Week 6: AI Essentials within ServiceNow Platform

This week I leveled up on the AI side of ServiceNow — AI Essentials, the Agentic AI Executive Micro-Credential, and three hands-on labs building and configuring AI Agents. TL;DR: I now know how to make ServiceNow smarter and keep it honest. 

First, the "why should we" before the "can we"

AI Essentials didn't just teach me how AI works — it taught me when it shouldn't. Bias, transparency, accountability — the course treated responsible AI as a real skill, not a footnote. So now when I look at automating something, I'm asking "should we, and how do we do it right?" not just "can we?"

Then I met Now Assist AI Agents. 

Think of it as a digital coworker that handles everything from quick automated replies to genuinely complex problem-solving — freeing up human agents to focus where they're actually needed. It's less "AI replacing the team" and more "AI that knows when to tag itself in and when to tag a human in."

Going deeper: Agentic AI. 

The Agentic AI Executive Micro-Credential took things further — this isn't AI as a tool you point and click. It's AI as an actor that can plan, adapt, and execute on its own. 

And then I built one myself. 

Three labs, hands-on:

• Build an Agent — Watched an agent adjust its own actions mid-task as an incident changed in real time. Genuinely cool to see in action.

• Configuring AI Agents — Learned how Now Assist and Virtual Agent work together to orchestrate work across an org.

• AI Agent Admin — Because someone has to keep these agents in line once they're live.

The takeaway: Good agentic AI doesn't just run a script — it reads the room and adjusts. Pair that with responsible-AI guardrails, and that's where the real value is for any org running ServiceNow.

Week 7 is already in motion — stay tuned. 👀