Domain separation and Universal Task

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation and Universal Task

    Domain separation in ServiceNow Universal Task allows organizations to logically segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This separation controls user access to data and ensures that data flows into the correct domain based on the application’s service provider use cases. Universal Task supports domain separation at run time, affecting the user interface, cache keys, reporting, rollups, and aggregations. The instance owner is responsible for configuring the application to operate across multiple tenants.

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    In Universal Task, configuration tables are process domain-separated, meaning parent domain configurations apply to child domains but can be overridden by child domains. Data tables are data domain-separated, allowing parent domains to access data from child domains, while restricting access between unrelated child domains unless explicitly configured.

    Key Features

    • Process domain separation: Applies to configuration tables such as snunitaskconfig, snunitaskbasetaskconfig, snunitaskcatalogtaskconfig, and snunitaskempinputtaskconfig. Child domains inherit parent configurations but can override them as needed.
    • Data domain separation: Applies to data tables including snunitaskuniversaltask, snunitasktemplate, and snunitaskemployeeform. Data from child domains is accessible to the parent domain but isolated from other child domains unless configured.
    • Support for multi-tenant environments: Enables service providers to manage multiple tenants securely, ensuring customer interactions like chat responses remain visible to the appropriate tenant users.
    • Basic support level: The feature is supported at a basic level, focusing on proper data domain placement and access control.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables secure multi-tenant management by logically separating data and processes for different business units or customers.
    • Provides flexibility for child domains (e.g., individual services) to customize configurations while maintaining overall organizational governance.
    • Ensures that data visibility is appropriately controlled, improving compliance and reducing risks associated with data leakage between tenants or departments.
    • Supports agent workflows by allowing tasks and employee interactions to be managed in a domain-aware manner, enhancing operational efficiency across tenants.

    Domain separation is supported for ServiceNow Universal Task. Universal Task enables agents to request extra information from the employee or to task the employee to accomplish an activity, in order to resolve a ticket. 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.

    Support level: Basic

    • Business logic: Ensure that data goes into the proper domain for the application’s service provider use cases.
    • The application supports domain separation at run time. The domain separation includes separation from the user interface, cache keys, reporting, rollups, and aggregations.
    • The owner of the instance must set up the application to function across multiple tenants.

    Sample use case: When a service provider (SP) uses chat to respond to a tenant-customer’s message, the customer must be able to see the SP's response.

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

    Overview

    In the Universal Task framework, all the configurations are process domain-separated, and the data tables, namely, Universal Task table, Employee form table, and Task template table are data domain separation offerings.

    How domain separation works in Universal Task

    The configuration tables in Universal Task are process domain-separated. So, the configurations created by the parent domains are also implemented in the child domains. However, a child domain can override the configuration, if needed. For example, In an organization, the services are the child domains, while the organization is the parent domain. The task types available for Universal Task in a particular organization, will also be available for the various services of the organization. However, a particular service can override the task types as needed.

    The data tables in Universal Task are data domain-separated. So the data stored in any of the child domains is accessible to the parent domain. For instance, if a service is using task templates, the data captured in the Task templates table for the service domain is accessible to the organization domain, but not to the domains of other services, unless configured.

    Tables

    The following Configuration tables are process separated.
    • sn_uni_task_config
    • sn_uni_task_base_task_config
    • sn_uni_task_catalog_task_config
    • sn_uni_task_emp_input_task_config
    The following Data tables are data separated.
    • sn_uni_task_universal_task
    • sn_uni_task_template
    • sn_uni_task_employee_form