Domain separation and Customer Service Management
Summarize
Summary of Domain separation and Customer Service Management
Domain separation in Customer Service Management (CSM) allows ServiceNow customers to logically separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This separation controls user access and visibility, ensuring data isolation across multiple tenants or customers. It is particularly valuable for service providers, managed service providers (MSPs), and customers operating in domain-separated or hybrid environments. Domain separation enables end users such as contacts or consumers to access various entities beyond customer service cases, including problems, changes, and projects.
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How Domain Separation Works in Customer Service Management
- Each customer account is assigned to a single domain, which governs all related entities including contacts, cases, addresses, assets, and contracts.
- When a new account is created, a domain with the same name is automatically generated and linked to that account.
- All related entities inherit the domain of their parent account, maintaining strict data segregation.
- Changing the domain of an account updates the domain for all its related entities.
Setup and Configuration
- Domain separation requires activating the domain separation plugin and enabling the csmautoaccountdomaingeneration property, which automates domain creation for new accounts.
- Existing accounts do not automatically get domains assigned; adding domains for existing accounts requires a migration script available from ServiceNow Professional Services.
- The Account table ([customeraccount]) is extended with Domain and Domain Path fields, which can be exposed and customized in lists and forms for administrative use.
- Customer service agents and managers must be explicitly assigned to the TOP/MSP/Default domain to access case and account data.
Additional Domain Separation Features
- Escalation templates and severity records are domain separated and created within the domain of the related account or case, with default records residing in the global domain.
- Ribbon configuration, Lookup and Verify settings, and Special Handling Notes support domain separation as process-separated tables, ensuring consistent access control.
- Visibility and access control are further refined through relationships such as contact, partner, and parent-child entity associations.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Ensures secure, tenant-aware data management for organizations supporting multiple customers or business units.
- Enables MSPs to efficiently manage multiple customer domains within a single instance while maintaining strict data boundaries.
- Supports advanced scenarios where customers or MSPs provide CSM as a service to their own end customers.
By implementing domain separation in Customer Service Management, ServiceNow customers gain robust control over data visibility, user access, and process isolation, supporting multi-tenant architectures and complex service provider environments.
Domain separation is supported in Customer Service Management. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.
Support level: Basic
- Business logic: Ensure that data goes into the proper domain for the application’s service provider use cases.
- The application supports domain separation at run time. The domain separation includes separation from the user interface, cache keys, reporting, rollups, and aggregations.
- The owner of the instance must set up the application to function across multiple tenants.
Sample use case: When a service provider (SP) uses chat to respond to a tenant-customer’s message, the customer must be able to see the SP's response.
For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.
Overview
- Customers using the application in a domain-separated environment or in a hybrid environment. With domain separation, a customer can grant access to end users (contacts or consumers) to other entities in addition to customer service cases. For example, contacts or consumers can access problems, changes, or projects. System administrators can synchronize the CSM account model with the domain structure and maintain data separation for entities that do not have account-based data separation enabled.
- Managed service providers (MSPs) using the application to provide customer support. In this scenario, an MSP can provide support to multiple customers, where domains are necessary to contain all relevant customer data and processes. For example, an MSP providing support to customers related to billing questions, contract renewals, or other non-service operations.
- Managed service providers offering the application as a service that customers can provide to their customers. In this scenario, an MSP can offer Customer Service Management as a service to customers who, in turn, use the application to support their end customers. This scenario requires additional configuration due to domain support for some of the core entities in the platform such as Product Model.
How domain separation works in Customer Service Management
Domain separation for Customer Service Management aligns each customer account to one domain. To use domain separation with the application, all customer accounts must be assigned to a domain.
The customer account is the main entity within Customer Service Management. All entities related to the account, such as contacts and cases, are created in the same domain as the account. This rule also applies for all entities on customer service cases, including addresses, assets, and contacts.
When a new account is created, a domain of the same name is also created and assigned to the account. All related entities for an account, such as contacts and cases, must reside in the same domain. When a related entity for a domain separated account is created, the entity is assigned to the account domain.
Setting up domain separation for Customer Service Management
Domain separation for Customer Service Management requires the domain separation plugin. Contact ServiceNow to activate domain separation.
Domain separation for Customer Service Management also requires enabling the csm_auto_account_domain_generation property. This property is installed with Customer Service Management and is available only after the domain separation plugin is active. Contact ServiceNow to enable this property.
Changes to Customer Service Management tables
Domain separation for Customer Service Management adds the Domain and Domain Path fields to the Account [customer_account] table. These fields are not exposed by default. Customers can customize lists and forms to view these fields.
Account domains and related entities
When creating related entities for an account, the domain for the related entities is set to the account domain. Related entities include:
- Contacts
- Cases
- Assets
- Contracts
- Entitlements
- Addresses
- Social profiles
- Escalations
- Sold Products
- Installed Products
- Install Base Items
- Affected Install Base Items
- Sold Product Covered
Changing the domain for an account also changes the domain for all the account’s related entities.
Domain visibility for customer service agents and managers
Users with the customer service agent (sn_customerservice_agent) and customer service manager (sn_customerservice_manager) roles must be manually assigned to the TOP/MSP/Default domain. Agents and managers cannot see case or account details until they are assigned to the TOP domain.
Domain separation for case and account escalation
Escalation template records and escalation severity records are domain separated. By default, these records reside in the global domain. Users can configure the Escalation Template and Escalation Severity forms to display the Domain field and set the domain as needed.
When an escalation record is created from a case or account, it is created in the account domain.
Domain separation for ribbon configuration, Lookup and Verify configuration, and Special Handling Notes
Ribbon and Lookup Verify configurations and Special Handling Notes support domain separation as process-separated tables.
When inserting or updating a record for process-separated tables, the picker domain scope takes precedence by design with the Overrides [sys_override] field on process-separated tables. For more information, see Process administration.