Contact Tracing

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 5 minutes to read
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    Summary of Contact Tracing

    The ServiceNow® Contact Tracing application helps organizations minimize workplace transmission of infectious diseases by identifying on-site users who may have been in contact with affected individuals. It aggregates data from various sources such as badge scans, Wi-Fi access logs, wearable devices, and daily contact logs to create a list of potentially exposed users. The application also ensures data privacy by obtaining user consent and applying data retention policies.

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    Key Features

    • Contact Identification: Detects users who may have been exposed through proximity data from badge swipes, Wi-Fi networks, and daily contact logs.
    • Integration with Devices and Systems: Supports importing data from wearable devices via Zebra and Devvio integrations, as well as Wi-Fi data through Mist Systems or Cisco DNA Spaces.
    • Case Management: Enables creation of outreach cases and tasks for follow-ups with potentially exposed users, including visualization of exposure levels up to two degrees.
    • Data Privacy and Retention: Maintains user privacy by managing consent and automatically deleting contact tracing data based on retention settings.
    • Guided Setup: Provides a step-by-step guided setup to configure the Contact Tracing and other Safe Workplace suite applications easily.
    • Domain Separation: Supports domain separation at the Standard level to maintain data security and segregation.

    Integration with Safe Workplace Suite

    • Emergency Outreach: Sends notifications to users for daily contact log submissions and privacy consent collection.
    • Emergency Exposure Management: Runs diagnostic reports to identify potentially exposed users by leveraging multiple data sources.
    • Safe Workplace Dashboard: Displays trends of active cases and exposures with alert capabilities for threshold breaches.
    • Emergency Self Report: Automatically creates cases for users reported in quarantine.
    • Employee Readiness Core: Updates health and safety status of users based on exposure and privacy consent status.
    • Vaccination Status: Allows review of vaccination status of exposed contacts within the tracing visualization.

    Practical Use and Compliance

    ServiceNow provides the Contact Tracing application without legal compliance guarantees; organizations are responsible for ensuring their use aligns with applicable laws, especially data protection and employment regulations. Government agencies receive the application free of charge for limited periods and must confirm usage compliance with their ethics offices.

    Installation and Configuration

    Administrators can install Contact Tracing and configure system properties, scheduled jobs, integrations with Wi-Fi access logs, and outreach notifications to aggregate and manage tracing data effectively.

    Data Collection and Monitoring

    • Badge Data: Import badge swipe data to identify contacts.
    • Risk Scores: Import and monitor risk scores from wearable devices and external systems to identify at-risk users.
    • Wi-Fi Access Logs: Use Wi-Fi connection data to correlate user proximity.
    • Daily Contact Logs: Encourage employees to submit daily contact logs via notifications to enhance tracing accuracy.

    Case Management for Exposure Follow-up

    Upon identifying a positive case, case managers can create and manage cases to follow up with potentially exposed individuals, ensuring timely outreach and risk mitigation within the workplace.

    The ServiceNow® Contact Tracing application helps organizations reduce workplace transmission of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, by identifying any on-site users who might have been in contact with an affected user. The user receives updates about the number of reported cases or symptoms in the location. A list of potentially exposed users is created from various data inputs, such as badge scans, Wi-Fi access logs, and daily contact logs.

    Features

    In Contact Tracing version 1.29.4. and above, the navigation path is not available in the Application search context menu (All > Contact Tracing) for Zebra and Devvio. The navigation path is available if you are using Contact Tracing 1.29.2 and later versions.

    • Identify on-site users who may have been in contact with a potentially infected user.
    • Aggregate contact tracing information across workplace locations, work shifts and reservations, badge scans, Wi-Fi access logs, and self-reporting logs to enhance search criteria.
    • Identify potential user interactions with a user using the Wi-Fi access data by correlating who connected to the same Wi-Fi network using laptops, mobile devices, or Bluetooth LE devices. You can get the Wi-Fi access data by manual import or through integration with Mist Systems or Cisco DNA Spaces.

    • Get the contact tracing data of users who use handheld or wearable devices at the workplace. You can import the contact tracing report from Zebra MotionWorks Portal.
    • Monitor risk scores of users who use wearable devices at the workplace. You can import risk score reports with Devvio integration.
    • Create outreach cases and tasks for follow-up interviews with potentially impacted users.
    • Assess the status of potentially exposed contacts and their next two levels of potential exposures from within a case using visualization.
    • Maintain the data privacy of users, in the context of contact tracing by obtaining their consent.
    • Use data retention settings to determine when the data collected for contact tracing is automatically deleted from the system.
    Identify potential exposures from affected users to minimize transmission of infectious diseases at the workplace
    Use guided setup to implement Safe Workplace suite apps
    The Safe Workplace guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help you configure the Safe Workplace and Emergency Response Management applications on your ServiceNow instance. To open the Safe Workplace guided setup, navigate to Guided Setup > Safe Workplace Guided Setup. For more information about using the guided setup interface, see Using guided setup.

    Use with other ServiceNow® Safe Workplace suite and applications

    The Contact Tracing application provides enhanced capabilities and additional features with other Safe Workplace suite applications.
    • Emergency Outreach: Configure and send email and mobile notifications to users requesting them to submit daily contact logs and to get responses for privacy consents.
    • Emergency Exposure Management: Run a diagnostic report on affected users to identify potentially exposed users who might have interacted with the affected user. You can use multiple data sources to broaden the coverage of finding potential exposure. Review tracing systems for data sources provided by Contact Tracing to see whether these tracing systems meet your business needs. You can modify these tracing systems or set up a new tracing system for your data source. For more information, see Set up a tracing system for an exposure data source.
    • Safe Workplace Dashboard: View the trend of active cases and potentially exposed contacts over a given time period for a campus or location. You can also get alerts to determine when the number of active cases is higher than the threshold in a particular campus or location.
    • Emergency Self Report: A case is created automatically for a user who is reported to be in quarantine if no active case exists for the user at the time of reporting.
    • Employee Readiness Core:
      • Automatically adds or updates a user's health and safety requirement status when a user is identified as a potentially exposed contact in a case. This up-to-date information helps you evaluate the readiness of your potentially exposed users to return to the workplace.
      • Automatically adds or updates a user's privacy consent requirement status when a user responds to the privacy consent request. This up-to-date information helps you ensure that your users acknowledge the privacy consent before entering the workplace to facilitate contact tracing as desired.
    • Vaccination Status: Review a potentially exposed contact's vaccination status in the contact tracing visualization.

    Domain separation for the Contact Tracing application

    The Contact Tracing application supports domain separation at the Standard* level. For more information, see Domain separation and Contact Tracing. For a deeper understanding of the support levels, see Application support for domain separation.