Did you know about User Criteria?

[Danny Mortense1]

Did you know?

Did you know that Service Catalog and Knowledge Base applications share a feature called User Criteria?

User Criteria allow administrators to control access to content in a service catalog or a knowledge base.

Administrators can create User Criteria so that control of access to content can be applied with the user criteria records. User criteria can be applied to a knowledge base, knowledge article, service catalog item, record producer and/or a service catalog category.

Catalog and knowledge managers and editors can apply existing user criteria for items, categories, knowledge articles, and knowledge bases to which they are assigned. However, managers and editors cannot create or edit user criteria directly, only an administrator can create or edit user criteria records.

This is an awesome feature for administrators, as it means that they are not stuck with the job of setting up a service catalog or knowledge base security determined by the owners of the service catalog or knowledge base.

Managers and editors of a catalog or knowledge base can apply User Criteria. Sure, administrators are still required to set up the User Criteria records in the User Criteria table, but the managers and editors are able to apply these criteria to give access to the appropriate groups of users.

For example, if a manager of HR information in Hong Kong wanted only staff in Hong Kong to be able to see particular HR information in a knowledge base, then the manager can select the appropriate User Criteria that will allow access to users located in Hong Kong. The administrator will set up the specific User Criteria record, but the manager can select this record to make a knowledge base or knowledge article available to users in Hong Kong only.

Still not sure what User Criteria are? Have a look at our docs site for a quick overview.

NOTE: This is one of a series of Did you know posts by me. I will be picking random snippets of information that I feel are useful to know, but may not be common knowledge amongst newer users of ServiceNow.

If you find this information useful then please let me know by making a comment and marking the post as useful.

[thomashansson]

I have a question about user criteria on article level. Seems like can read on article level works fine for those that also are readers on the KB level. But it doesn,t restrict access for that article for contributors in the KB. Is that correct behavior for the function?

[Danny Mortense1]

Hi Thomas,

If I understand the question correctly you are asking that if a user meets the criteria for a KB contributor, should they have read access if they to an article if they don't meet the articles Can Read user criteria access.

This is expected behaviour I believe, because if a user meets the conditions for a particular criteria assigned to "Can Contribute" related list, at the KB level they also receive read access to all articles in the KB whether they match conditions of the "Can Read" User Criteria or not.

[Tim Owen]

Danny,

      We are trying to use departments to provide read access to a knowledge base. In ServiceNow, we have a hierarchy of departments, and would like to be able to choose certain parent departments (means the difference between setting 4 departments as apposed to 40). It does not seem to give access to the sub department users. Is this supposed to cascade down the hierarchy, or do we have to specify every single sub department? If it does not cascade, are there plans to add this in the future? We are on Jakarta Patch 3a.

[Danny Mortense1]

Hi Tim, Thanks for the great question. That is an interesting requirement and one that I'm sure is not uncommon.

The User Criteria is not that smart in that it will only match whatever is in the list exactly. If we did introduce this feature and enforced it, you'd then have an issue if you didn't wish to follow the hierarchy for the parent department. It would require some method such as a check box to enable hierarchy or not.

I'm not sure what the plans are with regard to enhancements of User Criteria are. If you log into Hi and submit a request for an enhancement, then it will be looked at on its merits and prioritised if accepted.

To achieve what you are after you would need to delve into the Advanced option and try out some JavaScript. If I find some time I'll try and come up with a solution, though I'm not a JavaScript guru. If any gurus out there are up for the challenge then please feel to post your solution.

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