Migrate from Connect Support to Advanced Work Assignment and Workspace Agent Chat

[Sam Santo]

Benefits of migrating

ServiceNow continues to support existing Connect Support customers on the Now Platform for current and upcoming releases but further feature development is not planned for the future.

We strongly encourage customers to make the move from Connect Support to Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) and Workspace Agent Chat as we’re focused on continuing to invest in innovation within Advanced Work Assignment and Workspace Agent Chat.

• Once customers migrate, they’ll be able to route work items (chats, cases, incidents, etc) to agents based on a number of conditions such as skills, availability, and capacity using AWA.
• With Agent Affinity, which is a premium feature of AWA, customers can tailor the assignment logic so that the same agent is assigned to a similar work item instead of orienting a new agent every time.
• Interactions Management, which is part of AWA, is only supported when using Agent Workspace. It automatically stores chat transcripts that Agents can refer back to and downloadable copies that can be shared with customers if desired.
• Supervisors will have access to Operation dashboard to monitor weekly trends, incoming work items, and agent availability.
• Supervisors can monitor live, in-progress chat conversations, join those conversations, and even exchange private messages with Agent using Agent Whisper.

How to migrate

To migrate from Connect Support, use AWA to create chat queues used for routing chat work items to agents and the Chat Setup form to configure Agent Chat.

Please note that Agent Workspace does not support Connect Support. 

What is similar about Connect Support and AWA + Workspace Agent Chat?

There are several similarities between the functionality of Connect Support in comparison to AWA and Agent Chat including:

• Launching the chat client from the ServiceNow Service Portal
• Enabling or disable Agent Avatar
• Transferring a chat to chat queues or individual agents
• Modifying OOTB Initial Agent Response
• Using Chat Actions (slash commands)
• Attaching files to chats
• Creating task-based records from chats
•  Saving chat transcripts

What is different?

Feature	Connect Support	AWA and Agent Chat
Collecting data prior to chats   from a Pre-chat Survey		X
Updating Agent Availability   Status	\*	X
Modifying incoming chat card   layout		X
Setting time limits for agents to   accept chats		X
Routing chats based on agent   skills		X
Routing chats based on agent’s   existing relationships to   customers		X
Routing chats based on agent   last assigned		X
Routing chats based on agent l   last idle		X
Routing chats based to back-up   groups within a Queue		X
Rejecting Chats		X
Supervisors joining chats to   observe or assist agents		X
Reporting on chats, related   tasks, and interactions		X
Collecting data after chats from   a Post-Chat Survey		X
Calculating Agent Capacity	\**	X

* With AWA and Agent Chat, agents have the ability to control their own Availability status whereas Connect Support Agent Availability is driven by Scheduled Business Hours.

** With AWA and Agent Chat, agent capacity is automatically calculated pending and in-progress chats whereas Connect Support is driven from a static numeric value within Connect Support Properties.

Full Feature Comparison

Feature Functionality	Connect       Support	AWA/Agent     Chat	Release
Agent Whisper		X	Paris
Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat		X	Quebec
Service Portal Chat Widget	X	X	Madrid
MS Teams integration	X (not available Quebec+)	X	Madrid
Slack Integration	X (not available Quebec+)	X	Madrid
Queue Overflow Handling		X	Madrid
Queue Schedules	X	X	Madrid
Native Pre-Chat		X	Orlando
Pass Context Variables on Chats	X	X	Madrid
Assign chats based on agent skills		X	Madrid
Assign Work Items to Agents based on   Agent Affinity		X	Orlando
Chat Timeout Reassignment		X	Madrid
Queue and Agent Chat Transfers	X	X	Madrid
Variable Work Item Sizing		X	Orlando
Assignment based on agent capacity	Static value in Connect Properties	X	Madrid
Agent Inbox to view incoming chats	X	X	Madrid
Allow agents to reject Chats and provide a   reason for the rejection		X	Madrid
Chat Transcripts	X	X	Madrid
Create task-based records from   conversations	X	X	Madrid
Customize the audio alert by uploading   your own audio file	X	X	Orlando
Directly notify other agents from a chat   using @Mentions	X		Madrid
Insert pre-canned messages into a chat   using Response Templates		X	New York
Set and track Agent Presence		X	Madrid
Supported in Agent Workspace		X	Madrid
Create and edit Chat Actions	X	X	New York
Create and edit initial responses per chat   queue	X	X	Madrid
Attach files within chat conversations	X	X	Madrid
Configure anonymous agent details to   requestors		X	Orlando
Requestors can see their wait time	X	X	Orlando
Post Chat Surveys	Survey link only available when agents end chats	X	Orlando
Auto-logging of Interaction Transactions		X	Quebec
Customizable inbox audio alerts per   Service Channel		X	Quebec
Queues can be defined to support external   routing		X	Quebec

[Tarun Gupta2]

Hi, 

Is it possible to initiate chat in Connect interface on the portal and open up in the Agent Workspace for the agents?

Thanks

[Sam Santo]

Hi Tarun,

Under Collaboration > Chat Setup there are Fulfiller UI options for either Connect Support or Agent Workspace which is illustrated in the screenshot below. Here's a link to our product documentation for more information.

* Note: The Connect Support Fulfiller UI option will only be available to customers who have already activated the Connect Support plugin prior to upgrading to Paris. If customers are on Paris but haven’t activated Connect Support, they will no longer have this option as the plugin has moved into a development only state.

[Tarun Gupta2]

@Samantha.Santo - Thanks for your response. I am aware of setting the Fulfiller UI in Chat Setup record but it doesn't satisfy the use case I have. In our instance, Connect chat is already activated and being used by employees to chat with the agents. With implementation of Agent Workspace, we don't want to change the employee experience, i.e., we would like the employees to still initiate the chat in the same (Connect) interface on the portal but in the backend that chat should pop up in Agent Workspace. Do you know of a way of making that work?

As far as I know, the chat needs to be initiated in Virtual Agent interface in the portal for it to pop up in the Agent Workspace for the agent in the backend.

Regards,

Tarun

[Sam Santo]

@Tarun Gupta Detailed information on how to setup Service Portal Agent Chat Configurations is provided on our product documentation site here.

[Francis Cavaciu]

Hi,
I haven't played with this much but I have a few suggestions for you.

A. If you only want the Virtual Agent icon to route the users to a live agent chat and you don't want to use the virtual agent for anything else on a specific page you could:

1. Create a virtual agent topic that does not ask any questions etc but just routes the user straight to a live agent chat (see docs for details on using virtual agent designer)
2. Once the topic is created make a note of the sys_id of the topic (this can be found in the url when you preview the topic)
3. Add the virtual agent widget to your portal page/pages as desired (see docs for details on editing portal pages)
4. Open the options schema for the individual instances of the widget (it's the pencil icon on the instance of the widget on the page when in the page designer) 
   
5. Then add the the following to the Virtual Agent Client URL Parameters field sysparm_topic=fc6eb2d12f2220107a1affecf699b682
   (replacing the sys_id in red with the topics sys_id that you created in step 1)
   
   
   
   
6. Then save the changes.

Now when clicked the Virtual Agent will directly open into the topic you created, routing your users straight to a live chat.

B. If you want to alternatively add a button similar to the link that you was previously available where by you could route users straight to a chat with a specific queue, you could add a html widget with a hyperlink to route them straight to the same topic as mentioned previous. To do this:

1. Create a virtual agent topic that does not ask any questions etc but just routes the user straight to a live agent chat (see docs for details on using virtual agent designer)
2. Once created make a note of the sys_id of the topic (this can be found in the url when you preview the topic)
3. Add a html widget to the relevant page/pages (see docs for details on editing portal pages)
4. Open the options schema of the instance of the widget on the page (as mentioned above)
5. Add a open the source code of the html and add a link to the topic like the example below (replacing the red sys_id with the sys_id of your topic). Format the link as you see fit
   
   <p><a href="$sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_topic=fc6eb2d12f2220107a1affecf699b682" target="_blank"><img style="max-width: 40%; max-height: 480px;" src="unanswered-question.svg" /></a></p>
   
   
   
   this is just a very simple link with an OOTB image from the db_image library (the text in green) that, when clicked, will open the virtual agent topic in a new window (thanks to the target ="_blank"). The only down side is that the target window will be the same size as the existing browser window so will look a bit big!!!
   If you want to make the target window open in a specific size etc then you will need to employ some more advanced code in the html (I found a good reference for this here) you will also need to whitelist any advanced code elements in the html sanitizer otherwise they will get stripped out on saving the html widget.
   
   

C. You can also surface links as Content Items in the catalog, this is similar to above but places the link in amongst other catalog items (I guess this isn't your use case but might be useful for others reading this article) (see the docs for more details on Content Items)

1. Create a virtual agent topic that does not ask any questions etc but just routes the user straight to a live agent chat (see docs for details on using virtual agent designer)
2. Once created make a note of the sys_id of the topic (this can be found in the url when you preview the topic)
3. Add a Content Item to the relevant Catalog and Category choosing the type as either:

• Catalog Content and edit the html as suggested above for the html
• External Content and enter the url as below (replacing the red topic sys_id)
  
  $sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_topic=fc6eb2d12f2220107a1affecf699b682
  
  FYI: the External Content type will allow you to specify that the link opens in a new tab but it does not appear to allow any advanced coding to define the target windows size etc.

One final point if you want to hit the virtual agent topic from an external source then you will need to add the full url like below (update the red text to match your needs):

https://your_instance.service-now.com/$sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_topic=fc6eb2d12f2220107a1affecf699b682

[stefaniesing]

Hi, 

Is it possible for Chat Agents to have visibility (not on a dashboard, but somewhere on the agent chat interface) into the chats that have been waiting the longest?

Thanks!

[Sam Santo]

@stefaniesing Advanced Work Assignment dashboard for interactions has an indicator for percentage of all interaction work items that have exceeded the target wait time. There are three reports for work item age including # of interaction work items that agents have accepted in the past hour, # of interactions work items that agents have abandoned in the past hour, and average amount of time that customers have spent waiting for an agent response in the past hour.

This information is captured in our detailed documentation here.

[stefaniesing]

Thank you!

[Sam Santo]

You're welcome! Happy to help!

[Andrea Elms]

Hello,

Is there something like the Follow function available and what about UI16, any changes there too?

 

Thank you

[Sam Santo]

Hi Andrea,

This article refers to the Connect Support product while the follow feature is apart of the Connect Chat product. The follow feature and Connect Chat will remain as is.

Thank you

[AJ36]

This is amazing