When migrating dashboards and reports from development to production in a ServiceNow scoped application with Application Administration enabled (true), the dashboards may become inaccessible to end users, even though sharing permissions are set correctly. Reports fail to load, or dashboards display as unavailable.
The Problem: The tables used by your reports are not registered in the sys_scoped_admin_acl_inheritance table.
Key Symptom: Dashboards work fine for Application Administrators and users with admin role, but regular users cannot view them.
Root Cause
When a scoped application has Application Administration enabled, ServiceNow enforces strict ACL isolation. This means:
- Users need explicit permissions not just on the dashboard or report, but on every table the report queries
- These table permissions are controlled through
sys_scoped_admin_acl_inheritance - If a table is not registered in this table, regular users cannot access reports that use it
- Admin users bypass this restriction (which is why dashboards work for you but not for others)
It's a security feature, not a bug. To grant users access to reports, you must explicitly register all tables used by those reports in sys_scoped_admin_acl_inheritance.
