Content Ownership

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Content Ownership

    Content Ownership in ServiceNow enables system and content administrators to control who can create, publish, and view content within the Content Publishing framework. This feature restricts access and capabilities to specific content managers, ensuring targeted and secure content distribution across the organization.

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    Key Features

    • Audience Control: Assign content managers permission to publish content tailored to specific employee groups based on criteria such as geographic location or employment type (e.g., contractors, new hires).
    • Topic or Portal Page Assignment: Restrict content managers to publish content only within designated topics or portal pages, allowing focused content management within the site taxonomy or specific rich content pages.
    • Content Item Ownership: Grant content managers exclusive rights to create and manage sensitive or specialized content items, including legal announcements, regional news, or corporate communications like mergers or reductions in force.
    • Role Impact:
      • System Admin: Full control and visibility across Content Publishing and Content Experiences, regardless of ownership restrictions.
      • Content Administrator: Complete capabilities to add, edit, and publish content within assigned restricted areas.
      • Content Manager: Access and authoring rights are limited to the records (audiences, topics, pages, content items) assigned to them.
    • Access Behavior: Content managers can only access records assigned to them; unassigned records remain accessible to all content managers.
    • Activation Requirements: Activation requires the Employee Center Pro, Content Publishing, and optionally Content Governance and Content Experiences plug-ins. Once enabled, Content Ownership properties activate ownership-related lists on audiences, content items, topics, and portal pages.

    Practical Benefits

    By leveraging Content Ownership, ServiceNow customers can ensure that content publishing rights are precisely allocated, improving content security, relevance, and compliance. This targeted control helps organizations deliver appropriate content to the right employees while maintaining governance and reducing the risk of unauthorized content modifications.

    Define who has permission to create content, where they can publish it, and which employees can view it.

    Content Ownership enables system admins and content admins to designate exclusive access to certain Content Publishing features to specific content managers.

    Content Ownership gives control over three areas of Content Publishing:
    • Who sees the content (Audience)
    • Where can a content manager publish content (Topic or Page)
    • What content can the content manager create (Content item)
    Table 1. Examples by ownership area
    Ownership area Examples Relevant links
    Who - Audience

    Assign content managers the ability to publish content for specific employees
    • Geographic audiences: target content to audiences based on their geographic location. For example, benefit information may be different for your employees located in the United States as opposed to other locations.
    • Type of employment: target content for employees that are contractors, new hires, or employees requiring visa transfers.
    		 Assign ownership of an audience

    Create an audience
    Where - Topic or Portal page

    Assign content managers to specific topics or pages
    • Designated topics in the taxonomy
    • Designated pages in the portal
    • Pages containing rich content
    		 Assign ownership to a portal page

    Assign ownership to a topic
    What - Content item

    Assign content managers to specific content items
    • Sensitive content, such as:
      • Mergers or acquisitions
      • Reduction in Force (RIF)
      • Content specific to geographic region
      • Legal announcements
    • Rich content
    • News
    		 Assign ownership of content

    Impact on roles

    • System admin (admin) has total control and visibility into Content Publishing and Content Experiences during and after restriction set up.
    • Content Administrators (sn_cd.content_admin) have full and complete access to add, edit, and publish content within the restricted areas and functions for Employee Center Pro.
    • Content Managers (sn_cd.content_manager) have restricted access to authoring and publishing capabilities. Review the tables below to understand how content managers access to audiences, pages, topic, and content items changes when a user or group is assigned to the record.
      The following graphic shows a content manager's access permissions to a record based in whether they are assigned to that record or not.
      Note:
      These access permission changes apply only when a record is assigned to at least one user or group. If a record does not have an assignment, it is accessible to all content managers.
      Figure 1. Access to records
      content managers access to records

    Activating Content Ownership

    The following plug-ins are required:
    • Employee Center Pro
    • Content Publishing
    • Content Governance (only required if using Content Governance features)
    • Content Experiences (only required if using Content Experiences features)
    Note:
    For more information on activating the above plug-ins, see Employee Center plugins and Install Employee Center Pro.

    After activating the required plug-ins, enable the Content Manager Ownership properties. See Properties installed with Content Publishing. When the Content Manager Ownership properties are enabled, Content Ownership related lists appear in records for audiences, content items, topics, and portal pages.