ServiceNow Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc. said today they’re teaming up to help make life easier for information technology help desk teams.

They’ve come up with what they say is a virtual agent integration that can help to automate the resolution of virtual application and virtual desktop “resets” in a matter of minutes. With the emergence of COVID-19 and remote work, the issue of virtual app and desktop resets is becoming all too common for IT help desk teams, which have to deal with dozens and sometimes even hundreds of such incidents on a daily basis.

These resets can be caused by all manner of things, including networking issues, forgotten passwords or something such as a misalignment with the IT organization’s chosen authentication policies. They’re a big problem that can take hours to resolve, and that leads to a big productivity drain as employees are unable to get on with their work until their access to the app or desktop has been reestablished.

To deal with these and other IT ticket headaches, help desk teams have increasingly lent on virtual agents. These artificial intelligence-powered chatbots can help employees to resolve many issues themselves. But ServiceNow said it’s not enough, and many teams are still encumbered with having to manually solve many of these reset issues.

ServiceNow’s new Virtual Agent integration with the Citrix Connector app, which is a part of that company’s Virtual Apps and Desktops service, promises to eliminate that burden. It leverages ServiceNow’s IT Service Management and IntegrationHub technology, allowing IT teams to automate the necessary reset actions within Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service.

Reset issues will be resolved in just minutes, as opposed to leaving remote employees sitting and twiddling their thumbs for hours on end, ServiceNow and Citrix promise. ServiceNow said the integration with Citrix builds on its commitment to advance automated self-service across the enterprise.

North Carolina-based healthcare network Novant Health Inc. said it has faced some big challenges due to the demands on its IT teams that resulted from the shift to remote work.

“Secure and consistent access to Citrix Virtual Applications and Desktops so that employees have the appropriate level of access to key information is mission-critical,” said Brian Nuernberg, Novant Health’s manager of IT service delivery. “With the Citrix ITSM Connector, we’ve been able to reduce the number of incidents solved manually by 25%. We expect to more than double that number initially with the new Virtual Agent integration.”

ServiceNow said the new integration is available now from within ITSM Virtual Agent Conversations and also from the Citrix ITSM Connector in the ServiceNow store.

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