Domain separation and Notifications

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain Separation and Notifications

    Domain separation within the Notifications application allows for the organization of data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This enables controlled access for users, ensuring that they see only the data relevant to their domain. It is important to note that while notifications are process-separated, they are not data-separated, and subscription-based notifications do not support domain-specific settings.

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    Key Features

    • Process Separation: Notifications are triggered by record insertions/updates or specific events, processing only those that match the domain of the action.
    • Configuration Needs: Instance owners must set up the minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters tailored to their tenants.
    • Email Accounts: Domain separation is not applicable to email accounts due to limitations in sending and processing inbound mail actions.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing domain separation in notifications, organizations can effectively manage notifications based on specific domains, ensuring relevant information reaches the appropriate users. However, care should be taken to manage email notifications to avoid duplicate messages across domains. Proper configuration and understanding of domain separation mechanisms in notifications can enhance operational efficiency.

    Domain separation is supported in the Notifications application. 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: Standard

    • Includes all aspects of Basic level support.
    • Application properties are domain-aware as needed.
    • Business logic: The service provider (SP) creates or modifies processes per customer. The use cases reflect proper use of the application by multiple SP customers in a single instance.
    • The instance owner must configure the minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters per tenant as expected for the specific application.

    Sample use case: An admin must be able to make comments required when a record closes for one tenant, but not for another.

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

    Overview

    Domain separation is specifically supported in Notifications but not in email accounts. Notifications are not data-separated but they are process-separated. Notifications are also triggered by specific actions.

    Note:
    Subscription-based notifications are not domain aware and cannot support domain-specific settings.

    How domain separation works in Notifications

    There are two basic components of domain separation and Notifications.

    • Notifications are process-separated (not data-separated).
    • Notifications are triggered in two main ways:
      1. When a record is Inserted or Updated

        Notifications with matching conditions AND in the same domain and global domain as the inserted/updated record are processed.

      2. When an event defined in the notification is triggered
        1. Events typically have a target record. For example, [incident.inserted] event references the incident record being inserted.
        2. When an event is fired, notifications configured for that event in the same domain and global domain as the event’s target record are processed.

    Domains and email accounts

    Domain separation is not supported in email accounts for these reasons:

    1. Sending mail: There is only one SMTP sender per account. This prohibits providing domains for each account, and they are not configurable.
    2. For receiving Inbound mail: You can set up multiple email accounts but cannot meaningfully set the domain of an inbound email action. Inbound Actions are processed in the domain of the user who sent the email. For example: User_A in Domain A sends an email to a ServiceNow email account which executes the “Create an incident” inbound email action. The resulting new incident created by the inbound action is in Domain A.
    To learn more see Inbound email actions.
    Note:
    If the number of email accounts exceeds 20, reception of email slows down.

    Use case

    If an instance is using the Domain separation plugin and a new email notification is defined for a domain that has the same event as the notification on the global domain, the user receives two emails for the same event.

    Solution: Set the [sys_overrides] field on the notification that belongs to the domain so it overrides the setting on global. For more information, see Delegated administration.