The wxrks Translator Service Spoke plugs wxrks' AI translation directly into your ServiceNow instance, using ServiceNow's own Dynamic Translation and Localization Framework features. Once it's configured, translation happens where your team already works — no separate tool, no workflow changes.
It covers two different ServiceNow translation surfaces:
Dynamic Translation — real-time translation of Forms and Activity Streams (for example, translating a work note on an Incident on the spot).
Localization Framework — structured translation requests for Knowledge Articles and Catalog Items.
Translations use wxrks' AI engine together with wxrks' Sous-Chef contextual settings (audience, tone, formality, and so on), so results are adapted to your terminology and use case rather than generic machine translation.
💡 Who is this for? This guide is for a ServiceNow admin, who installs the plugin and app and completes the ServiceNow-side setup below, and a wxrks Account Admin, who generates the API credentials and configures the wxrks-side translation settings.
Step 1 — Install the required ServiceNow plugins
Before installing the wxrks app, make sure your instance has both of these ServiceNow plugins active:
Dynamic Translation (
com.glide.dynamic_translation)Localization Framework (
com.glide.localization_framework.installer)
If either isn't installed yet, open System Applications > All Available Applications > find the plugin by its ID above > Install.
The wxrks app also needs read access to three ServiceNow tables — sys_alias, sys_connection, and sys_auth_profile_basic — which the app's own role grants automatically once installed.
Step 2 — Install the wxrks app from the ServiceNow Store
In your ServiceNow instance, open the wxrks Translator Service Spoke listing in the ServiceNow Store.
Click Get and follow the install prompts, approving any requested dependencies.
⚠️ You need admin permissions in ServiceNow to install applications and plugins.
Step 3 — Configure a credential in ServiceNow
In wxrks, as an Account Admin, go to your profile > Security, and click Generate to create an API ID and API Secret. Generating a new key invalidates the previous one, so update anything already using the old key.
In ServiceNow, go to Connection & Credentials > Credentials > New > Basic Auth Credentials, and fill in:
Name: wxrks API Credentials
Username: your wxrks API ID
Password: your wxrks API Secret
Click Submit.
Step 4 — Configure the connection
In ServiceNow, go to Connection & Credentials > Connections & Credential Aliases > select wxrks > Connections tab > New.
Fill in:
Name: wxrks Connection
Credential: wxrks API Credentials (from Step 3)
Connection URL:
https://app.wxrks.com(US) orhttps://eu.wxrks.com(EU) — use whichever matches your wxrks account's region.
Click Submit.
Step 5 — Set wxrks as the default translator
In ServiceNow, go to Dynamic Translation > Translator Configurations.
If another configuration is already marked default for translation or default for detection, edit it and set both to false first.
Open the wxrks configuration and enable Mark as default for translation and Mark as default for detection.
Click Update.
Step 6 — Configure default translation settings in wxrks
Log in to wxrks (app.wxrks.com or eu.wxrks.com) and go to Tools > ServiceNow.
Select the Organization Unit that ServiceNow translation projects should use.
Set the default Sous-Chef translation settings that every ServiceNow translation will use unless overridden: Audience (free text describing who the translation is for), Instructions (custom guidance for the AI, e.g. terminology or brand voice to keep), Formality (Informal / Neutral / Formal), Tone (Professional, Conversational, Persuasive, Technical, Witty, Direct, or Artistic), and Creativity Level (a 1–5 slider between more literal and more creative translations).
Click Save.
See Sous Chef Configuration in the wxrks Translation Portal article for more on what each of these settings does.
Testing the configuration
Quick check — Activity Streams:
Open any record that supports Activity Streams (for example, an Incident).
Post a work note or comment in a different language than your ServiceNow language preference.
Click the Translate button that appears next to it.
The translated text should appear below the original within a few seconds.
Full check — diagnostic script: in ServiceNow, go to System Definition > Scripts - Background, set the scope to global, and run gs.info(JSON.stringify(new x_but_bw_spoke.BureauWorksrunDiagnosticsUtil().runDiagnostics(), null, 2));. This exercises authentication, language detection, and translation end-to-end (it takes roughly 40 seconds) and prints a status for each step — every step should read SUCCESS.
Translating Incidents
Supported fields:
Form fields: Short Description, Description
Activity Stream fields: Work Notes, Additional Comments, and Resolution Notes (under Resolution Information)
To translate one: open the Incident, click Translate next to the field that has content, and the translation appears below it automatically.
Translating Knowledge Articles
This uses ServiceNow's Localization Framework, translating the Article Title, Article Body, and any additional structured fields configured on the Knowledge table.
Go to Self-Service > My Knowledge Article and open the article.
Select its checkbox and click Request Translation. (If this button doesn't appear, confirm that language packs besides English are installed on the instance.)
Choose the target language and submit.
To translate manually instead: add the Localization Task column to the list view, open the task (its number starts with LFTASK), click Translate, then Machine Translate. A successful result shows Successfully translated using wxrks.
Translating Catalog Items
Catalog Items — name, short description, description, and (depending on configuration) variable labels and help text — translate the same way once Knowledge Article translation above is configured.
Go to Service Catalog > Catalog Definitions > Maintain Items and open the item.
Click Request Translations, choose the target language(s), and submit.
Manual process: add the Localization Task column, open the LFTASK record, click Translate, then Machine Translate.
Troubleshooting
Nothing happens when I click Translate, or the diagnostic script fails. Re-run the diagnostic script from the Testing section above — it checks the connection alias, credential, API host, authentication, and a live translation call, and will point to which layer is failing. Have your Instance ID and the diagnostic output ready if you contact wxrks Support.
A long text translation times out. ServiceNow enforces separate timeouts per context: 270 seconds by default for Knowledge Articles/Catalog Items (com.glide.sn_lf.machine_translate.timeout) and 40 seconds by default for Forms/Activity Streams (glide.dynamic.translation.default.timeout, set in milliseconds). An admin can raise either system property if longer texts need more time — these aren't officially documented by ServiceNow, so change them with care.
I fixed a translation but the old one keeps coming back. Dynamic Translation caches results per source text and target language and serves the cached copy on repeat requests — this caching is built into ServiceNow's Dynamic Translation feature itself and can't be turned off from the wxrks side. Clearing it is a ServiceNow-side operation your admin performs directly in ServiceNow (production environments should go through ServiceNow Support for this).
Request Translation button missing on a Knowledge Article. Confirm at least one additional language pack (besides English) is installed on the instance — the button only appears once there's another language to translate into.