Restricted access to content pages

[Prudhvi Raj Y]

Hello All,

Currently user with content_manager role can access all the content pages and able to make changes to all the pages, but we have lot of other teams who needs access to edit, create content pages for their teams giving content manager role will give access to complete content pages which we want to restrict. Is there a way to allow users to have access to only content pages they are entitled? I have gone through the documentation where we need to enable the system property which adds Restrict content by user/ Restrict content by group tabs and there we can add the users or groups but we need to do activity for all the existing content pages to hide it according to the user entitlement, so looking out for any simple way to provide the access.

Reagrds,

Prudhvi

[ajmalmuhamm · Accepted solution]

Hey @Prudhvi Raj Y ,

Yes, this can be handled OOB, but there is an important distinction between content visibility and content management/ownership.

If your requirement is that different teams should be able to create/edit only their own content, I would recommend using Content Ownership rather than giving everyone the broad sn_cd.content_manager role.

You can enable Allow Ownership for Content Items under the Content Publishing/Content Experiences properties. Then, on a content item, use Restrict content by group and assign the appropriate content-manager group. ServiceNow documents that once ownership is assigned, only that user/group can access the content for content management activities.

The challenge, as you mentioned, is the existing content. Ownership is configured at the individual content-item level, so there isn't an OOB setting that automatically determines ownership for all existing content based on the user's department/team.

For your situation, I would suggest:

• Create a content manager group for each team.
• Give the appropriate users/groups the sn_cd.content_manager role.
• Enable Allow Ownership for Content Items.
• Assign each team's existing content to its corresponding group.
• For future content, have the team create/clone content under its assigned ownership.

This avoids giving every team unrestricted access to the entire Content Library.

If you have hundreds/thousands of existing content records, I wouldn't manually configure each one. Instead, you could consider a one-time data fix/script to populate the content ownership records based on an existing attribute such as topic, department, author, or another team mapping. That would keep the ongoing solution OOB while avoiding a large manual exercise.

Also, don't confuse this with User Criteria/Audiences. Those control who can see the content on the portal, whereas Content Ownership controls which content managers can manage the content. ServiceNow specifically recommends audiences/User Criteria for content targeting/visibility.

So, there isn't a simple global switch that automatically limits content_manager to "their team's pages." The cleanest approach is Content Ownership + groups, with a one-time automation/script to assign ownership to your existing content if you have a large volume.

ServiceNow – Assign ownership of content