Am I using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a Virtual Agent Service Portal widget?

[Mark Roethof]

Hi there,

Working with the Virtual Agent web client, are you aware if you are using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget? It's an important question to know, not only when posting a question on the Now Community 🙂 Because I am asking this regularly on the Now Community when someone posts a question Virtual Agent web client related, and because I noticed a flaw recently on a Virtual Agent Academy... let's write an article on this!

Service Portal Agent Chat configuration versus (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget

So why it is actually important to know which method you are using? Several reasons are thinkable, one for example when wanting to apply different branding. Creating your own branding record is pretty clear, though how to apply it depends on if you are using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget. Or another example, you might think you are using an embedded (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget and added URL parameters though nothing is happening... that could well be because you are actually using both Service Portal Agent Chat configuration AND a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget. That's not uncommon seeing all Now Community posts, though also a recent Virtual Agent Academy episode.

Which method is used: Shortcut

A first indication for identifying if you are using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget or both, could be the Unread messages icon. Below I'll show three different variations.

1. The first one, shows the modern Unread messages icon. This one you will only see when using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration.

2. The second one, shows the old Unread messages icon. This one you can see when using the out-of-the-box Virtual Agent Service Portal widget. You might also see it on cloned widgets, depending on how many customizations were done.

3. The third one (which is a screen capture of the Virtual Agent Academy mentioned), shows actually the old Unread messages icon behind the web client icon (when toggled). This indicates that multiple Virtual Agent web clients are used, most likely Service Portal Agent Chat configuration AND a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget.

Which method is used: More reliable way

Other more reliable ways to identify if you are using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget are:

1. Navigating to Service Portal > Agent Chat, and search for active records with in the portal field your portal mentioned (or an empty portal field!).

2. Open the current Portal page in the Service Portal Designer, for example through CTRL + Righ mouse click > Page in Designer. Investigate if there is a Virtual Agent related widget instance applied.

3. Navigating to Service Portal > Portals, select your Portal, on the portal record opened open the associated Theme, on the theme opened open the associated Header or Footer and investigate the Body HTML template field for an embedded Virtual Agent related widget.

Result

Having applied the methods above, you should have been able to identify if you are using Service Portal Agent Chat configuration or a (legacy) Virtual Agent Service Portal widget or... both!

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And that's it. If any questions, let me know!

👍	If this post helped you in any way, I would appreciate it if you hit bookmark or mark it as helpful. Interested in more articles, blogs, videos, and Share projects on Virtual Agent I published? - Virtual Agent

Kind regards,
Mark
2020-2022 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020-2022 ServiceNow Developer MVP

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[Wai Kuen Ko]

Seems like Service Portal Agent Chat configuration is having a lot more limitation on branding at the moment. A lot of branding features listed in the forum is not applicable to Service Portal Agent Chat configuration.