Best Practices for Managing Roles and Groups in ServiceNow WSD with Limited Licenses

[KaderS]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently working on optimizing our use of ServiceNow Workplace Service Delivery (WSD) with a limited number of licenses (150). I want to ensure that we efficiently manage roles and assign them to groups to make the most of our available licenses.

Could anyone share best practices or strategies for:

1. Defining and creating custom roles tailored to specific user needs?
2. Organizing users into groups and assigning roles to these groups effectively?
3. Monitoring and adjusting license usage to ensure optimal allocation?

Any insights or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

[Rafael Batistot]

Hi @KaderS 

1. Defining and Creating Custom Roles

Best practices:

• Analyze user tasks: Identify what each user group actually needs to do in WSD. Do they need to book rooms, approve requests, view dashboards, etc.?

• Start with out-of-box roles: Use out-of-the-box roles like wsd_user, wsd_manager, wsd_admin, etc., as templates. Clone and modify only if necessary.

• Avoid over-privileging: Many roles implicitly include others. Granting a user a high-level role like admin or wsd_admin might consume a license unnecessarily.

• Use role inheritance wisely: Create a hierarchy of roles if needed (e.g., custom_wsd_requester > wsd_user) to simplify management and avoid duplication.

2. Organizing Users into Groups and Assigning Roles

Best practices:

• Group by function, not department: For WSD, think in terms of what people do, not just where they belong (e.g., “Facilities Requesters”, “Room Approvers”).

• Assign roles to groups, not users: This ensures better scalability and easier auditing.

• Use dynamic group rules (if possible): You can use User Criteria or Scripted Membership to auto-assign users to groups based on attributes like department, location, etc.

3. Monitoring and Adjusting License Usage

Tools & tips:

• Use the License Usage View (SAM Pro):

  • Navigate to Software Asset > License > License Usage View

  • Focus on the WSD license metrics, which show real-time and historical usage

• Identify inactive users: Create a scheduled job or report to find users who haven’t logged in or used WSD features in 30/60/90 days.

• Remove roles from inactive users/groups: Set up a script or flow to flag and remove unnecessary roles after a grace period.

[Simon Hendery]

Sorry for going off-topic, but this thread is a superb case study for anyone interested in GenAI's stochastic parrot problem, and how it impacts knowledge communities like this one.

The first reply in this thread (July 2025) does an okay job of answering the question, although it's clearly based heavily on some output from ChatGPT.

Now, ChatGPT scrapes this Community fairly regularly, so when someone else goes to ChatGPT two months later to generate the second reply, it's remarkably similar to the first one -- and why wouldn't it be? ChatGPT recognises this Community is one of the best sources for the type of ServiceNow content it parrots, so it came right back to this post to find an answer.

No disrespect intended to anyone involved. It's just a great example of the challenges GenAI brings, and I hope as a community we can find a way to combat this knowledge quality spiral. (Hi @Dan Bruhn!)