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Service Assistant Frequently Asked Questions
Review frequently asked questions about Service Assistant.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
- What permissions, licenses, and editions are required?
- Can I Access Service Assistant in the New Agentforce Builder?
- What type of agent is Service Assistant?
- Can I use Agent Script?
- Does Service Assistant have preconfigured topics?
- Does Service Assistant support Agentforce Actions?
- Can I have multiple Service Assistant agents?
- Can I test Service Assistant in the Agentforce Testing Center or Agentforce Builder?
- Does Service Assistant support context variables?
- What features are used in Service Assistant?
- Does Knowledge Grounding Through Agentforce Data Librires incoporate my ful knoweldge articles?
- Are there prerequisites?
- How am I billed for Service Assistant?
- Is Data 360 Required?
- Is Data Cloud One Supported?
- What type of Agent is Service Assistant?
- Can Service Assistant work with an Agentforce Service Agent?
- What objects does Service Assistant support?
- What channels does Service Assistant support?
- What languages does Service Assistant support?
- How do I secure my Case data?
- Does Service Assistant have preconfigured topics?
- Does Service Assistant support Agentforce Actions?
- Are data retrievers supported?
- Can I add service plan data to prompt templates?
- Is the similar cases feature a grounding source?
- Does Service Assistant support translation?
- What Quick Actions are supported?
- What’s the difference between Quick Action instructions and Topic instructions?
- How do I write Quick Action instructions?
- Service Assistant is only supported in the legacy Agentforce Builder. Agentforce script isn’t supported.
- Beginning in April 2026, agent topics are now called subagents. There are no changes to functionality. During this transition, you may see a mix of the new and previous terms in our documentation.
What permissions, licenses, and editions are required?
Review Permissions and Licensing for Service Assistant. Service Assistant requires standard and custom permission sets based on the features you use. Additionally, each user requires a user role.
What type of agent is Service Assistant?
Service Assistant is an assistive agent in the form of a Lighnting web component embeded on the case record page. It provides a checklist of case resolution steps.
The resolution guidance is fully grounded in your company data through multiple features, like Service AI Grounding, Agentforce topics and instructions, and knowledge articles through Agentforce Data Libraries.
Service Assistant isn’t considered an Employee Agent type and isn’t autonomous or conversational. The agent has its own type and a template: Service Assistant. It’s available for selection in the Agentforce Creator only when you have the required licensing and permissions.
Can I Access Service Assistant in the New Agentforce Builder?
No. Service Assistant is only supported in the legacy Agentforce Builder.
Does Service Assistant have preconfigured topics?
No. You must create your own Topics. In Service Assistant, topics and instructions contain your company’s specific guidance for resolving a particular case. See Grounding Service Assistant with Topics.
Does Service Assistant support Agentforce Actions?
No. Actions are specific tasks that AI agents complete for users, such as creating a case or sending an email. Service Assistant doesn’t complete any direct actions for the customer or service rep. Instead, all steps in a service plan and any actions required for those steps are carried out directly by the service rep. If you add any Agentforce actions, they’re used only as additional grounding and treated like instructions. We don’t provide reference guidance for Agentforce actions in Service Assistant.
Can I test Service Assistant in the Agentforce Testing Center or Agentforce Builder?
Service plans can't be tested in the Agentforce Builder or Agentforce Testing Center because Service Assistant provides service plans through a Lightning web component on the Case record page. To test the accuracy of your service plans, you must draft service plans on case records. In the Agentforce Builder, you can only perform a general sanity check that your topics and instructions are being selected based on your input. See Test Service Assistant.
What features are used in Service Assistant?
To create a service plan that’s specific to your company, Service Assistant is grounded in your Salesforce data from several sources.
- Your service policies and practices transcribed in Agentforce subagents and instructions (required)
- Case data from Service AI Grounding (required)
- Knowledge articles through Agentforce Data Libraries (optional)
- Quick Actions that provide automation for service reps to complete plan steps (optional)
- Messaging and voice records (optional)
Agentforce actions aren’t required in Service Assistant. Service Assistant doesn’t complete any direct actions for the customer or service rep. Instead, all steps in a service plan and any actions required for those steps are carried out directly by the service rep. If you add any actions, they’re treated like instructions. We don't provide reference guidance for actions in Service Assistant.
Does Knowledge Grounding Through Agentforce Data Librires incoporate my ful knoweldge articles?
Not every detail from your articles appear in service plans, including full ordered procedures. Service Assistant summarizes content for clear, succinct resolution guidance. The exact step-by-step content of your articles aren’t surfaced direclty in service plans. Procedural steps may be omitted, condensed, or combined into a single step
Are there prerequisites?
- You must Enable Einstein Generative AI, Agentforce, and Service AI grounding. See Setup Service Assistant.
- You must set eligibility criteria, which are a set of requirements that determine whether a case is eligible for a service plan. Eligibility criteria provide you with control over what cases must have a service plan. See Service Plan Eligibility Criteria.
- If you use knowledge grounding, you must provision and turn on Data 360. See Turn On Data 360.
- As a recommended prerequisite, evaluate and prepare your company’s data so you don’t have to gather information or make decisions during setup. Prep work includes determining your use cases, preparing your topics and instructions, and evaluating your knowledge articles. See Get Ready for Service Assistant.
How am I billed for Service Assistant?
Service Assistant is a consumption-based product that utilizes Flex Credits, Einstein Requests, and Data 360 credits. Feature consumption and billing differ between the Agentforce for Service and Einstein for Service licenses.
Is Data 360 Required?
Data 360 isn’t required to draft service plans using only topics and instructions. You don’t need Data 360 turned on. However, the Service Assistant agent user (ServicePlanner User) requires the Data Cloud User permission set to draft service plans. To have access to the permission set, you must have Data 360 provisioned.
If you ground Service Assistant in your Knowledge base using Agentforce Data Libraries or want to show a list of similar cases in the component, Data 360 must be turned on.
Is Data Cloud One Supported?
Yes. You can set up Service Assistant in any Data Cloud One companion org. All Service Assistant features are available for setup and use in companion orgs.
However, setting up knowledge grounding and similar cases requires modified steps. Currently, we only provide guidance on setting up similar cases in your companion org. Information about set up and use of knowledge grounding in your companion org is to be provided in a future update.
What type of Agent is Service Assistant?
Service Assistant is an AI agent in the form of a Lightning web component built for service reps to help them work and resolve cases faster. It’s not an autonomous or conversational agent.
The agent has its own type and a template: Service Assistant. It’s available for selection in the Agentforce Creator when you have the required licensing and permissions. Service Assistant isn’t considered an Employee Agent type.
Can Service Assistant work with an Agentforce Service Agent?
There’s no direct interactions between the AI agents. Service Assistant supports only drafting service plans for Cases created from Agentforce Service Agent. These case types include Email-to-Case and Messaging for In-App and Web.
What channels does Service Assistant support?
Service Assistant isn’t supported in Service Cloud channels. It’s available only on the Case record page.
What languages does Service Assistant support?
By default, Service Assistant drafts all service plans your company’s preferred language. Although Salesforce offers a wide range of options for your company's default language, Service Assistant is limited to the specific subset of languages supported by Prompt Builder. See Supported Languages in Prompt Builder.
In addition, you can turn on and set up Real-Time Translations to translate service plans into your service reps’ preferred language.
- Reference Guide: Service Plan Translation
- Set Up Steps: Set Up Service Plan Translation
How do I secure my Case data?
All service plans are drafted according to the permissions of the ServicePlanner User (the agent user). This means that the field, object, and sharing service reps have don’t apply to the content included in a service plan. Service can see information that they don’t have direct access to. See Grounding Data Access.
- Configure all grounding sources according to your company’s security standards. This ensures that the service reps only see information in a the plan that they have access too.
- When you’re using Service AI grounding, ground only on fields that you want service reps to see.
- Service Assistant supports all optional data masking features in the Einstein Trust Layer. It’s recommended that you customize these features to your company’s security standards.
Are data retrievers supported?
When grounding Service Assistant in your Knowledge base with Agentforce Data Libraries, Service Assistant officially supports only the Knowledge data type. It’s the only certified knoweldge data type for Service Assistant.
While you can set up and test the Data Retriever, File Upload, or Web Search data types, we haven’t certified it for use. We don’t offer guidance for their use in Service Assistant.
Can I add service plan data to prompt templates?
You can setup and configure the Summarize Case and Draft Service Plan Email prompt templates. These templates help service reps draft emails, case posts, and case comments with key details from both the case and service plan using invocable actions. We provide you setup guidance and recommended configurations. See Set Up the Summarize Case Prompt Template and Set Up the Draft Service Plan Email Prompt Template.
You can also use the Get Service Plan Enhanced Data invocable action in Record Summary, Flex, and custom prompt templates. We don’t provide guidance on how to add or configure the data action in these template types.
Is the similar cases feature a grounding source?
No. The list of similar cases in the Service Assistant component is only a reference tool. The list of similar cases provides service reps additional support while working a case to quickly access relevant past cases. The listed cases aren't used as a grounding sources during service plan creation. See Set Up Similar Cases
Does Service Assistant support translation?
Yes, service plans are automatically translated in your company’s preferred language when that language is supported by Prompt Builder. Service Plans plans can be translated into your service reps preferred language if you have Real-Time Translation enabled.
Does Service Assistant Support URLs?
No. If you have URLs in your subagent instructions or your knowledge articles, the URLs aren’t rendered in the steps of a service plan.
What Quick Actions are supported?
Service Assistant supports several custom and standard Case object quick actions. Quick actions must be added to your Case Layout to be available for use in Service Assistant. The Agent Quick Action type isn’t supported.
| Quick Action Type | Supported Quick Actions | Required Permissions |
| Standard Case object |
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| Custom Case object |
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What’s the difference between Quick Action instructions and Topic instructions?
Topic instructions define your service polices and practices for working a particular Case. They form the high-level, sequential steps of the service plan based on your service. Here's an example.
- Name: Billing Issue
- Instruction: For customer questions regarding anything related to a billing issue, first verify the transaction details in the payment system.
Quick action instructions define what it is and how it completes a specific task for a business process. They also specify any conditions, outcomes, or requirements for its use. Here's an example.
- Name: Initiate Billing Dispute
- Instruction: Launches a flow to document and submit a customer’s billing dispute. This action must be used when a customer reports an incorrect or unrecognized charge on their account.
Both instructions work together to help Service Assistant determine when and why the quick action is matched to a specific topic and its instructions and then shown in a service plan step. See Quick Actions in Service Assistant.
How do I write Quick Action instructions?
An effective quick action requires following two guidelines.
| Guideline | Details | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Provide a descriptive and specific name that reflect the action’s purpose. | The name states the exact use case, providing far more context than a generic name. The more specific the name, the better context Service Assistant has about the action's purpose. | Name: Mark Order As Shipped |
| Provide specificity in the quick action instruction | Instructions are tailored to a particular workflow of a general business processes. The instruction serves to:
|
Instruction: Updates the Status field on the order record to a specified value. This action is intended for use after an order is fulfilled and the package is dispatched with a carrier. |
It’s important that quick action instructions have specificity. Service Assistant relies on the instruction to match the quick action to the right plan step. See these documents for further details and examples.
