question Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group? in ITSM forum

How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Denton — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 14:41:30 GMT

In our environment, we have many non-IT users with ITIL roles. ServiceNow is being used for task assignment for the entire company and all this is run off the Incident table.

(Note: I know how bad this is. I inherited this and did not design it. This question isn't about fixing this, it's about working around it.)

There is a role in our organization simply called "IT." All actual IT users have this role.

What I'm trying to accomplish is to set up an ACL (or other solution) where if an Incident has the "IT Operations" assignment group, only users with the IT role can read or write to the work notes on that Incident. I do not want users with the ITIL role, sn_incident_read, or sn_incident_write roles to see work notes for this assignment group unless they also have the IT role. They should be able to view work notes in other assignment groups w/o impediment.

This feels look it should be easy, but I haven't been able to work it out. It's also very possible I'm just a bad admin. Any help would be appreciated.

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Ankur Bawiskar — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 14:56:14 GMT

Hi,

you can have field level READ and WRITE ACL on that field

In the role section give the role -> IT

In the condition field give the condition as -> Assignment Group [IS] IT Operations

Regards
Ankur

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Ankur Bawiskar — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 14:59:06 GMT

Hi,

If you don't want to use ACL then another approach

1) Display BR

if(current.assignment_group.name == 'IT Operations' && gs.hasRole('IT')){
g_scratchpad.isValid = 'true';
}
else{
g_scratchpad.isValid = 'false';
}

2) Client Script:

function onLoad(){

g_form.setDisplay('work_notes', false); // 1st hide it

if(g_scratchpad.isValid == 'true'){

// if valid then show and make it editable

g_form.setDisplay('work_notes', true);

g_form.setReadOnly('work_notes', false);

}

}

Regards
Ankur

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Ankur Bawiskar — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:02:17 GMT

@Denton

ACL screenshot

Regards
Ankur

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Denton — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:14:32 GMT

Strangely enough, I set up the ACLs the same way I did the first time with no luck (yesterday) and now it appears to be working as I intended. It may have been a cache issue?

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Denton — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:27:37 GMT

Here is exactly what I have and it does not appear to be working...

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Denton — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:47:28 GMT

Ok, I figured out the problem. So apparently, going back to the initial description, yes, I'm a bad admin.

There were separate ACLs for role sn_incident_write for read and write access.
I put a condition in there that said:
Assignment Group IS NOT IT Ops --OR--
Assignment Group IS NOT IT Staff.

The problem: I put an OR into a list of negative conditions (instead of an AND) so of course the whole thing always returned true.

Rookie mistake though I've been doing this for a while now. Sorry to waste your time!

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a certain assignment group?

Ankur Bawiskar — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 16:05:25 GMT

@Denton

No worries. Everyday is a new learning.

Please close the question by marking appropriate response as correct and helpful.

Regards
Ankur

Re: How can I make work notes visible only to members of a certain role when an Incident is in a cer

Priya Singh 2 2 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 18:37:57 GMT

@Ankur Bawiskar I have similar requirement on another table where I need to make activity (work notes to be visible only to a particular members of group) and I am trying to achieve it by ACL but it's not working

Also I tried to write business rule - display along with onLoad client script but users without mentioned rule can see activities (Screenshot which I attached to the record)