Domain Separation and Custom Form Layouts

[Chris Sanford1]

I am fairly new to domain separation, and am facing an issue with domain specific form layouts. I have created an incident form layout for a specific domain (let's call it Domain X), which overrides the pre-existing global form layout. From what I understand, this means any incidents in Domain X or below in the domain map will now display that form layout, but all other domains will still show the global layout. I also understand that when you create an incident, the domain of the incident is based on the domain of the user in the caller field. Please correct me if either of these notions are wrong.

The problem I am facing, happens when support users in the top domain sometimes have to create an incident for a user in domain X. When a top domain user creates an incident, the form still shows the global form layout since they are in the top domain. But once they save the form with a domain X caller, the layout 'switches' to the domain X one. So the top domain users are then confused, because many of the fields they initially populated are missing from the form, and new domain X ones show up after they click save.

This problem could be solved if the top domain users simply switched the domain picker to domain X prior to creating the incident, but many of them do not know ServiceNow very well, and this seems like a bad user experience for them. Is there another way I could fix this, such that the form layout could update in real time once they set the caller to a domain X user?

[Jon G]

I don't know how far you've gotten with this, but we use the Service Desk Call plugin to deal with this.

Service Desk Call uses a separate table called New Call.  It works well for us because it lets us immediately start taking basic information before we classify the nature of the call.  From there, we can convert it to an incident or request or whatever record type we want.  Once the record type is selected on the new call form, a new incident is generated and populated with the correct information, then displayed to the user.  The record will already be in the correct domain.

We have customized our a bit to do what we need, but using a method like this should prevent you from having to change domains every time you want to enter a new incident in a different domain.

[Chris Sanford1]

Oh yeah, you have no idea how much we use Service Desk call. It's basically the dumping ground for all of our inbound emails, which are the majority of our ticket traffic. However, we have our call table managed exclusively by the help desk, so the technicians don't have to deal with the details of how to convert it, or get duplicate/spam email in their queue.

The issue we were facing was more for tech-created incidents in the platform UI, since we want them to be able to directly create and code an incident without going through the help desk. The solution I went with was an interceptor page that requires them to select the appropriate domain.