As Microsoft works to enable AI at the enterprise level, our focus is on building sophisticated productivity tools that integrate with our ecosystem of partners. For example, during last year’s Microsoft Ignite conference, we provided an early preview of how ServiceNow’s integration with Microsoft Copilot would bring generative AI capabilities to IT and employee experiences. I recently had the pleasure of joining ServiceNow’s President and Chief Operating Officer CJ Desai on stage at the company’s marquee event, Knowledge 2024 in Las Vegas, to unveil three compelling scenarios that fulfill the promise of Copilot and Now Assist, ServiceNow’s generative AI experience.
Now Assist AI delivers direct, relevant, and conversational responses to employee requests, and connects exchanges to AI-powered workflows on ServiceNow’s platform to take actions on behalf of the employee. I’ll share more on how we’ve integrated Copilot and Now Assist to supercharge the workforce using the scenarios from Knowledge 2024, but first let’s discuss the extensibility model used by ServiceNow for the integration.
There are various ways to extend Copilot, which provide the starting point for partners looking to harness AI and bring Copilot capabilities to your apps. We are also working on a new approach to extensibility that makes it possible for independent software vendors (ISVs) to bring their own generative AI technologies into Copilot experiences and hand off users to their own third-party copilots, ensuring user experiences and workflows are streamlined. ServiceNow is taking advantage of this new option by allowing users to execute ServiceNow workflows via Now Assist to improve employee productivity and deliver an improved experience.
“Today’s news marks a new chapter in the way businesses will operate,” says Dorit Zilbershot, VP of AI Product Experiences at ServiceNow. "With Microsoft as our partner, we’re enabling a smarter way to work, where generative AI assistants can cohabitate and interact to unlock new levels of productivity.”
Now, let’s take a closer look at how Copilot and Now Assist can help unlock the value of enterprise knowledge and turn information into action. The following three scenarios demonstrate Now Assist and Copilot working together to produce efficiencies in employee service management tasks, including IT, HR (human resources), and more, focusing on a knowledge worker we’ll call Daniela.
Scenario 1: Leveraging Copilot and a Now Assist knowledge base
For this first scenario, Daniela was away from the office last week and needs to catch up. She opens a Microsoft Teams chat with Copilot and asks about what she missed. Copilot combs through her chats, meetings, emails, and calendars and combines that information with the power of Microsoft Graph to compile a summary of the most important updates, like an assistant at her fingertips. Copilot shows Daniela that a coworker confirmed delivery of a sales report, a colleague praised her in a company-wide email, and that her laptop crashed three times and IT is requesting her log files.
Daniela wonders if it’s time for a new laptop and asks Copilot about her company’s device replacement policy. Copilot intuitively connects her to Now Assist, which creates a customized response based on what ServiceNow knows about her current laptop, also leveraging ServiceNow’s knowledge articles to check whether she can get a new one. Daniela now has the information she needs to take action.
Scenario 2: Ordering a new laptop with Copilot and Now Assist
Now let’s look at how Copilot and Now Assist automate business processes.
Based on the eligibility information provided by Copilot and Now Assist, Daniela decides to order a new laptop. Rather than going to her team admin, she simply tells Copilot to order a new laptop. Copilot automatically hands off the request, with all the relevant context, to Now Assist, which prompts Daniela to initiate the ordering process right within Teams with the click of the “Start Order” button. This seamless handoff between Copilot and Now Assist helps make this process more efficient and streamlined.
Now Assist walks Daniela through the ordering process step by step, enabling her to customize her laptop according to her specific needs. Now Assist asks her what kind of laptop she wants, provides a variety of options from the company’s preselected models, offers a choice of screen size, and then confirms the shipping location.
Finally, Now Assist displays a summary of her order, with options to submit or make changes. The combined power of Copilot, Now Assist, and Teams helped Daniela move quickly through the ordering process while staying right within her flow of work.
Scenario 3: Connecting to a live ServiceNow agent to change delivery
Of course, there are times when you still need to connect with a real person. Let’s see how Copilot and Now Assist can enhance the live support experience.
Daniela decides she wants to take next Wednesday off, so she asks Copilot to tell her what meetings she has that day. Copilot provides her schedule and reminds her that her new Surface laptop is due to be delivered. Daniela realizes she won’t be home, so she tells Copilot that she needs to hold the delivery until Thursday. The laptop has already left the warehouse, so updating shipping instructions requires human support.
Copilot connects her with Now Assist, which provides her with an option to start a chat with a support team member. Daniela initiates the chat, and the agent receives all the prior context from her previous request. Daniela explains her issue, and the agent updates the shipping information to have it held for an extra day.
So, we’ve seen how Copilot, Now Assist, and Teams all work together in harmony to empower employees with enterprise knowledge, automate business processes, and enhance person-to-person interactions to help improve productivity. Now, in comparison, think about the time-intensive manual processes that exist in most enterprises today. How long would it take, and how many people would need to be involved, for an employee to catch up on their critical items, check a company IT policy, order a new laptop, and adjust that order?
By bringing Copilot and Now Assist together, Daniela was able to accomplish several tasks in a matter of minutes using only natural language prompts in chat. That frees her up to focus on her core responsibilities and lightens the load for an IT agent, an HR employee, or an admin—or possibly all of them—to devote more time to high-value work. The effects of generative AI are broad, and they accumulate as more employees adopt these exciting technologies.
I hope these scenarios have been enlightening for partners. Think of the many ways your apps and solutions already benefit your customers, and then envision all the potential uses that could come from joining forces with Copilot to bring generative AI to their everyday work. We will continue to build on our ecosystem approach and enable ISVs to integrate with Copilot in unique and valuable ways. We look forward to working with you.
For more information about Copilot and ServiceNow, follow the links below.