Is Using a Generic User for External Email Ticket Creation Compliant with ServiceNow Best Practices?

[arorsu1]

Problem: External users need to create tickets, but they do not have access to the self-service portal and do not have a user record in our sys_user table.

Possible Solution: We plan to allow external users to send emails to a shared mailbox. Using an XYZ framework, we capture the details from these emails and send an API request to our ServiceNow instance to create an incident. Since the external users are not in the database, we would use a generic user [External User] as the Caller. Additionally, we would store the source email address in a custom field called External Contact, enabling us to send notifications related to the ticket back to the external user's email address.

Questions:

1. Is this approach of using a generic user for external ticket creation compliant with ServiceNow best practices
2. Are there any potential issues or security concerns with this method?
3.  Is there a more recommended approach for handling ticket creation from external users who are not in the sys_user table?

Any insights or alternative solutions would be greatly appreciated.

[Slava Savitsky · Accepted solution]

I've seen a similar approach implemented at some companies and never heard of any problems with it.