External content connectors user permissions to sharepoint documents.

Ramkumar Thanga · ‎05-22-2025

Hi All,

How the user permissions are handled with AI search on External content connectors. For eg. if the user doesn't have access in SharePoint to access a particular document. Will he be able to access it from ServiceNow through AI search.

Thanks!

Ram

Maik Skoddow · ‎05-22-2025

Hi @Ramkumar Thanga

ServiceNow’s AI Search is designed to maintain the access permissions of external content sources such as SharePoint when making those documents available within the ServiceNow environment. During the ingestion process, the system captures and preserves the user and group permissions defined in the external system for each document. This ensures that, when a user searches for content through AI Search, only those documents for which they have explicit permission in the source system will be included in the search results.

If a user does not have access to a particular document in SharePoint, that document will not be visible or accessible to them within ServiceNow’s AI Search, regardless of their ServiceNow roles. The platform enforces these permissions by filtering search results according to the user’s permissions in the external system, not just by their ServiceNow access rights. This approach provides a seamless but secure experience, ensuring that users cannot bypass the security controls of the original content repository.

ServiceNow administrators can further manage and map external users and groups to ServiceNow users, but the underlying principle remains that access is always governed by the permissions set in the external system. This integration supports a wide range of external content sources and ensures that compliance and data security requirements are maintained across all connected platforms.

References:

Maik

View solution in original post

Maik Skoddow · ‎05-22-2025

Hi @Ramkumar Thanga

ServiceNow’s AI Search is designed to maintain the access permissions of external content sources such as SharePoint when making those documents available within the ServiceNow environment. During the ingestion process, the system captures and preserves the user and group permissions defined in the external system for each document. This ensures that, when a user searches for content through AI Search, only those documents for which they have explicit permission in the source system will be included in the search results.

If a user does not have access to a particular document in SharePoint, that document will not be visible or accessible to them within ServiceNow’s AI Search, regardless of their ServiceNow roles. The platform enforces these permissions by filtering search results according to the user’s permissions in the external system, not just by their ServiceNow access rights. This approach provides a seamless but secure experience, ensuring that users cannot bypass the security controls of the original content repository.

ServiceNow administrators can further manage and map external users and groups to ServiceNow users, but the underlying principle remains that access is always governed by the permissions set in the external system. This integration supports a wide range of external content sources and ensures that compliance and data security requirements are maintained across all connected platforms.

References:

Maik