MFA - Email Verification

[Sruthi17]

I've created a new user account in ServiceNow.

I've ensured email is associated with it

I set the password as admin and try local login

I'm successfully logged in

Now I'm redirected to the MFA page

I try email verification

But I cannot see any outbound emails sending the verification code.

Can anyone help me understand what I'm missing?

[Sruthi17]

Hi @yashkamde ,

Thanks for your reply.
I see "Deactivate", meaning its already active.

[Aditya08]

Hello @Sruthi17 ,

Deactivate that policy then next time you dont get multi factor authentication. @yashkamde approach is right you just need to deactivate it.

[Sruthi17]

Hi @Aditya08 , I dont want to deactivate. I wanted to have the MFA in place. I just wanted to know how the email is sent when the user chooses email verification. 
Because currently when the user chooses the email verification, I'm unable to see any verification emails sent in the sys_email table. 

[Aditya08]

Hello @Sruthi17 ,

Ok i thought you just want stop that mfa , The MFA email verification code is sent from ServiceNow platform servers, not from your instance’s own mail server. When a user logs in and email-based MFA is triggered, the instance simply requests authentication, after which ServiceNow’s central MFA service generates the one-time code and sends it using ServiceNow’s backend email infrastructure. Because of this, the MFA email does not use your instance email account, SMTP settings, or Notification records, which means you won’t see it in Email Logs, Notifications, or the sys_email table, and you cannot customize the email subject, body, or sender address. What you can control is whether Email MFA is enabled, the MFA policies, and which users are required to use MFA. ServiceNow handles this centrally to ensure better security (preventing spoofing or tampering), reliability (it works even if instance email is misconfigured), and compliance. Easy way to remember: the instance triggers MFA, but ServiceNow servers generate and send the code.

[Sruthi17]

Hi @Aditya08 , Thank you so much.
Your answer is very helpful.
But I have one more question. Do you know how it works for DEV instance?

Like I created a user account
Username: test
Email: test123@gmail.com

Email sending is enabled, but to send all emails to my email account

Now user test logins, MFA will be forced. User chooses email verification.

Verification email will be sent to the user email test123@gmail.com or my email ?

I would like to understand how it works in the DEV instance.
Thank you so much. Your answer really helped a lot