What IT services does AIATS provide?

AIATS provides comprehensive IT services including 24/7 helpdesk support, cloud solutions (AWS & Azure), business telecoms, network infrastructure, cybersecurity, disaster recovery, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and ServiceNow implementation for UK businesses.

Where is AIATS located and what areas do you serve?

AIATS is headquartered in Swanley, Kent, and serves businesses across London, the South East, and the wider UK. We provide both on-site and remote IT support depending on your needs.

Do you offer a free IT evaluation?

Yes, AIATS offers a free, no-obligation IT evaluation where our experts assess your current infrastructure, identify opportunities for improvement, and provide a detailed roadmap with transparent pricing.

What is your response time for IT support requests?

Our consultants typically respond within 2 business hours for standard requests. For critical issues, we provide 24/7 monitoring and emergency support with rapid response times.

What industries does AIATS specialise in?

We serve Healthcare & NHS, Finance & Banking, Legal & Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail & E-Commerce, Education, Logistics, Media & Entertainment, Real Estate, and Hospitality sectors.

Are you certified in cloud platforms like AWS and Azure?

Yes, our team holds certifications across major platforms including AWS, Microsoft Azure, ServiceNow, Cisco, and VMware. We are trusted partners for cloud migrations, management, and optimisation.

What is your uptime guarantee?

We maintain a 99.9% uptime across our managed services, with zero unplanned outages in the past 12 months. Our proactive monitoring ensures your business stays connected 24/7.

How do you ensure data security and compliance?

We implement enterprise-grade security measures including Zero Trust architecture, firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection, and regular security audits. We help businesses achieve compliance with GDPR, ISO 27001, and Cyber Essentials.

ServiceNow AI Search: Enterprise Search, Generative Answers and Agent Workflows

Search is the backbone of useful agents

ServiceNow AI Search is the retrieval layer behind modern Now Assist experiences: portal search, generative answers, Virtual Agent grounding and many agent skills. If retrieval is wrong, every downstream agent looks “dumb.”

This article covers how UK enterprises should configure AI Search as a product — tied to knowledge, catalogue and agent workflows — with a light note on SDK/Fluent hooks for custom sourcing. It is not a full SDK guide.

Automation and knowledge work

What AI Search provides

Unified search across configured sources (knowledge, catalogue, curated tables, external where licensed/configured)
Relevance tuning and facet experiences for employees
Generative answers grounded in retrieved snippets (with citations when configured correctly)
A foundation for Now Assist and AI Agent Studio skills that must “look things up” before acting

Tie search to knowledge and catalogue

Source	Role in AI answers
Knowledge	How-to, known errors, policy
Service Catalogue	Orderable requests — prefer fulfilment over free-text advice
Custom tables	Only curated, ACL-safe content
External (where used)	Explicit ownership and freshness SLAs

Rules of thumb:

Generative answers should prefer catalogue when the intent is “I need something”
Knowledge must have owners, review dates and ACLs — stale KB is the top cause of bad answers
Exclude junk: old HR drafts, duplicate KBs, test catalogue items

Generative answers done safely

Enable only on sources you trust.
Require citations in user-visible answers where the product allows.
Define fallback: “No confident source — create ticket / talk to agent.”
Log question, retrieved docs and user feedback for weekly tuning.
Block answers that would disclose content the user cannot ACL-read — platform search should respect security; verify with test users.

How agents consume AI Search

User question
   → AI Search retrieval (ACL-aware)
   → Generative answer OR agent plan
   → Optional tool: create request / incident
   → Feedback loop (helpful / not)

In AI Agent Studio, prefer a dedicated search skill over stuffing entire KB text into prompts. In MCP scenarios, expose search_knowledge that calls the same governed retrieval — do not invent a parallel crawler.

Custom hooks (SDK / Fluent — briefly)

When you need custom indexed content or glue:

Use scoped apps to own scripted data sources or integration points — keep them in Git via Fluent / SDK where your team is code-first
Review ACLs on any new searchable table as carefully as a public API
Avoid duplicating the full SDK implementation guide: treat Fluent as the way to version search-related metadata and server modules, then follow your normal build / install pipeline

Custom hooks are for gaps — not for bypassing knowledge governance.

30-day improvement plan

Week 1 — Top 50 portal queries: measure zero-result and unhelpful-answer rates.
Week 2 — Fix content: merge duplicates, archive stale KB, align catalogue synonyms.
Week 3 — Tune AI Search ranking / synonyms; re-test generative answers with citations.
Week 4 — Wire the improved retrieval into one L1 agent skill; compare deflection.

Expert view

AI Search is not a checkbox on the Now Assist install guide. It is an operating capability: content owners, freshness SLAs, ACL tests and query analytics. Teams that invest here make every agent — in-platform or MCP — look smarter without raising autonomy risk.

Key takeaways

AI Search grounds Now Assist and agent skills — treat it as a product.
Prefer catalogue fulfilment for request intents; keep KB fresh and owned.
Require citations and safe fallbacks for generative answers.
Reuse the same retrieval for Agent Studio and MCP search tools.
Use SDK/Fluent only for versioned custom hooks — not to bypass governance.