How to govern ServiceNow Now Assist
AI summarising tickets, drafting replies and routing work across IT and HR service desks.
ServiceNow · Reviewed quarterly, and when the vendor ships a capability change or a customer declares the tool · Last reviewed 16 Oct 2026
Governance change Reviewed the Brazil release summary, updated 8 October. The assistant is now branded Otto. Autonomous agents create change requests and submit catalog requests, Desktop Actions let agents operate macOS applications and browsers with stored credentials, and MCP servers let external AI clients read and modify incidents, changes and approvals. AI Control Tower adds department blocks, a kill-switch role, trace retention of up to 30 days, and connections to Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft and Amazon. New instances deny agent access by default. Full changelog ↓How ServiceNow Now Assist is used
We see four common ways businesses use ServiceNow Now Assist, and we govern each one on its own terms. If your team uses it differently, that is fine: you describe the use in your own words and Certrak works out the governance from what it actually does.
General productivity assistance
Consequence to people: MediumDrafting, summarising, brainstorming, internal Q&A - day-to-day help with internal work
Customer communications drafting
Consequence to people: HighDrafting customer emails, support replies, or other outbound communications - reviewed before sending
Customer-facing chatbot or automated support
Consequence to people: HighInteracting with customers directly, without a person reviewing each response
Workflow automation across systems
Consequence to people: MediumAutomating tasks across business systems - triggers, data movement, decisions in workflows
Governing ServiceNow Now Assist in practice
- Name one person who owns ServiceNow Now Assist in your business. Governance starts with a name.
- Write down what ServiceNow Now Assist is used for. Certrak recognises 4 common uses: General productivity assistance, Customer communications drafting, Customer-facing chatbot or automated support and Workflow automation across systems. Yours may differ; write down yours.
- Decide what ServiceNow Now Assist may and may not be given. Personal information is in scope for some uses; write the boundary down before it is needed.
- There is no human review of outputs. Decide whether that is acceptable for each use, and what would make you change it.
- ServiceNow Now Assist can create, change, or delete records in another system and send messages outside the business without a person approving. Record which of these you allow, and who can change that.
- Look at this again every month, and sooner on any of these: industry incidents, vendor model updates, autonomy level changes and data classification changes.
What changed, and how Certrak responded
We record every check here, including the ones that changed nothing. A check that found no governance change proves we looked.
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Governance change Scheduled review
Brazil release notes: summary of new features
ServiceNow shipped it 8 Oct 2026.
Reviewed the Brazil release summary, updated 8 October. The assistant is now branded Otto. Autonomous agents create change requests and submit catalog requests, Desktop Actions let agents operate macOS applications and browsers with stored credentials, and MCP servers let external AI clients read and modify incidents, changes and approvals. AI Control Tower adds department blocks, a kill-switch role, trace retention of up to 30 days, and connections to Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft and Amazon. New instances deny agent access by default.
How Certrak responded: Where Now Assist is used for everyday work, customer communications or automation, agents can now change records and act in applications without a person starting each step. Owners are asked whether autonomous agents or Desktop Actions are active; if they are, the system is treated as making changes on its own and the matching controls apply.