Employee Center Pro – balancing country-based/persona personalization

MattL1434689710 · ‎01-02-2026

Context: We’re expanding EC Pro globally and want a balanced experience: highly personalized by country and a way for personas like matrix managers or elevated admins to view other-country content when needed.

Current approach: We use user criteria on topics/content by country, which personalizes the portal well—but it blocks managers who support teams in other countries. If we loosen criteria, the experience becomes noisy.

Question: Has anyone implemented (or seen from ServiceNow) a user-selectable persona/country toggle in EC/EC Pro—ideally a widget or pattern that lets a user temporarily “act as” a country/persona to view non‑sensitive content (while keeping their default personalized view)?

Considerations:
• Topic/user criteria inheritance & visibility in EC widgets (Popular Topics, Mega Menu).
• AI Search and portal search result filtering by criteria.
• Governance guardrails (e.g., non‑sensitive content only; log/audit of toggle use).

Looking for: Architecture patterns, widget examples, governance tips, and pitfalls from those who solved this for global workforces.

SupriyaWaghmode · ‎01-02-2026

Hello @MattL1434689710 ,

Checklist for Publishing HRSD Module Globally and Customizing for Country-Specific Needs

Identify Global Components

List all global HR services.
Identify HR groups, Criteria and associated record producers other associated stuff.
Include portals and other related processes.

Standardize Core Elements

Create standardized forms and fields.
Define user criteria and HR criteria.
Ensure knowledge articles follow a global standard.

Plan Country-Level Kickoff

Schedule a kickoff meeting with country process owners.
Understand existing processes and requirements.
Identify gaps between global and country-specific needs.

Leverage Existing Processes & Customize Where Needed

Reuse existing processes wherever possible.
For new processes, create new HR cases.
Add additional fields only for country-specific needs.
Configure country-specific Groups , COE security, HR criteria, User Criteria and assignment rules.

Address Global Gaps

If functionality is missing globally but needed across all countries, raise a change request.
Add new features at the global level where applicable.

Develop a Standardization Strategy

Define a clear approach for global standardization.
Identify country-level gaps and implement enhancements accordingly.

This guidance will be extremely helpful when managing extensive country-level customizations while maintaining common global standards.

Please mark accepted solution if this resolves your query.

Thanks & Regards ,

Supriya Waghmode |ServiceNow Consultant

www.linkedin.com/in/supriya-waghmode

HRSD

MattL1434689710 · 2 weeks ago

Hi Supriya,

This is a very helpful list in general so thanks for sharing - but I don't think it addresses my question entirely. The concern we are having is that we are trying to structure our knowledge and other content in a way that only shows relevant content to the user typically based on country. Some users, however, have a need to see knowledge across different countries maybe if they have a direct report in United States and one in India. I was curious if other customers have approached this problem before and had any insights on how to tackle it? The idea I had was maybe enabling a functionality that allows the user to "switch" their country view so the system could identify I have a US hire and an IN hire and let me toggle between relevant content for each.

SupriyaWaghmode · 2 weeks ago

@MattL1434689710 - Can you country field on user-HR profile which different user on country details.

1. Recommended: Use Knowledge Blocks with User Criteria

Instead of creating dozens of separate Knowledge Bases, use Knowledge Blocks within a single HR Knowledge Base.

How it works: Create one general HR Knowledge Base. Use Knowledge Blocks for content that differs by country (e.g., benefits, local holidays). Apply User Criteria to these blocks so they only show to users in that country. (India/USA)
Why it works: It prevents massive duplication of articles. A manager in the US with a report in India will see the core global content, and the Indian-specific blocks will be filtered based on the viewer if they are searching for that report's context.

2. The "Toggle" Idea: Customise the Employee Center Portal

To address your idea of allowing users to "toggle" between countries, you can customize the Employee Center Portal.

How it works: Create a custom widget on the HR Portal that allows a user to select a "Context Country" from a dropdown. This selection sets a session parameter, which filters the AI Search results in real-time.
Implementation: Use AI Search capabilities to dynamically filter search results by country based on a user-selected parameter.
Alternative UI approach: Implement a "My Team" tab in the Employee Center that specifically highlights knowledge based on the location of the direct reports, rather than just the manager's home country.

3. Manager Hub (for Reporting Context)

How it works: Utilize Manager Hub. When a manager navigates to their team in the Manager Hub, the content, to-dos, and relevant HR information can be automatically targeted based on the location of the employees in their team.
Why it works: This is an out-of-the-box solution designed specifically for managers handling cross-border teams.

4. Alternative: Dynamic User Criteria on Specific KBs

If you prefer separating content entirely:

How it works: Create separate Knowledge Bases for major regions (APAC, USA).
Implementation: Use Dynamic User Criteria to create a script that checks if a user is a manager and has direct reports in a different region, granting them read access to those KBs.

Please mark accepted solution if this resolves your query.

Thanks & Regards ,

Supriya Waghmode |ServiceNow Consultant

www.linkedin.com/in/supriya-waghmode

HRSD

Leri Andrews · a week ago

Hi

I have experience with this issue. In a previous instance we had a customised solution whereby groups were populated according to which country managers had direct reports in. Then user criteria were created and applied to relevant articles. Thus the Spain Sickness Absence Policy would have a user criteria "people located in Spain" and also one "People in the group 'Spain Managers'". You can imagine the jobs running nightly to add people to groups as people joined or moved roles - but it worked well. It neatly allowed 'manager only' articles too.

Then we moved to an OOTB instance and were not permitted to customize like this. The result is a single criteria for managers (based on whether there are people with someone's user ID in the 'manager' field). So basically now every manager has access to every article. It's not an ideal solution but nobody has been able to suggest anything else.

Happy to learn there's a better way though!!

Leri