Test a chat assistant
Test your chat assistant.
Before you begin
See Review chat assistant settings.
Role required: virtual_agent_admin or admin
About this task
It's important to test your assistant to simulate an end-to-end conversation before moving your experience into a production environment. Validate the user interface experience, agentic workflow results, and fallback options.
Procedure
-
Navigate to All > Assistant Designer > Assistants tab and select Test for the assistant you wish to test.
If selected portals only have the standard chat experience or only the enhanced chat experience enabled, the drop-down list doesn't appear. If both experience types are enabled, the drop-down list shows both of them.
[Omitted image "NAinVA-test-052026.png"] Alt text: Option to select a chat experience when testing an assistant.
The Test options reflect the assistant’s configured display experiences. When multiple chat experience types are configured, a drop‑down list appears with all available testing options. If only one chat experience type is configured, the drop‑down list is not shown.
Testing a chat assistant can also be accessed when editing an assistant.
[Omitted image "NAinVA-test-edit-052026.png"] Alt text: Option to select a chat experience when testing an assistant.
Note: If a display experience hasn’t been configured, the test panel launches the enhanced chat experience.
---
title: Test a chat assistant
description: Test your chat assistant.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/conversational-interfaces/virtual-agent/test-assistant.html
release: australia
product: Virtual Agent
classification: virtual-agent
topic_type: task
last_updated: "2026-09-10"
reading_time_minutes: 1
breadcrumb: [Create a chat assistant, View assistants, Configure assistants overview, Create assistants, Virtual Agent, Conversational Interfaces]
---
# Test a chat assistant
Test your chat assistant.
## Before you begin
See [Review chat assistant settings](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/conversational-interfaces/virtual-agent/review-assistant-settings.md).
Role required: virtual\_agent\_admin or admin
## About this task
It's important to test your assistant to simulate an end-to-end conversation before moving your experience into a production environment. Validate the user interface experience, agentic workflow results, and fallback options.
## Procedure
1. Navigate to **All** > **Assistant Designer** > **Assistants** tab and select **Test** for the assistant you wish to test.
If selected portals only have the standard chat experience or only the enhanced chat experience enabled, the drop-down list doesn't appear. If both experience types are enabled, the drop-down list shows both of them.
\[Omitted image "NAinVA-test-052026.png"\] Alt text: Option to select a chat experience when testing an assistant.
The **Test** options reflect the assistant’s configured display experiences. When multiple chat experience types are configured, a drop‑down list appears with all available testing options. If only one chat experience type is configured, the drop‑down list is not shown.
Testing a chat assistant can also be accessed when editing an assistant.
\[Omitted image "NAinVA-test-edit-052026.png"\] Alt text: Option to select a chat experience when testing an assistant.
**Note:** If a display experience hasn’t been configured, the test panel launches the enhanced chat experience.
| title | Test a chat assistant |
| description | Test your chat assistant. |
| locale | en-US |
| canonical_url | https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/conversational-interfaces/virtual-agent/test-assistant.html |
| release | australia |
| product | Virtual Agent |
| classification | virtual-agent |
| topic_type | task |
| last_updated | 2026-09-10 |
| reading_time_minutes | 1 |
| breadcrumb | Create a chat assistantView assistantsConfigure assistants overviewCreate assistantsVirtual AgentConversational Interfaces |