Best practice for managing multi-organisation access without generic accounts

attanhes
Tera Guru

3 weeks ago

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on a legacy setup we currently have in ServiceNow.

 

We have an older ServiceNow instance that we use internally to manage Incident, Problem, and Change. In addition, we support several external partner organisations who also log tickets into our instance.

 

To facilitate this, we built a separate portal for these partner organisations, where they can raise Incidents and Changes using dedicated record producers. Each organisation currently accesses the portal using shared (generic) user accounts (i.e. one account per organisation). These accounts only have basic ESS access and no role-based permissions.

 

The original intent behind using generic accounts was to allow multiple users within the same organisation to log in and view all tickets associated with their organisation in a shared way.

 

However, this design is now quite outdated (it was implemented over a decade ago), and we’re starting to see limitations around security, auditability, and user management.

I’d like to understand:

  • What are the recommended modern approaches in ServiceNow for handling multi-organisation access like this?
  • Is there a better way to allow users from the same external organisation to view and collaborate on their organisation’s tickets without using shared accounts?
  • Any best practices around identity management, access control, or portal design in this scenario?

Appreciate any insights or examples from your experience.

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ben_hollifield
Tera Guru

3 weeks ago

Hi @attanhes,

 

Data separation within a single ServiceNow instance is a common need. There are a handful of approaches, ranging from Domain Separation to ACLs to a tool we built, Simple Data Separation. If you aren't aware of SimpSep, it may be worth a look - it has been around for more than a decade, is used across many customers in the federal, commercial, and municipal space, and accomplishes the 'data separation' need simply and efficiently without the cost & overhead of domain separation. I'll put a couple of links below that may be helpful. Reach out if you have any questions or want to see a demo.

 

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