Zing vs. AI Search in ServiceNow

Zing vs. AI Search in ServiceNow

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
- Helen Keller

Zing vs. AI Search in ServiceNow

A detailed breakdown of architecture, features, licensing, and configuration differences between ServiceNow's legacy and modern search engines.

Executive Summary

  • Zing is the legacy, keyword-based search engine that comes standard with the ServiceNow platform. It is reliable for exact matches (like Ticket Numbers) but lacks modern intelligence.
  • AI Search is the modern, machine-learning-powered engine. It understands intent (NLU), handles typos, learns from user behavior, and provides direct answers ("Genius Results"). It is the default for Service Portals and Next Experience but typically requires Professional or Enterprise licensing.

1. Core Architecture & Technology

Feature Zing (Legacy) AI Search (Modern)
Search Method Keyword Matching: Relies on finding exact words or stemmed variations (e.g., "printing" matches "print") within the text index. Intent & Semantic Search: Uses Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to understand the meaning of a query, not just the words.
Indexing Uses the ts_index table. Indexing happens automatically on task tables when the "text index" attribute is checked. Uses Indexed Sources. Data is ingested into a separate index structure optimized for ML. Requires explicit configuration of what tables to index.
Relevancy Scoring Static: Based on frequency (TF-IDF), sequence, and field weight (e.g., Short Description > Work Notes). Scores do not change automatically. Dynamic (ML): Learns from "Search Signals" (clicks, successful sessions). If users constantly click the 3rd result for a query, AI Search promotes it to 1st over time.
Content Scope Strictly internal ServiceNow tables. Internal tables + External Content (SharePoint, Confluence) via connectors (requires configuration).

2. Feature Comparison

A. User Experience (UX)

  • Genius Results (AI Search Only): The standout feature of AI Search. It displays a "card" with the direct answer or action at the top of the results (e.g., a "Request Laptop" catalog item card or a Q&A snippet extracted from a KB article). Zing simply lists links.
  • Typo Tolerance:
    • Zing: Poor. "Emial" will likely fail to find "Email" unless explicitly defined in a synonym dictionary.
    • AI Search: Excellent. Automatic spell check and correction ("Did you mean...").
  • Auto-Complete:
    • Zing: Suggests recent searches or simple field matches.
    • AI Search: Suggests queries based on successful results from other users and predicts the rest of your sentence.

B. Linguistics & Language Support

  • Zing: Uses basic "stemming" (chopping off word endings) for English, French, and German. Supports Lemmatization for Japanese.
  • AI Search: Uses advanced Lemmatization (understanding the root word based on context) and Decompounding (breaking complex words apart).
    Supported Languages: English, French (incl. Canadian), German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese (Trad/Simp).
    Recently Added (Aug 2024): Portuguese, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Dutch.
    Global Fallback: Supports exact-match search for all other space-delimited languages.

3. Configuration & Administration

Tuning Search

  • Zing: You tune it by editing Stop Words (words to ignore) and Synonyms (e.g., "PC" = "Laptop"). This is a manual, reactive process.
  • AI Search:
    • Result Improvement Rules: "If a user searches for X, always show Y first" (Boost/Promote/Block actions).
    • Search Profiles: You bundle settings (Synonyms, Stop Words, Typo Handling) into profiles and assign them to specific applications (e.g., one profile for HR Portal, another for IT).

Troubleshooting

  • Zing: Debugging is done via text_search debug properties. It shows why a document matched based on word frequency.
  • AI Search: Provides a Search Preview tool in the admin console. You can run a search as a specific user to see exactly why results appeared (or didn't) and which "Result Improvement Rule" triggered.

4. Licensing & Availability

This is the most critical decision factor for many organizations.

Product Availability / Cost
Zing Free / Core Platform. Included with every ServiceNow instance (Standard, Pro, Ent).
AI Search Paid / Premium. Generally bundled with Pro and Enterprise packages (e.g., ITSM Pro, CSM Pro, HRSD Pro).
Note: Some basic AI Search capabilities may be present in Next Experience, but advanced features (External connectors, full tuning) usually require the AI Platform license.

5. Where do they appear? (UI Context)

  • Service Portals: AI Search is the standard for all modern portals (Employee Center, CSM Portal). Zing is considered legacy here.
  • Mobile App: AI Search is fully supported and recommended.
  • Classic Environment (Backend):
    • Global Search (Top Right):
      • If you use UI16, it uses Zing.
      • If you use Next Experience (Polaris) with Unified Navigation, you can enable AI Search (Plugin: sn_aisearch_global).
    • List View Search ("Go to"): purely utilizes database queries (Zing/SQL), not AI Search.

6. Migration Recommendation

When to keep Zing:

  • You are on Standard licensing (no Pro/Ent).
  • You are a heavy user of the classic UI16 interface.
  • Your search needs are simple "exact match" lookups (e.g., searching specifically for Incident numbers or asset tags).

When to move to AI Search:

  • You have Pro/Enterprise licensing.
  • You are deploying Employee Center or CSM Configurable Workspace.
  • You want to reduce ticket volume by improving Self-Service (users finding their own answers via Genius Results).
  • You require search across external repositories (e.g., searching SharePoint from ServiceNow).