Vancouver release

Tired of getting the message, "I am sorry but I didn't understand your request"? Use ServiceNow's search tools to get better results and answers for your Virtual Agent users. You can use the Search Fallback topic, powered by Contextual Search, or if enabled you can use AI Search. Fallback topics are helpful when you are just starting your Virtual Agent journey and haven’t enabled all your desired topics yet. While expanding your topic list, you can rely on Search Fallback to still serve the majority of your users’ requests and questions.

Users can still expect answers from your Service Catalog or Knowledge Base. That is why it is also important to maintain your Catalog and Knowledge with the latest and greatest information.

Rule of thumb: Your search results are only as good as the quality and currentness of your Knowledge Base and Service Catalog!

Custom Greetings & Setup – Recommended Setup topics configuration for fallback topics.

See the following search methods available on the Virtual Agent below:

• AI Search, Genius Results, and Troubleshooting
• BONUS! - External Sources
• Final Thoughts and VA Academy video

AI Search, Genius results, and Troubleshooting

AI Search is a newer, more powerful search for ServiceNow. It uses machine learning to find the most relevant search results to directly address user queries. Genius results powered by NLU provide the single most relevant item in a rich card format.

How to enable:

AI Search is automatically provisioned for you. If not, you can enable AI Search via the “Request AI Search” button. This can be found in the Conversational Interfaces Home page. Once your instance is successfully provisioned for AI Search, the AI Search Status page should display the status: “AI Search is Ready!”

Requesting AI Search on the CI Home page

Using AI Search for Virtual Agent

In your Default Chat Experience > Setup topics configuration, “AI Search Fallback” should have the “AI Search – Fallback" topic added by default. When AI Search is enabled, Virtual Agent will use AI Search as the default fallback. If not enabled or if AI Search does not return results, then the “Search Fallback” topic is used. The "AI Search - Fallback" topic uses an updated "AI Search" topic block. If you're upgrading from a previous ServiceNow release, check to see that you're using the new topic block to run AI Search in your topics or flows.

Optional: You can navigate to Default Chat Experience > Search Mapping, to change the Search Application or the Search UI (EVAM) Configuration. The Search Application determines the behavior and logic of the AI Search experience while Search UI determines the appearance of the search results.

Genius results present a single result in a card format. To activate genius results, take the following steps:

• Since genius results rely on NLU, navigate to “Vocabulary Sources” and sync your sources related to AI Search Genius results
• In your AI Search > Search Profile, ensure that genius results for “Catalog” and “Q&A” (Knowledge) are Active.

Note: Genius results are currently only available in English.

Catalog item genius result

Catalog Item results with AI Search

In the Tokyo release, catalog item results can be ordered via in-line conversation, a pop-up, or a new browser tab. The behavior is determined by the catalog item itself and its variables. The default experience is pop-up. You can see how the catalog item will be rendered in Virtual Agent by navigating to sc_cat_item table, clicking an item, and then clicking the "See VA render type" related link. If you do not want to render your Virtual Agent conversation as a pop-up, set the glide.sc.va.render_type.legacy property to 'true', which renders pop-up catalog items in a new browser tab.

Troubleshooting Virtual and AI Search :

If you're expecting certain search results, first test your search term in the AI Search Preview tool. Virtual Agent displays those results.

Make sure that the "AI Search - Fallback" topic uses the updated "AI Search" topic block.

Admins can expand the number of AI search results displayed up to 10, using the com.glide.cs.ai_search.max_regular_result system property.

Contextual Search

You can also use regular Contextual search as your fallback. The “Search Fallback topic” uses the contextual search topic block. The topic block can also be used within other topics in fallback branches, e.g. when user issues still are not resolved after a recommended action.

Additional configurations:

You can configure the search context of the Search Fallback Topic. First, duplicate the (read-only) Search Fallback Topic. Click on the “Contextual Search” topic block. You can then change the context field. The available search contexts can be found in the “Search Context” table (cxs_context_config), each with different Search Sources. The default search context is “Incident Deflection”. You can also create your own.

Contextual Search topic block and search context

FAQ Builder

You can use the FAQ Builder topic block to provide a simple FAQ experience in the Virtual Agent. When users type a Question that matches an FAQ record in the Knowledge Base, the Virtual Agent will output the Answer.

Note: FAQ requires the Knowledge Management – Advanced Installer plugin. Once installed, FAQ is available as an Article template. In Knowledge > Administration > Templates, mark "FAQ" as Active.

How to enable:

First, make sure you have published FAQ Knowledge records.

Example published FAQ article about corporate cellphone plans

Then in VA Designer, use the FAQ Conversation Builder topic block. It requires an input query, which can be a text input for example. You can incorporate the FAQ topic block in an existing topic or consider creating a separate topic just to service your FAQ.

FAQ Builder topic block and example topic flow

BONUS! - External Sources

Sometimes, the information users are looking for can’t be found in ServiceNow. It’s also possible to embed a web search such as a search engine or product support site.

Note: AI Search can integrate external sites owned by customers such as your corporate SharePoint. The following example is for public sources.

How to configure:

It is possible to create a dynamic link where a portion of a URL is scripted or based on the user’s input. You can use this to create a URL link for users to surface external search results based on their search terms. For example, searching for “Teams audio issues” in the Microsoft Support site results in a URL: https://support.microsoft.com/search/results?query=Teams+audio+issues&isEnrichedQuery=false

You can create a Text Input node first to grab a user query. Then use a Text Output node and insert a link. For the link, use the data pill to insert an input variable. This will generate a link that users can click to open the search results.

If you know some simple scripting and HTML, you can also embed an HTML of the search results within the Virtual Agent. To embed the query, you can access your input query variable in your script block with ‘vaInputs.xxx’.

Note: If using an MS Teams or Slack integration, HTML will display as an image so this technique will not be as effective.

Final thoughts

• To reiterate, one of the first things you should do is to replace the “Fallback Topic” with the “Search Fallback Topic.”
• As you expand your topics, avoid creating topics just for the sole purpose of showing a knowledge article or piece of information. Instead rely on search fallback to surface relevant information.
• Keep your Knowledge Base and Service Catalog up to date. The better the data, the better the results!
• Keep your ITSM/HRSD Virtual Agent Conversations store app updated. We are constantly improving the Virtual Agent and Search experience through the store apps.

See the May 3, 2022 Virtual Agent Academy on using search in Virtual Agent: