SoftTech AI Registry
ServiceNow · AI Agent Studio

Approval Assistance AI Agent

ServiceNow's Approval Assistance AI Agent retrieves approval requests requiring a user's attention, evaluates relevant record information and assists the user in making approval decisions. Approval or rejection remains an explicit user action.

Recorded characteristics

Function
The Approval Assistance AI Agent can retrieve a user's pending approval requests, present details of approval records, filter approvals by attributes such as request type or priority, generate a Gen AI checklist from configured knowledge base articles and policies to support decision making, and carry out approve or reject actions that the user instructs, including optional rejection comments.
Data access
ServiceNow documents that the agent works over Approvals [sysapproval_approver] records assigned to the signed-in user, and can retrieve current details of the underlying request or ticket where the user is permitted to read it. The fields displayed for an approval, and the knowledge base articles, policies and search sources used to generate the evaluation checklist, are set by administrators in the Approval Configuration record. Reading records in other tables that go through the approval process requires additional roles (for example sn_change_read for Change Request records) and, where records are restricted to an application scope, cross-scope privileges; AI-agent data-access configuration can also include roles needed to read underlying records (for example itil for Incident records). Access is therefore bounded by the roles and data-access configuration in place; unrestricted access to ServiceNow tables is not documented and must not be inferred.
Actions
Can take actions
External actions
Unknown
Human confirmation
Required
Permission basis
Not established
Administrative control
ADMINISTRATOR CONFIGURATION: ServiceNow documents that the agent must be activated in AI Agent Studio before it can be used; that the approval_admin and admin roles are required to configure the agent's display fields and knowledge base search fields; that the Approval Configuration record controls the fields displayed for an approval, the knowledge base search fields, and whether the evaluation checklist is generated Always, Never or Conditionally; that optional triggers can be defined (none are defined by default); that third-party agent access and AI-specialist access are off by default; that long-term memory is off by default; and that administrators may need to grant cross-scope privileges to the ServiceNow Otto Agents for Requester plugin. RUNTIME ACCESS CONTROLS: ServiceNow documents role masking to determine which users can access AI agents; end-user access to this agent requires the approver_user and sn_request_approver_read roles, with additional table roles as needed; and the documented agent configuration lists Agent roles (ACLs) snc_internal with Data access roles "Not defined". Administrative configuration authority is not treated as runtime execution authority.
Default state
Not established
Availability
ServiceNow documents the agent as accessible from AI Agent Studio under the AI Agents tab and usable through Virtual Agent, the ServiceNow Otto panel and Microsoft Teams. The documentation states the agent is installed with certain applications and that entitlements should be checked; broader availability is not established.
Licensing
Not established. The reviewed documentation states only that the agent is installed with certain applications and directs users to check their entitlements; it does not establish licensing terms for this capability.
External model or provider
Not established. The reviewed documentation does not identify a model or model provider for this capability.
Limitations and uncertainty
ESTABLISHED by current ServiceNow documentation: the agent retrieves pending approvals assigned to the current user, filters them and retrieves current details for a selected approval; it generates an evaluation/checklist from configured knowledge base articles and policies to support the approver's decision; approval and rejection operations are supported, including e-signature handling where applicable and optional rejection comments; in the documented Employee Center flow for supported REQ/RITM approvals the human selects Approve or Reject, the agent then asks whether it is okay to proceed, the human selects Yes or No, and only after Yes does the request get approved and move from Open to Completed; access is constrained by end-user roles (approver_user, sn_request_approver_read and additional table roles), role masking and AI-agent data-access configuration; and the records, channels and configuration behaviour available depend on deployment and the Approval Configuration record. NOT ESTABLISHED: the exact runtime security principal that performs the final approval-state database write - the documentation describes the approver's roles, the agent's ACL role (snc_internal) and undefined data-access roles, but does not state which of these authorises the write, so permission basis is recorded as not established rather than forced to a single mechanism; external operational action - the documented consequential operation changes a ServiceNow approval record, and availability through Microsoft Teams or third-party agent access is a channel/access matter, not proof that this agent executes a consequential write in an external system; a universal capability-level default state - activation in AI Agent Studio and sub-settings that are off by default (third-party access, AI-specialist access, long-term memory, no default triggers) do not establish whether the capability itself is enabled or disabled by default; whether every deployment, channel and record type uses exactly the same confirmation user experience as the documented Employee Center flow; and the model or model provider, and licensing terms, for this capability. The human-confirmation classification of required is bounded to the documented approval and rejection operations. Retrieval, filtering and checklist generation are read/generative steps and are not documented as requiring separate confirmation. This record concerns the Approval Assistance AI Agent only; the capabilities of other ServiceNow AI agents are not inherited.

Evidence