Agent Chat FAQs

Table of Contents:

Agent Chat

Install Agent Chat plugins

Available Features

Useful Resources

For more information

Where can I learn more about Agent Chat?

Where can I learn more about AWA?

Where can I learn more about Workspace?

Community Forum

Agent Chat:

What is Agent Chat?

With Agent Chat, agents can communicate with customers, create incidents, or case records, or transfer chats to another agent or queue. 

Agent Chat uses a persistent widget for chat conversations on any portal page of the portal that you're using.  

You can establish assignment rules to enable chat conversations to reach the best agent available who has the capacity and skills to handle the job.  

Through Agent Chat, agents communicate with customers, create incident or case records, or transfer chats to another agent or queue. Agents can use response templates to enable reusable, consistent messages to requesters. 

Is Agent Chant Supported in Next Experience? 
Yes, Agent Chat is embedded into Agent Workspace which is supported in Next Experience.

Does Agent Chat need a Workspace? 

Yes, Agent Chat needs a Workspace with the Agent Inbox included. The agents will use the workspace to view their incoming work via their inbox and to set their presence and Accept/Reject the work. All workspaces are supported within Next Experience.  ServiceNow provides many Workspaces, each targeted at a specific user. 

For example, agents using IT Service Management Workspace (ITSM) track and resolve IT issues. Agents using Customer Service Management Workspace (CSM) resolve customer cases, such as sending a piece of computer hardware to fulfill a customer's request using the Workspace. 

The Agent Chat widget is embedded within the Workspace, a configuration required for Workspace Agent Chat to enable:

• Customers to ask questions and receive information chatting with a live agent.
• Live agents communicate with customers, create incident or case records, or transfer chats to another agent or queue.   

Find more about Workspaces in Next Experience: 

Workspace Resources 

Workspace FAQs 

Workspace UI ServiceNow Documentation 

Setting up your Configurable Workspace 

Next Experience 

Does Agent chat require Advanced Work Assignment? 

Yes, Agent Chat does require Advanced Work Assignment.  The Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) routes the requestor chat to live agents' queues based on their group, availability, capacity, and skills. After determining which agent is best suited to handle the work, it then offers the work to the agent via the Agent Inbox within a workspace. For all questions about AWA please refer AWA FAQs 

Where to find Agent Chat Configuration details?

Find the ServiceNow doc for  Configuring Agent Chat

What is the difference between Agent Chat/” Live Agent” and Virtual Agent?

Virtual Agent is an automated “chatbot” experience.  Virtual Agent is most often deployed as the first level of a given user/requestors interaction to enable self-service of common support workflows.  Agent Chat is inherently a human-assisted engagement supporting end users/requestors. Live agent is not a product it is a terminology used for connecting to agents who connect live with end users. Virtual Agent is NOT required to use Agent Chat.

How to bypass Virtual Agent and transfer to a live agent automatically?

There are two ways to go to a live agent:

• First is by setting sys_parm = live_agent_only (<instance-name>/$sn-va-web- client.app.do?sysparm_live_agent_only=true.
• Second is in the CAF framework you can set a channel to be live_agent_only.

Can Teams users connect with Agents through Agent Chat?

Yes, With our Teams integration with Virtual Agent bot allow the Teams users to look for a Live agent and get connected to chat.

Can I use Connect Support on Workspace? 

No.  Connect Support is not available on Agent Workspace. Workspace is a new agent config console for fulfillers and agent chat is supported for messaging experience. 

How is Agent Chat different than Connect Support? 

Agent Chat uses Advanced Work Assignment to push incoming chats and other work items such as Cases and Incidents to agents based on skills, availability, capacity, and more.  

With Agent Chat you can:  

• Route more than just chats– Route conversations, cases, incidents, walk up, and more to agents based on skills, availability, and capacity. 
• Assign work more intelligently– Agent Affinity enables Pro customers to further define logic so that the same agent is assigned to a similar work item instead of orienting a new agent every time.  
• Connect customers to agents through multiple channels– Mobile, SMS, Facebook Workplace, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, etc (check with Wen on all the adapters we support).  
• Advanced monitoring– AWA dashboards enable managers to monitor important KPIs such as incoming work items, agent availability, and more.  

Feature highlights:  

• Download Chat transcripts 
• Agent Whisper 
• Dynamic Translations for Agent chat 
• Sensitive Data Handler 
• Auto Pilot  

Is Agent specific dashboard available? 

As of now, we have a dashboard for supervisors to monitor and look at all agent’s activity only using Advanced Work Assignment Operations Dashboard. ITSM is planning a digital workspace for an agent which is in the early stages.  

How does a manager manage agents and schedule work? 

Managers can manage teams and schedules in workspaces using Workforce Optimization. Manager Workforce plugin is needed to activate the manager workspace for the respective business need. Find more details here 

How do I activate Agent Chat/AWA? 

Activate the plugin for Agent Chat (com.glide.interaction.awa). 

Is Agent chat plugin containing Advanced work assignment plugins?

Yes. Agent chat plugin activates along with advanced work assignment.

Do all ServiceNow Workspaces support Agent Chat?

Yes, all ServiceNow Workspaces include support for Agent Chat and Advanced Work Assignment. Talk to SN account executive team to find a suitable Next Experience workspaces for your business need.

Can I use a 3rd party call center to route chats to Agent Chat? 

Yes, this capability is available using the AWA (Advanced Work Assignment) External Routing API. It provides an endpoint to route a chat to a queue if an active work item exists. If an active work item does not exist, create a work item and set its fields accordingly. 

Find available AWA APIs below: 

AWA Routing API 

AWA agent API 

AWA assignment API 

AWA Inbox Actions API 

How to handle idle live chats time in Agent Chat? 

To change the default idle chat timeout values, see add system properties. Add the com.glide.cs.idle_chat_reminder_timeout and the com.glide.cs.idle_chat_cancel_timeout properties to set the chat reminder message timeout and the idle chat cancel timeout values. Create both properties at the same time.  Find documentation to control idle live chat sessions. 

Where can the admin see the interaction chat logs?

Find the menu in the left navigation by searching with the keyword 'interaction' to find System Logs-> ‘Client interactions’.

Are Start Chat/Import Chat integrations applicable to Microsoft Teams?

Yes, these are integrations built for Microsoft teams. To find more click Here.

Customers can use this interface to facilitate communication between agents on a ticket. The primary use case for Start Chat and Import Chat was to facilitate fulfiller-to-requester communication, but it is possible to do fulfiller-to-fulfiller as well.

Is start Chat/ Import Chat the same as Agent Chat?

No, they are different products.

If I upgrade to Utah, will custom integrations to third-party platforms such as Slack still work?


Another reason to move to Agent Chat as a platform conversational interface offers prebuilt integrations to Slack, Teams, and Facebook Workplace.

How do I configure SMS chats with a Live Agent through Twilio?

Find the details in product documentation here and watch this helpful youtube video for the configuration details.

How do I transfer end users from a Virtual Agent conversation to a Live Agent? 

Conversations in Virtual Agent are transferred to a live agent in several ways. This transfer happens automatically when an unrecoverable error occurs, but it can also be triggered via a script in a topic or when manually selected by the user. To trigger a transfer to a live agent via script, use the vaSystem.connectToAgent() method. End users can also choose the Contact support option in the top menu and then select Contact Live Agent. 

To transfer to a live agent in a 3rd party channel, users can type the command “Hi” or “agent”. 

See documentation for more information click Transferring Virtual Agent conversations to a live agent.  

How do I configure separate Live Agent chat queues, for example between IT and HR support? 

If you are using Agent Workspace, the Virtual Agent conversation is automatically transferred to a qualified available agent, based on the Chat service channel configuration and the queues that the agent supports. Navigate to Chat Setup and specify “Agent Workspace” as the fulfiller UI for HR or ITSM. Routing is handled by Service Channels and queues within that channel. To configure this, navigate to Advanced Work Assignment > Settings > Service Channels.  

For more documentation on configuring service channels, see here.  

How to embed a static URL to open a live chat.

Yes, it is possible. In URL u can embed sys_parms variables.

Example: Sys_parm subject = ‘HR’ or ‘Email’.  Based on the subject text containing ‘HR’ or ‘Email’ determine when to connect to an agent.

Can guest chat user (who is off the network) connect to a direct live agent?

It is possible, there is no standard authentication mechanism available for guest chat users but Agent, in general, can ask authentication questions to verify the user before providing details. It depends on the agent to manage based on your company policies.

Can a chat transcript be downloadable?

Yes, both internal and external chat transcripts copies are downloadable.

Please click to  find more details - download the chat transcript

An agent can see both private and public chat transcripts in the interactions table for the respective interaction.

Can a chat transcript automatically related/link to the interaction record?

Yes, when an agent ends a chat interaction, the chat transcript is automatically related/link to the interaction record. It will be visible for another agent who is looking into the same ticket and can see the previous agent's comments/history. 

Is data masking available for agent chat?

As of now, we have passive data masking and secure data masking.

• Passive data masking: Mask the data and not Store the masked data.
• Sensitive data masking: mask sensitive data in a way that you can see and store, but data is stored masked.
  • Out-of-the-box masking is available for – SSN, credit card number, …etc. masking. customers can also customize.    
    

Is Sidebar different than Agent Chat?

Yes, both are different products.

Agent Chat is requestor to full-filler interactions and Sidebar is peer-to-peer interactions within the same system.

Agents can also start discussions during live interactions to get help from others agents or subject matter experts using Sidebar. Sidebar is supported OOTB in a few workspaces. Please work with ServiceNow account executive team to find more details of a suitable workspace. Find more details about Sidebar and Sidebar FAQs.

What is Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat (DTAC) is it the same as Dynamic Translation (DT)? 

Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat and Dynamic Translation are technically two different products. 

Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat translates live chat conversations from one language to another. Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat enables agents and requesters to have chat conversations with each other, without the need for a shared language.  

Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat requires a Pro license as well as a subscription to a translation service. For more information about how to setup Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat, please visit:  

• YouTube: Dynamic Translation | Agent Chat 
• Prod Docs: Configuring Dynamic Translation in Agent Chat   

Dynamic Translation is available for other platform features. 

How many languages are supported by Dynamic Translation? 

There is no specific answer. It depends on the translation service (IBM vs Google vs MS).  

Below are the helpful links to figure out if the desired language is supported: 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/business/languages/ 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/Translator/language-support 
https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-translation-models 
https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/languages?hl=en 

Install Agent Chat plugins:

Install the following plugins:

• Agent Chat plugin (COM.GLIDE.INTERACTION.AWA)
• Agent workspace plugin (COM.AGENT_WORKSPACE). Agent workspace is also included in the Agent Chat plugin.
• AWA Plugin (COM.GLIDE.AWA). AWA is also included in the Agent chat plugin.

Available Features: 

 Find available capabilities in our documentation:

Agent Chat available features and Using Agent Chat in Conversational Interfaces

Useful Resources:

Migrate from Connect support to Agent Chat

Using Connect Support for one application and Agent Chat for another (same instance)

FAQ for Connect Chat and Connect Support

HR Agent Workspace - Your FAQs Answered!

Setting up Agent Chat in a legacy workspace

Agent Chat for Customer Service Management Configurable Workspace

Configure the Agent inbox in Service Operations Workspace

Using Agent Chat in Conversational Interfaces

Advanced Work Assignment documentation

Agent Chat YouTube Playlist

For more Information: 

Where can I learn more about Agent Chat?   

Visit the product documentation site: Agent Chat  

Where can I learn more about Workspace?   

Visit the product documentation site: Workspace

Where can I learn more about AWA?   

Visit the product documentation site: Advanced Work Assignment documentation

Community Forum:

• Visit our community forum for Agent Chat and AWA: Link 
• Subscribe to our bi-weekly Academy videos: Link 
• Catch up on our past Knowledge labs: Link