Assign user personas, roles, groups, and responsibilities in Investigative Case Management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 13, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Assign user personas, roles, groups, and responsibilities in Investigative Case Management

    Investigative Case Management (ICM) on the ServiceNow platform includes predefined roles, personas, and responsibilities designed to manage investigative cases effectively. Assigning appropriate roles and grouping users helps control access to ICM features, streamline case handling, and ensure organizational accountability within investigations.

    Show full answer Show less

    Assigning User Roles

    Roles determine users' access and actions within ICM. As an admin, you can assign roles to users based on their investigative responsibilities. Key steps include:

    • Identify who will work on investigative cases and their required permissions.
    • Create or update user records in User Administration.
    • Assign roles to users either individually or by associating them with groups.

    Roles are essential for delegating access to features, capabilities, and case data, ensuring users have the permissions needed for their tasks.

    Using Assignment Groups

    Groups serve to organize users into teams with shared roles and responsibilities, simplifying role management and access delegation:

    • Create groups such as administrators, investigators, supervisory agents, and managers based on your organizational structure.
    • Assign roles to groups so all members inherit the necessary permissions.
    • Add users to these groups to automatically grant them the group roles.

    Assignment groups differ from case-level teams; they affect user-level roles and access across cases, while case teams handle responsibilities specific to individual cases.

    Responsibilities

    Responsibilities are case-level designations assigned to users within the context of a specific investigative case. They are different from roles and control what part a user plays in a case. Features include:

    • Responsibilities can be assigned once a case is created, allowing multiple responsibilities per user across different cases.
    • Default responsibilities include titles like Case Agent, Coroners Office Liaison, Crime Lab Technician, District Attorney, Expert Analyst, and others.
    • Responsibilities help build case teams and manage role-specific duties without altering user roles globally.

    Configuring Case Access via System Properties

    ICM provides system properties to control case read and write access automatically based on organizational alignment:

    • xsncicm.casewriteaccess controls which users can modify case data, with options to grant access based on Assignment Group, Assigned Office, or both.
    • xsncicm.casereadaccess restricts read access similarly, ensuring only authorized users can view case details.
    • These settings streamline case access management by aligning permissions with organizational units, reducing manual case team configuration while maintaining existing role-based security.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Efficiently manage investigative workflows by assigning precise roles and grouping users logically.
    • Maintain strong security controls by differentiating global user roles from case-specific responsibilities.
    • Automate case access controls to match organizational structures, reducing administrative overhead.
    • Customize responsibilities and roles as needed to fit your investigative teams and processes.

    By default, Investigative Case Management comes with roles, personas, and responsibilities that can be assigned to existing users on the platform.

    Assigning user roles

    Assign roles to members of your investigative organization Investigative Case Management application so that your users can have delegated access to Investigative Case Management features, capabilities, and data.

    There are a few guidelines for assigning roles to users:

    Role required: admin

    To assign roles to a user within an organization:

    1. Make sure a user record has been created within the organization. Navigate to All > User Administration > Users to create a user record, or open an existing user record.
    2. In the Roles related list, select Edit.
    3. In the Collection list, select the desired roles, and then select Add
    4. Select Save.
    5. Repeat as many times as needed until all desired users are added to and associated with the organization and have the desired role.
    You can also create user groups and assign roles to them. Users assigned to the group inherit the roles.

    Using assignment groups to create organizational teams

    There are a few guidelines for creating groups:
    • Create one group for administrators and assign the admin role to this group only.
    • Create as many groups as needed in your organization. For example, create an investigator group for each supervisory agent team, and a larger investigator group for the investigators for the entire organization, and a group for all the supervisory agents with their manager. Assign the necessary users to those groups, and then assign the necessary role to those groups if you haven't already. You can create groups first, assign a role to the group, and add users, or you can add user roles individually and then add them to the group. All users in a group will inherit the group role.
    To delegate access to cases and create organizational teams, you can create assignment groups. This is different from creating case teams at a case level within an investigative case in ICM, where you assign team responsibilities instead of roles. These do not affect roles at the user level. To create a user assignment group:
    1. Navigate to All > User Administration > Group to create group record.
    2. Select a group Name.
    3. In the Group Members related list, select Edit.
    4. Select one or more names in the Collection list.
    5. Select Add and Save.
    6. Repeat as many times as needed until all desired users are added to the group.
    7. In the Roles related list, select Edit.
    8. Add the desired roles to the group.
    9. Select Save.

    For more information on the roles available in Investigative Case Management and to determine which makes sense for each user, see Investigative Case Management roles and Investigative Case Management Personas

    Responsibilities

    The following is a list of all responsibilities that are provided with the Investigative Case Management application by default. Responsibility definitions can be used to build teams of users in the Teams tab within the Investigative Case Management workspace. You can assign these using the dropdown menus on the Teams tab. For information on creating case teams, see Create a case team for an investigative case

    Responsibilities are different than user roles; responsibilities are tied to the case only and determined at the case level. These can only be assigned once a case has been created. A user can have multiple responsibilities across cases, per case, and a user's responsibility within a case does not affect a user role.

    teams tab

    The following is a list of all responsibility definitions that are provided with the Investigative Case Management application by default. Responsibility definitions can be added and removed as needed using the responsibility definition table. For information on how to configure responsibility definitions, see Configuring Investigative Case Management responsibility definitions.
    Table 1. Responsibility table (Case Level)
    Responsibility
    Case Agent
    Coroners Office Liason
    Crime Lab Technician
    District Attorney
    Expert Analyst
    Internal Affairs Officer
    Investigative Assistant
    Special Agent in Charge
    Supervisory Agent

    Configure Case Access for Office and Assignment Groups

    Use the x_snc_icm.case_write_access and x_snc_icm.case_read_access system properties to extend write access and restrict read access to cases based on Assigned Office, Assignment Group, or both, to allow automatic case access alignment with organizational units without manual Teams tab management, preserving existing access pathways and role-based permissions.

    Table 2. x_snc_icm.case_write_access
    Value Label Behavior
    0 Default No change. Case write access remains governed by existing access pathways.
    1 Assignment Group Extends write access to members of the case's Assignment Group.
    2 Assigned Office Extends write access to users that match the case's Assigned Office.
    3 Assignment Group & Assigned Office Extends write access to users that match either condition.
    Table 3. x_snc_icm.case_read_access
    Value Label Behavior
    0 Default No change. Case read access remains open to all users with the appropriate platform roles.
    1 Assignment Group Restricts case read access to members of the case's Assignment Group.
    2 Assigned Office Restricts case read access to users that match the case's Assigned Office.
    3 Assignment Group & Assigned Office Restricts case read access to users that match either condition.