Domain separation and AI Search

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated February 5, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation and AI Search

    Domain separation in ServiceNow allows you to segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct logical domains, controlling user access and visibility. Although the AI Search application tables themselves do not support domain separation, AI Search respects domain restrictions in user search queries based on the domain information stored in indexed ServiceNow AI Platform table records.

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    How AI Search Handles Domain Separation

    • When AI Search indexes content from ServiceNow AI Platform tables, it captures the sysdomain field values for both source and referenced records.
    • Search queries automatically apply filters based on the user’s current session domain, ensuring that results only include records visible within that domain.
    • Child tables configured with the domainmaster attribute derive their domain from the parent record during indexing and searching.

    Restrictions and Behavior with Referenced Records

    • Referenced records not visible in the current domain are excluded from search matches.
    • Filtering and faceting on reference fields have no effect if the referenced record is outside the session domain.
    • If the domain of a referenced record differs from its parent, the reference field is not displayed in search results.

    Managing Domain Updates in Indexed Records

    • AI Search automatically updates domain information for records in indexed source tables but does not do this automatically for referenced tables.
    • To update domains for referenced tables, you can:
      • Perform a full reindex of the source table including the referenced table.
      • Enable automatic domain updates by configuring a dotwalkfields field setting for the reference field, specifying domain-related attributes.

    Why This Matters for ServiceNow Customers

    This behavior ensures that AI Search results comply with your organization's domain separation policies, maintaining data security and relevance based on user permissions. Understanding how domain separation interacts with AI Search indexing and querying helps you maintain accurate and secure search results in multi-domain environments.

    Domain separation is unsupported for the AI Search application tables, but user search queries respect domain restrictions from indexed ServiceNow AI Platform® table records. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

    Note:
    Refer to the Overview and following sections for details on how AI Search search queries respect domain settings from indexed records.

    Support level: No support

    • The domain field may exist on data tables but there is no business logic to manage the data.
    • This level is not considered domain-separated.

    For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.

    AI Search domain separation overview

    AI Search enables users to index and search content from records in ServiceNow AI Platform tables. The AI Search application tables and properties don't support domain separation, but user search queries respect domain settings from indexed content as described in the following sections.

    Domain separation in indexed content and search queries

    When indexing searchable content from a ServiceNow AI Platform table, AI Search stores the sys_domain field values for records on the source table and referenced tables.

    If domain separation is enabled, AI Search applies a filter for the current session domain to every search query. This filter excludes records that aren't visible in the session domain. Only records visible in the session domain appear as search query results.

    For child tables that have the domain_master attribute set, both indexing and search use the appropriate reference field to derive the child record domain from a referenced parent record.

    Restrictions apply to referenced records in search queries, as summarized in the following table.

    Condition Behavior
    Referenced record isn't visible in current session domain
    • Search queries don't match content from the referenced record
    • Filtering on the reference field has no effect on search results
    • Faceting on the reference field has no effect
    Referenced record domain differs from parent record domain Search result records don't display the reference field

    Indexing changes to record domains

    AI Search automatically updates indexed domains for records in tables configured as indexed sources.

    AI Search doesn't automatically update indexed domains for referenced tables. You can update the indexed domain for a referenced table in either of the following ways.

    Use case Action
    Perform a one-time update of domain field values for a referenced table Perform a full table reindex for the indexed source that includes the affected table.

    For details on this procedure, see Perform a full table index or reindex for a single AI Search indexed source.
    Enable automatic updating of domain field values for a referenced table Create a dot_walk_fields field setting for the reference field, specifying the sys_domain,sys_domain_path domain fields as the attribute value.

    For full steps for this task, see Enable automatic domain updates for a referenced table.