Exploring Instance Scan

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

3 minutes to read

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Summary of Exploring Instance Scan

Instance Scan is a tool designed to help ServiceNow customers assess the health and security of their instances by running focused checks against tables, records, or metadata. It detects anomalies and opportunities related to security, upgrade best practices, manageability, user experience, and performance vulnerabilities. Although it supports domain separation visually based on the source record’s domain, full domain separation is not yet implemented.

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Key Features

Checks: Singular, rule-based validations that identify potential issues or improvements within the instance.
Results and Findings: Results summarize the scan status and type, while findings reference specific records that violate a check’s rule.
Dashboard: Provides a system-wide visual summary of instance health, helping users manage and analyze scan outcomes.
Quota Rule: Limits scan execution time to prevent long-running scans from impacting instance performance.
Scan Types:
- Full Scan: Runs all active checks across the entire instance.
- Point Scan: Executes checks against a single record, update set, or application, scanning only relevant records.
- Test Scan: Allows testing of individual checks to verify their operation without running a full scan.

Instance Scan Users and Roles

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

Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

Create and manage checks and check suites to proactively monitor instance health.
Execute and schedule scans to continuously assess security and performance issues.
Monitor ongoing scans and analyze results through the dashboard for informed decision-making.

Next Steps

Customers can deepen their use of Instance Scan by exploring configuration options, learning how to effectively use it, and reviewing references to optimize instance health management.

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.

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: