notes for you" may resist it (feeling like their work is being automated away) or over-rely on it (accepting AI drafts without review). The more effective framing: "This tool drafts the routine parts so you can focus on the parts that require your expertise." Position AI as handling the tedious mechanical tasks — summarising long threads, drafting standard resolution notes — while the agent's role remains as the judgment layer that ensures quality and catches anything the AI misses.
Run a pilot with a group of agents who are early adopters and gather their feedback before broad rollout. Their observations about where Now Assist helps and where it generates poor output are more valuable than any technical test — they are the production users. Use their feedback to tune configuration (which states show summarisation, what the note template looks like) before rolling out to everyone. This pilot approach applies to every major feature rollout, not just AI — but it is especially important for AI features where quality perception can make or break adoption.
Integrating Now Assist with existing ITSM workflows
Now Assist does not replace your existing Flow Designer automations or Business Rules — it adds AI-assisted UI capabilities on top of them. Your assignment routing rules, SLA definitions, approval workflows, and escalation flows continue working exactly as before. The Now Assist features (summarise, generate resolution note, AI Search) are UI enhancements for the agents working those workflows. This means you can activate Now Assist without changing any of your existing automation — there is no migration or workflow redesign required. The only configuration needed is plugin activation, role assignment, and the Now Assist-specific settings (which states show the AI buttons, what the generation template looks like).
Quality assurance for AI-generated content
Build a lightweight quality assurance process into your Now Assist ITSM deployment. Monthly, sample 20–30 AI-generated resolution notes and score them on: accuracy (does the note correctly describe what was done?), completeness (does it include the root cause, the fix, and the outcome?), and professionalism (is the tone and language appropriate for customer-facing documentation?). Track the scores over time. If quality drops, investigate — usually it is a change in how agents write work notes that is degrading the summarisation source material, not a platform issue. Feed findings back to the team so agents understand the connection between note quality input and summary quality output.
Configuration reference — key settings
Navigate to Now Assist > Administration > ITSM Settings for the key configuration options: Summarisation trigger (which incident states show the Summarise button), Resolution note template (the structure of AI-generated resolution notes — customise this to match your organisation's documentation standards), and Feature access (the now_assist_user role assignment that gates access). Changes to these settings take effect immediately — no deployment or update set needed. Test configuration changes in sub-production before applying to production to verify the behaviour is what you intended.
Now Assist ITSM delivers the most measurable early ROI of any Now Assist feature — agent time savings on summarisation and resolution notes are directly quantifiable in ways that AI Search deflection and code generation productivity are more difficult to measure precisely. Start here, measure rigorously, and use the demonstrated ROI to build organisational confidence for subsequent Now Assist feature rollouts.
For teams tracking Now Assist ITSM adoption: the System Log records every Now Assist action with source "sn_now_assist" — you can query it to measure how frequently agents are clicking Summarise, how many resolution notes are AI-generated vs manually written, and which assignment groups are adopting the feature vs ignoring it. This usage data is valuable for targeted adoption coaching and for the ROI calculations that justify continued investment.
The combination of Now Assist ITSM summarisation, resolution note generation, and AI Search addresses the three highest-friction points in the ITSM agent experience: long incident threads that take time to read and understand, resolution notes that are tedious to write and often skipped or abbreviated, and knowledge search that returns too many results or misses relevant articles. Addressing all three together — rather than activating one feature and treating the others as optional add-ons — delivers a significantly better agent experience than any single feature alone.