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

Oliver Stammler · 2 hours 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.