Exploring Instance Scan

Release version: Australia

Updated July 3, 2026

3 minutes to read

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Summary of Exploring Instance Scan

Instance Scan is a ServiceNow tool designed to help you assess the health and security of your instance by detecting anomalies, vulnerabilities, and best practice deviations. It uses focused checks that analyze tables, records, or metadata across your instance. The tool supports multiple scan types—full scan, point scan, and test scan—allowing flexible and targeted assessments. Although domain separation is partially supported (findings are domain-separated by source record), full domain separation is not yet implemented.

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Key Features

Checks: Defined rules that detect issues related to security, upgrade best practices, manageability, user experience, and performance.
Results and Findings: Scan outcomes report the status and details of violations found during scans, helping you identify problem areas.
Dashboard: A system-wide visual interface to manage and analyze scan results, providing insight into your instance’s overall health.
Quota Rules: Configurable thresholds that prevent excessively long running scans, ensuring efficient resource use and avoiding failures.
Scan Types:
- Full Scan: Runs all active checks across the entire instance.
- Point Scan: Targets a specific record, update set, or application with applicable checks.
- Test Scan: Allows testing of individual checks to validate their effectiveness before running full scans.

User Roles

scanuser: Can execute scans, view checks, findings, and results.
scancheckwriter: Includes scanuser permissions plus the ability to create new checks.

Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

Enables creation and management of custom checks and check suites to monitor instance health.
Provides flexible scanning options to efficiently identify and address instance issues.
Offers a comprehensive dashboard for monitoring and analyzing scan outcomes, supporting proactive instance management.
Includes quota rules to control scan execution time and prevent system resource overuse.

Next Steps

To leverage Instance Scan effectively, customers should explore configuration options, learn to create and manage checks, execute various scan types, and use the dashboard to monitor instance health continuously.

If you are new to Instance Scan, read this overview to learn what the tool can do. Follow the tutorial to create checks and execute scans that uses most basics of Instance Scan features.

Note:

Instance Scan doesn't fully support domain separation. Findings are visibly domain separated based on the domain of the source record. For more information see Domain separation.

Instance Scan overview

Instance Scan uses the following records, components and scan types.

Checks: Checks are singular focused rules that detect anomalies or opportunities in an instance. These checks can run against tables, records, or metadata. Checks are defined to identify security, upgrade best practices, manageability, user experience and performance vulnerabilities. See Getting started with checks for more information.
Results: An Instance Scan result reports the status and type of the scan. See Results for more information.
Findings: A finding is a reference to a record that has violated a rule from a check on the instance. See Findings for more information.
Dashboard: The Instance Scan dashboard is a system-wide visual representation of the health of your instance. The dashboard helps you manage and analyze the full scan results against your instance. See Instance Scan dashboard for more information.
Quota rule: A quota rule determines the execution threshold of a scan. The quota rule prevents the instance from running long scans. For example, any scan running longer than the threshold set by the quota rule will result in a failure. See Quota rules for more information.
Full scan: Execute a scan for the entire instance by selecting Execute Full Scan. Implementing a full scan runs all the active checks present in your instance.
Point scan: Execute all applicable checks against a single record, update set, or an application by selecting Run Point Scan. For example, if you execute a point scan against a business rule, only the checks that are applicable to the business rule table run, and only that single target record is scanned. If you execute an update set scan or an application scan, all records related to that update set or application are scanned. See Execute an app scan and Execute an update set scan for more information.
Test scan: Execute a test scan to verify if the check works as expected. The test scan enables you to test a single check instead of a full scan by selecting a single check and selecting Test Check on the Check form.

Note:

Instance Scan can scan tables that are extended by sys_metadata.

Instance Scan users

Instance Scan has the following roles.


Users	Description
scan_user	The scan_user role can run different types of scans, read checks, execute checks, and view the findings and results.
scan_check_writer	This role includes the scan_user role and provides permission to create new checks.

Instance Scan benefits


Benefit	Feature	Users
Create checks and check suites to know the health of your instance	Getting started with checks Create a check Create a check suite	scan_user
Execute scans on the created checks to review the instance health	Executing a scan	scan_user
Scheduling of scans and suite scan	Schedule a full scan Schedule a suite scan	scan_user
Monitor your scans to ensure no health issues of your instance	Monitoring a scan	scan_user
Manage and analyze the results of full scan against your instance	Instance Scan dashboard	scan_user

What to explore next

To learn more about using Instance Scan, see: