Data Management for CSM release notes

The ServiceNow® Data Management for Customer Service Management (CSM) application enables you to organize and manage the data for both your internal users and external customers. Data Management for CSM was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.

Data Management highlights for the Australia release

• Implement granular administrative roles across the Customer Data Foundation (CDF) for better access control over user permissions and data.
• Support unified user modeling with Contact as Consumer functionality, enabling the user to function as both a business-to-business (B2B) and a business-to-consumer (B2C).
• Migrate the Household (com.snc.household) plugin to ServiceNow Store for improved packaging and deployment flexibility.
• Renamed Service Model Foundation entities for clarity and consistency. Update any configurations, scripts, or integrations that reference these entities.
• Enable billing account support on Sold Products to give agents instant financial context, accelerate billing case resolution, and improve billing accuracy and transparency.

See Data management for Customer Service Management feature for more information.

Important:

Business Location and Install Base Management are available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

New in the Australia release

External staff can resolve customer cases at their locations

The external location consumer agents (having sn_customerservice.svc_location_consumer_agent and snc_external roles) at external organization (formerly external business location) can create, view, update, and close customer cases directly from the classic environment, the same way internal location staff already can. This extends consistent, timely customer service across company-owned and third-party locations.

External staff can view colleague contact details at their location

An external staff member with sn_customerservice.service_organization_contributor role, can view the business phone number, mobile phone number, and email address of other external staff members at their organization in the classic environment.

Configuring a contact as a consumer

Model a single user who functions as both a contact and a consumer within your customer data structure. This capability improves administrative efficiency by reducing the overhead of creating and maintaining multiple user records for the same individual. It also provides a unified experience, eliminating the need to switch logins across different personas.

Granular administrative roles for Customer Data Foundation

Implemented administrative roles that provide fine-grained access control across CDF. These roles can be assigned to administrators and other personas based on job functions and security requirements. It includes the following capabilities:

• Added 25 admin roles with specific read, write, create, and delete permissions.
• Updated Before you begin sections across all Customer Data Foundation configuration topics with role prerequisites.
• Improved security compliance through role-based access segregation.

New fields in the Customer Account table

Added the following fields to the Customer Account (customer_account) table to improve business identification and record management:

• DUNS Number: Store the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) identifier for business accounts to support data enrichment and third-party integrations.
• Active: Indicates whether an account record is active for filtering and workflow purposes.

Description field added Customer Data Foundation configuration tables

Added a Description field to the following Customer Data Foundation (CDF) configuration tables to capture additional details about each record:

• Related Party Configuration [sn_customerservice_related_party_configuration] table
• Responsibility Definition [sn_customerservice_responsibility_def] table
• Responsibility Access Configuration [sn_customerservice_responsibility_access_config] table

Billing accounts data model enhancements

Grant contacts and consumers access to billing accounts through the related parties data model, using out of base system responsibilities and roles.

Service Model Foundation Granular admin roles

Added new granular admin roles to enable targeted permission assignments based on functional responsibilities, replacing broad admin access.

Add related parties to an install base item

The Sold product is enhanced to support Related pricing.

Adding related parties to a sold product

Use flexible price and quantity ramps that adapt over a product’s lifecycle, enabling time-based pricing, segment modifications during post-sale workflows, and accurate calculations across multi-year contracts.

Sold product form

Use scheduled jobs to update the state of the Sold product based on start and end dates. Ensure that sold products follow clear start and end dates with automatic state updates, giving customers fair access, predictable billing, and reducing errors through accurate lifecycle management and delta pricing.

Sold product form

Billing Account support on Sold Products to give agents immediate financial context, streamline billing‑related case resolution, and improve billing accuracy and transparency for customers and enterprises.

Business Organization Self Contributor persona

Create and track service cases for themselves, and for sold products and install base items at a business location that are assigned to them, using the Business Organization Self Contributor [sn_bus_loc.business_org_self_contributor] role. This role is available to frontline, field, and location-based workers. A new Buyer Organization Member field on the sold product and install base item lets managers associate these records with specific members.

Hierarchy-scoped access for business organization members

Grant business organization members hierarchy-scoped access across child locations with administrator or manager-controlled exclusions using a new organization hierarchy responsibility, Organization Hierarchy Contributor [org_hierarchy_contributor]. Two new fields control the scope: Excluded Locations on the assignment, and Restricted on the business location.

Create Return Merchandise Authorization case lines

Enable agents to initiate return requests directly from sold product records along with install base items. Return cases automatically map order and product details to the case, giving users an end-to-end visibility into their returns and reducing processing times.

Proactive Customer Service Operations

Event management operators now have a dedicated customer service management role for access control when setting up new installations. The access to customer data for event management operators is granted through a limited scope role (sn_pro_cs_ops.csm_evt_mgmt_stakeholder) instead of the global platform role (evt_mgmt_operator) role.

How life-cycle values for Asset, CI, and IBI are synchronized

Configure a model category as a product instance to enable the system to synchronize the life cycle values between asset and install base item using the life cycle stage and life cycle state status values.

Changed in this release

Enhanced Customer Data Viewer role

The Customer Data Viewer (sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer) role includes expanded access to additional data tables and menu items. These enhancements enable users to view a broader range of customer data while maintaining read-only access restrictions. With this enhancement, you can:

• Extend access to additional tables for the customer data viewer role
  • Inherit household role in customer data viewer role
• Explore additional menu items now accessible to the customer data viewer role.

Household plugin migration to ServiceNow Store

Starting with the Australia release, the Household family plugin (com.snc.household) has been migrated to the ServiceNow Store as a standalone application. Any new enhancements to this application are delivered through the Household store app. This change provides improved packaging, versioning, and deployment flexibility for B2C implementations that require household relationship management.

Guided setup access for granular admin roles

Access to foundation data steps in guided setup now aligns with CDF admin roles. This access change enables administrators to delegate specific configuration tasks to users based on their assigned roles, providing greater flexibility in managing setup responsibilities.

Extensible account code support

Updated the account code generation logic to support dynamic length scalability. Account codes now automatically expand from 4 digits to 5 or more as needed, ensuring unlimited account growth without manual intervention. Administrators can resolve invalid insert errors by clearing the system property to regenerate codes based on the maximum existing code.

Declarative Responsibility Framework enhancements

Introduced usability and functional enhancements to the Customer Access Management (CAM) Declarative Responsibility Framework. These updates streamline access configuration management and improve flexibility for responsibility definitions. With this enhancement, you can now:

• Import or copy access configurations from one responsibility definition to another.
• Manage CAM-related assets through improved cleanup capabilities.
• Reference any field name in the Responsibility Definition field configuration.

Unified User configuration enhancements

Added a system property (sn_customerservice.consumer.allowed_user_types) to enhance unified user management. This property specifies which user types (classes) can be associated with consumers.

Customer Life Cycle Management Workflows

Added core primitives to support price and quantity ramps, enabling flexible, time‑based changes across the sold product lifecycle. The feature delivers scalable pricing aligned with usage, simplifies post-sale workflows, and improves revenue forecasting without custom scripts.

Install base data model enhancements

Improve traceability and product life cycle management with the Install Base Identifier field on the install base form. Base install base items are mapped directly to model categories to support industry-specific product configurations.

Added Provider Service Org field on the install base form to support tracking, recall workflows, and post-sale engagement with dealers and partners.

Sold product form

Create future‑dated subscription products in a Pending Activation state to improve the Add‑Order‑to‑Sold‑Product process. It also ensures lifecycle accuracy, predictable billing, and fair access for customers while improving revenue recognition for businesses.

Service Model Foundation renamed Entities

Renamed Service Model Foundation entities to improve clarity and maintain consistency across the platform. Review your existing configurations, scripts, or integrations that reference these entities and update them accordingly.

Note:

The entity name changes are available in the Business Location 5.2.0 store app.

Use hierarchical list view for sold products

Visualize the structure of a customer's sold products and product inventories as an expandable hierarchy directly on the account workspace.

Modify action limited to parent sold products

Perform the Modify action for only root sold products.The Modify action is inactive for child sold products across the list view, detail view, and hierarchical list.

Deprecated features

• As part of the CAM Declarative Responsibility Framework enhancements, the following legacy fields have been marked deprecated:
  • Restrict access to field from the Responsibility Access Configuration [sn_customerservice_responsibility_access_config] table
  • Applicable to field from the Responsibility Definition [sn_customerservice_responsibility_def] table
• Starting with the Australia release, the Household plugin (com.snc.household) is available as a store plugin and, as such, the family version of the plugin is being prepared for future deprecation. Upon upgrading, customers will automatically move to the store version of the plugin. It will be hidden from the family plugins and no longer installed on new instances but will continue to be supported as a store plugin. For details, see the Deprecation Process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

Activation information

CSM is a ServiceNow AI Platform application that is available with activation of the Customer Service Management (CSM) plugin (com.sn_customerservice). For details, see Activate Customer Service Management.

Additional CSM features are available with the activation of other plugins. For details, see Additional plugins for Customer Service Management.

Sales Customer Relationship Management is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is available with the activation of the Lead to Cash Core plugin (com.snd.l2c.core). For details, see Exploring Sales Customer Relationship Management.

Plugin information

Changed plugins

The following plugins are moved to store. The Customer Service Household (com.snc.household) plugin has been renamed to Customer Household Data Model (com.snc.household).

• CSM Contributor User (com.snc.csm_contributor_user)
• Outsourced Customer Service (com.snc.csm_ocs)
• Service Organization (com.snc.service_organization)
• Outsourced Service Provider (com.snc.outsourced_service_provider)

Plugins planned for deprecation

The following plugins are planned for deprecation in a future release:

These plugins are planned for deprecation in the C release. Beginning with the Australia release these plugins will be migrated to a store application. Upgrade your instance to Australia or later release versions and the store applications will be automatically installed.

• CSM Contributor User (com.snc.csm_contributor_user)
• Service Organization (com.snc.service_organization)

Browser requirements

Starting with the Australia release, data management for Customer Service Management doesn't support mobile devices and Internet Explorer. For more information, see Browser support.

Related ServiceNow applications and features

Communities

From the Customer Service Portal and Consumer Service Portal, you can enable your customers to connect, engage, and collaborate by using the ServiceNow® Communities application. Customer Service agents can create cases from community discussion threads and resolve cases with the community content.

Field Service Management

Customer Service Management includes an integration with the ServiceNow® Field Service Management application. With this integration, your technicians, agents, consumers, and customers can perform the following tasks:

• Field service technicians can view customer account and contact information on work orders and work order tasks in the Field Service Management application.
• Customer service agents can create work orders from cases in the Customer Service Management application.
• Customers and consumers can view the case-related work orders from the Customer Service Portal and Consumer Service Portal.

Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

Manage and maintain the productivity of your workforce from a single application by using ServiceNow® Workforce Optimization for Customer Service. With this application, you can efficiently route work to your team, manage your team's skills and schedules, and monitor their performance.

Workspace

ServiceNow® Workspace is a graphical user interface that puts multiple tools on one page, including the tools that agents use to identify, research, and resolve issues. CSM Configurable Workspace and CSM Agent Workspace are customer service implementations that provide tier-1 agents with the tools that they use to respond to customers and to resolve cases.

Sales Customer Relationship Management

The Sales Customer Relationship Management applications enable you to manage the product sales and order fulfillment life cycles in your organization. It includes pre-sales opportunities, sales quote generation, order capture, order fulfillment, and post-sales engagement.