The new ServiceNow’s Custom Table Guide and its impact on your licensing

Oliver Stammler · 3 weeks ago

The recent update to the ServiceNow Custom Table Guide, effective October 17, 2025, introduced significant changes that many in the community may not have noticed - at least that's true for me and my peers.

Among the most impactful is the adjustment in how Direct Task Inherited Tables are defined and licensed. This shift has important consequences for anyone managing custom tables on the ServiceNow platform and requires immediate attention to ensure ongoing compliance and proper entitlement assignment!

First of all: You can find the current ServiceNow Custom Table Guide here: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/legal/custom-table-gu...

What Are Direct Task Inherited Tables?

A Direct Task Inherited Table refers to any Custom Table extending from “Task” table whose entire extension hierarchy is composed solely of Custom Tables.

Key Licensing Changes

The most significant change concerns the licensing requirements for Direct Task Inherited Tables:

App Engine Enterprise Subscription Required: Any use of Direct Task Inherited Tables now requires a full App Engine Enterprise product subscription! App Engine Starter is not enough!
No Grandfathering: Direct Task Inherited Tables are specifically excluded from eligibility to be allocated as Grandfathered Custom Tables, meaning organizations cannot bring in previously created Direct Task Inherited Tables under older, more permissive terms.

Exempt Tables and Field Limitations

This topic is not new at all but since we already talk about custom tables please note that the list of exempt tables got updated. The following tables were removed:

sys_portal_page
sys_transform_script
dl_definition
sys_transform_map
sys_filter
sys_user_preference
sys_choice

It is also important that in future only tables extended from “cmdb_ci” are excluded. Previously, this applied to all tables extended directly from the “cmdb” table.
Probably irrelevant because everyone uses “cmdb_ci” anyway, but better be safe than sorry.

What You Should Do Next

Review your use of custom tables, especially those extending the Task table. If your applications or use cases rely on Direct Task Inherited Tables, you’ll need to plan for an App Engine product subscription - keep in mind: the lower-tier Starter level is no longer sufficient - or you need to re-engineer your custom application.

Finally, a personal question: Have you noticed this imho massive change?
Is it an issue in your teams or projects?

mhopp

Thank you for this very important topic @Oliver Stammler!
Additionally I think the custom field limitation on the exempt table is also very important to highlight, here.

Simon Christens

What happened to ServiceNows old slogan "Empower the user" where it was flatrate (do whatever you want)? ☹️

This is actually a bit sad to see that greed takes over.

Justin Loftas

@Oliver Stammler Many thanks for highlighting this, I think there is one correction after reading the legal document, section 6 states this "Direct Task Inherited Tables exceed the
App Engine Starter usage definition and cannot be considered an App Engine Starter
Custom Table.". Therefore it suggests you need a minimum of an App Engine Standard, rather than Enterprise.

Happy to be corrected if I've misinterpreted this.

Oliver Stammler

Hey @Justin Loftas ,
thanks for your feedback!

To be honest: I don't know - in the end only ServiceNow Sales might be able to answer this question.
I did check the current product page (https://www.servicenow.com/products/now-platform-app-engine.html#plans-packages) and there they only list Starter and Enterprise, which is why I referred to Enterprise in my article.

Justin Loftas

@Oliver Stammler Makes complete sense, I'm looking to get clarity from ServiceNow on it, will update the thread if needed.