Contact Tracing

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 5 minutes to read
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    Summary of Contact Tracing

    The ServiceNow® Contact Tracing application helps organizations reduce the transmission of infectious diseases in the workplace by identifying on-site users who may have been exposed to affected individuals. It aggregates data from multiple sources such as badge scans, Wi-Fi access logs, wearable devices, and daily contact logs to generate lists of potentially exposed users and provide updates about reported cases and symptoms at specific locations.

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    Key Features

    • Exposure Identification: Detects on-site users who might have had contact with infected individuals using diverse data inputs including badge swipe data, Wi-Fi network connections, and self-reported contact logs.
    • Integration with Devices and Systems: Supports importing data from wearable devices (e.g., Zebra MotionWorks Portal, Devvio) and Wi-Fi systems (e.g., Mist Systems, Cisco DNA Spaces) to enhance contact tracing accuracy.
    • Case and Task Management: Enables creation of outreach cases and tasks for follow-up interviews with potentially exposed users, along with visualization tools to assess exposure levels and risk.
    • Privacy and Data Retention: Maintains user data privacy by obtaining consent and applying data retention policies to automatically delete contact tracing data as configured.
    • Safe Workplace Guided Setup: Facilitates configuration of the Contact Tracing app within the Safe Workplace suite through a guided setup workflow.
    • Domain Separation: Supports domain separation at the Standard level to help manage data segregation as needed.

    Integration with Safe Workplace Suite Applications

    • Emergency Outreach: Sends notifications prompting users to submit daily contact logs and provide privacy consent.
    • Emergency Exposure Management: Runs diagnostic reports combining multiple data sources to identify potentially exposed users.
    • Safe Workplace Dashboard: Provides trends and alerts on active cases and exposures by campus or location.
    • Emergency Self Report: Automatically creates cases for users reported in quarantine if no active case exists.
    • Employee Readiness Core: Updates health, safety, and privacy consent statuses of users to ensure workplace readiness and compliance.
    • Vaccination Status: Displays vaccination information of potentially exposed contacts within the tracing visualization.

    Practical Use and Compliance Considerations

    Organizations must configure the application by setting system properties, scheduling jobs, and integrating necessary data sources. The app enables organizations to collect sensitive data responsibly by managing user consent and privacy. It is critical that organizations tailor any provided templates to comply with their specific legal and regulatory requirements, as ServiceNow does not provide legal advice or guarantee compliance.

    Government agencies using the application must confirm ethical approvals and are responsible for ensuring lawful use. The application is offered free of charge to government entities for a limited time without creating any future payment obligations.

    Installation and Setup

    Installation requires admin role access. Setup tasks include configuring integrations for Wi-Fi logs, badge scans, wearable device data, and outreach notifications to aggregate and analyze contact tracing information effectively.

    Maintaining User Data Privacy

    The application emphasizes protecting user privacy by obtaining consent, applying data retention settings, and securely handling sensitive health-related data gathered through contact tracing activities.

    Managing Exposure and Follow-up

    When a positive case is identified, case managers can create and manage cases to track and follow up with potentially exposed contacts, supporting workplace health and safety through timely outreach and monitoring.

    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.
    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.