Playbooks roles

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
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    Summary of Playbooks roles

    Playbooks roles in ServiceNow enable users to create, manage, and interact with playbooks, triggers, and activity definitions within the Playbooks framework. Assigning appropriate roles ensures users have the necessary permissions to perform tasks such as designing, editing, launching, and monitoring playbooks. System administrators control access by granting these roles directly or through delegated development permissions. Playbook authors can also apply filters for runtime user access in Workflow Studio.

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    Available Roles and Their Permissions

    • playbook.admin: Full control over triggers, playbooks, and activity definitions. Can create, update, delete, and translate playbooks and view shared Experience activity tables.
    • pdauthor: Can create, activate, edit, and delete playbooks in Workflow Studio and view all activity definitions and shared Experience activity tables.
    • pdcontentauthor: Manages activity and trigger definitions and views shared Experience activity tables.
    • pdtriggerauthor: Focused on creating, updating, and deleting trigger definitions.
    • pdoperator: View-only access to process and activity executions and execution logs.
    • pdshared.user: View shared Experience activity types and properties tables.
    • pdshared.admin: Edit shared Experience activity types and properties tables.
    • pdcancel: Allows canceling running playbooks without full playbook.admin rights or parent record write access, useful for roles like agent managers.
    • pdrestarter: Permission to restart active playbooks.
    • playbook.write: For users with content filtering restrictions, permits creation and management of playbooks and viewing shared Experience activity tables.
    • playbook.designeraccess: Allows users with content filtering restrictions to view playbooks in Workflow Studio.
    • playbook.activitydefread: Grants view access to all activity definitions unless restricted by Required Roles.

    Important Considerations

    • Granting Playbooks roles alone does not automatically provide access to the Workflow Studio design environment; separate Workflow Studio roles are required for design access.
    • Content filtering applies to some roles, enabling tailored access to playbooks and activities.
    • Experience activity types and properties tables (syspdactivity and syspdactivitytypeprop) are shared resources accessed by several roles related to Playbooks and Playbook Experience.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    Assigning the correct Playbooks roles ensures that users can effectively create, edit, manage, and monitor playbooks according to their responsibilities. For example, developers and authors receive elevated permissions to build and modify playbooks, while operators and managers may have view or limited control capabilities like canceling or restarting playbooks. Understanding these roles helps streamline collaboration and maintain security by granting only necessary access.

    Grant users one or more Playbooks roles to enable them to create triggers, playbooks, and activity definitions.

    Roles

    To learn more about managing per-user subscriptions, see Managing per-user subscriptions in Subscription Management and contact your account representative.

    System administrators can grant users access to Playbooks by assigning delegated development permissions or directly assigning Roles. Additionally, playbook authors can create additional filters for runtime user access as they build a playbook in Workflow Studio. The following user roles are available for Playbooks:

    Role Description
    playbook.admin Enables users to:
    • Create, update, and delete trigger definitions.
    • Launch Workflow Studio to create, activate, edit, and delete playbooks.
    • Create, edit, and delete activity definitions.
    • View the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    • Add translations for a playbook.
    pd_author Enables users to:
    • Launch Workflow Studio to create, activate, edit, and delete playbooks.
    • View all activity definitions.
    • View the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    pd_content_author Enables users to:
    • Create, edit, and delete activity definitions.
    • Create, edit, and delete trigger definitions.
    • View the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    pd_trigger_author Enables users to create, update, and delete trigger definitions.
    pd_operator Enables users to view process executions, activity executions, and execution logs only.
    pd_shared.user Enables users to view the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    pd_shared.admin Enables users to edit the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    pd_cancel Enables users to cancel running playbooks without the playbook.admin role or write access to the parent record. For example if you want to grant an agent manager the ability to cancel playbooks, but not an agent.
    pd_restarter Enables users to restart active playbooks.
    playbook.write Enables users who have content filtering restrictions to:
    • Launch Workflow Studio to create, activate, edit, and delete playbooks.
    • View the Experience activity types (sys_pd_activity) and Experience activity properties (sys_pd_activity_type_prop) tables that are shared by Playbooks and Playbook Experience.
    To learn more about content access filtering, see Content filtering for playbooks
    playbook.designer_access Enables users who have content filtering restrictions to launch Workflow Studio to view playbooks. To learn more about content access filtering, see Content filtering for playbooks.
    playbook.activity_def_read Enables users to view all activity definitions as long as there aren't Required Roles.
    Note:
    Granting users Playbooks roles does not automatically allow them to access the Workflow Studio design environment. Granting users access to Workflow Studio may be helpful when creating activity definitions. For more information on Workflow Studio roles, see user access to Flow Designer.