Content Ownership

Zurich Employee Service Management

Release

zurich

ft:locale

en-US

ft:publication_title

Zurich Employee Service Management

ft:clusterId

emplsm

bundleId

emplsm

workflow

Employee

Content Ownership

Release version: Zurich

Updated July 31, 2025

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Summary of Content Ownership

Content Ownership in ServiceNow's Content Publishing enables system and content administrators to control who can create, publish, and view specific content. It restricts Content Publishing capabilities to designated content managers by defining ownership across audiences, topics or portal pages, and individual content items. This control ensures sensitive or targeted information is managed and delivered appropriately.

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Key Features

Who - Audience: Assign content managers permission to publish content to specific employee groups based on criteria such as geographic location or employment type (e.g., contractors, new hires). Content managers can create audiences only if the "Allow Ownership for Audiences" option is turned off.
Where - Topic or Portal Page: Assign content managers to specific topics within the taxonomy or to designated portal pages containing rich content, controlling where they can publish.
What - Content Item: Assign ownership of particular content items, such as sensitive announcements (e.g., mergers, legal notices) or region-specific information, to specific content managers.
Role-Based Access:
- System Administrators have full control and visibility over Content Publishing and Content Experiences.
- Content Administrators have complete access to manage content within restricted areas.
- Content Managers have restricted authoring and publishing capabilities limited by their assigned ownership.
Access Permissions: Content managers can only access records they are assigned to; unassigned records remain accessible to all content managers.

Activation and Configuration

Required plug-ins include Employee Center Pro, Content Publishing, Content Governance (if using governance features), and Content Experiences (if using experience features).
After plug-in activation, enable Content Manager Ownership properties to activate ownership functionality.
Once enabled, ownership-related lists appear in audience, content item, topic, and portal page records to facilitate ownership assignments.

Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

Implementing Content Ownership allows your organization to precisely control content publishing workflows, ensuring sensitive or targeted content is only created, published, and viewed by authorized personnel. This reduces risk, improves content governance, and enhances personalized content delivery aligned with employee roles, locations, or other criteria.

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)

Note:
Content Managers can create audiences. To enable this, the Allow Ownership for Audiences option must be turned off. If the Ownership Property is enabled, the Content Manager will not have permission to create audiences. See, Create an auidence.

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

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.