We want to bulk register members to the inquiry watchlist

[M_Tomy]

Dear Expert

We've received a request that it's cumbersome to set up each relevant person individually on the watchlist when submitting inquiries from the employee portal, and they'd like us to find a solution.

Inquiries are submitted by system owners to the system maintenance team via the employee portal inquiry form.
They would like to register several personnel from the system owner department collectively to the watchlist during this process.
The system is in the service table, but system owner information is not currently stored in the ServiceNow table.

What kind of implementation would be appropriate?

Thank you for your assistance.

[Matthew_13 · Accepted solution]

Hi Buddy,

A good approach is to stop relying on users to manually build the watch list and instead populate it automatically based on the system being selected.

Since system owner information isn’t currently stored in ServiceNow, the first step is to define a simple source of truth. The most practical options are:

• Use a group per system (for example, “System Owners – Payroll”). Store that group on the system/service record and manage membership in the group.

• Or, if you need more flexibility, create a small mapping table that links a system to multiple users owners, delegates.

Once that’s in place, you can automatically add the relevant users to the watch list when the inquiry is submitted:

• Use a Flow Designer flow or an After Insert Business Rule to look up the users (or group members) tied to the selected system.

• Append those users to the watch_list field, avoiding duplicates.

This way, the submitter only selects the system, and all relevant system owner personnel are added to the watch list automatically. It removes manual effort, keeps things consistent, and is easy to maintain going forward.

@M_Tomy - Please mark Accepted Solution and Thumbs Up if you found Helpful 🙂