In August 2026, we introduce (finally!) the ability to export an AI agent to update set. This allows us to move our AI agent configuration into XML payloads that can be freely imported to another instance.

This won’t be all that interesting for seasoned ServiceNow administrators, who live and breathe moving configuration changes in update sets, but could be helpful for AI agent builder personas, that are less experienced with ServiceNow development and administration.

 

Prerequisites

For this tutorial, I’m running the following setup on my source instance:

• Australia Patch 5
• ServiceNow Otto Platform Prime [sn_aia_plat_prm] 2.2.0
• ServiceNow Otto AI Agents [sn_aia] 8.2.11

Export

Login as an AI agent admin user, with the sn_aia.admin role.

 

Go to the AI Agent Studio. Go to the AI agents sub-tab. Locate your AI agent record:

 

 

Select your AI agent. Navigate to the last page of the setup, Select channels and status. Then select the Create new update set button:

 

 

You’ll see a popup modal window like this. Note the disclaimers around what is NOT included in this update set:

 

Select the Create button to finish the export process. Your update set is created in the Complete state:

 

 

This is the end of the journey from the perspective of the AI agent admin user, as the update set administration is handled by a ServiceNow System Administrator, with the admin role.

 

Login as a System Administrator. Go to System Update Sets > Local Update Sets :

 

 

Select the update set that was generated from AI Agent Studio to view the artifacts and Customer Updates [sys_update_xml]:

 

 

Select the Export to XML related link if you want to move to an XML file:

 

 

You should have an XML file downloaded to your local folder, per your browser settings. Note that the file name of the update set in your local directory will appear with the sys_id of the update set, so something like:

 

sys_remote_update_set_e58c74fb2b2a4b109675f1cfe291bf9b

 

Import from XML

In your target instance, login as a System Administrator. Go to System Update Sets > Retrieved Update Sets:

 

 

Under Related Links , go to Import Update Set from XML :

 

 

Choose the file on local where your exported XML is, and select Upload :

 

 

After the update set is loaded:

 

 

Preview and commit the update set as per the normal process:

 

 

 

Go to AI Agent Studio and confirm that the AI agent was committed successfully. Always test again!

 

 

Miscellaneous

• Agentic Workflows [sn_aia_usecase] have update set support as well, the procedure is identical to what we show here:

• AI agent artifacts from differing application scopes are not supported as part of this export process, as least as of today.
• Re-exporting update sets, by creating the same AI agent’s update set over and over again, is supported. If you make a change to the AI agent, and re-export, you’ll have the cumulative, latest and greatest configuration.
• The default update set name includes the timestamp of the export in HH:mm:ss format. Your local OS may not support the “:” character in file names, so if you’re expecting to match XML file name with the update set name, you may be inconvenienced.

Resources

System Update Sets: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/application-development/system-update-sets/system-update-sets.html