Domain separation in the AI Admin Hub console

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation in the AI Admin Hub console

    Domain separation in the AI Admin Hub console allows ServiceNow customers to logically separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into independent domains within a single instance. This enables control over user access and data visibility, ensuring that data is correctly scoped for different tenants or business units. Domain separation supports runtime business logic, user interface segregation, caching, reporting, and aggregation, making it suitable for multi-tenant service provider environments.

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    Key Features

    • Domain-Scoped Skills: AI capabilities in the console are organized into skills, which by default exist in a global domain but can be configured or variant-created uniquely per domain.
    • Integration with ServiceNow Otto: Otto supports domain separation by restricting user access and AI data usage to their respective domains, ensuring domain-specific summarization and AI processing.
    • Configurable Skill Inputs and Access: Inputs, roles, triggers, and prompts for each skill can be customized per domain. This includes examples such as domain-specific incident summarization fields, role-based access to Otto panels, and selective activation of AI triggers like quick actions.
    • Skill Variant Management: Domains can have different versions or variants of a skill, allowing testing of new prompts or configurations without affecting other domains.
    • Domain-Level Skill Activation: Skills can be activated or deactivated per domain by managing records in the ServiceNow Otto Skill Config table, with careful replication of related configuration records to maintain domain consistency.

    Practical Usage and Considerations

    • Before using domain separation for AI Admin Hub skills, it must be enabled on the ServiceNow instance.
    • Users can only access and generate AI outputs based on data within their domain, which is critical for tenant data privacy in service provider scenarios.
    • Assist consumption tracking is done at the instance level and does not differentiate between domains, which ServiceNow customers should consider for usage and billing.
    • Skill configurations are managed through domain-specific records, requiring administrators to deactivate global skills and activate domain-specific versions within the preferred domain scope.
    • Recreating related configuration records in domain-specific skills is necessary to maintain full functionality.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables multi-tenant or multi-business unit support within a single ServiceNow instance by isolating AI capabilities and data.
    • Allows tailored AI skill configurations to meet domain-specific business needs and compliance requirements.
    • Supports operational efficiency by providing clear boundaries and access controls for generative AI functionalities.
    • Facilitates service providers in securely delivering AI-powered chat and automation services to multiple clients without data leakage.

    Domain separation is supported for the AI Admin Hub console. 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.

    In the AI Admin Hub console, generative AI capabilities are organized into skills. Each skill can be configured differently for each domain or you can create a variant of a skill for a domain. By default, all skills exist in the global domain.

    How domain separation works in the AI Admin Hub console

    You must enable domain separation on your instance first before you can use it for ServiceNow Otto skills.

    ServiceNow Otto works with domain separation. When you use ServiceNow Otto in a domain-separated environment, users are only able to access data within their domain. For example, if a user uses the summarization skill, ServiceNow Otto only uses material that exists within the user's domain when generating that summary. When a skill is domain separated, only users who are in that domain can use the skill that you have configured for that scope.

    If you're a service provider that hosts multiple clients in the same instance, you can set up domain separation to separate tenant data, processes, and administrative tasks. However, Assist consumption is tracked according to instance without differentiating between tenants. You can track your ServiceNow Otto usage in the Subscription Management dashboard.

    If you want a domain to have a different version of an existing skill, you can reconfigure and activate the skill or create a variant in the preferred domain. See the section on granting access to ServiceNow Otto skills to a domain.

    Use cases

    You can configure the inputs, roles, triggers, and prompts when you’re activating or editing a skill or a later variant of the skill.

    Some use cases include the following examples:
    • Use the Activity field as an input in the incident summarization in one domain but only use the short description and description fields in another domain.
    • Grant certain roles access to the ServiceNow Otto panel in one domain while another domain has no role restrictions.
    • Trigger the generative AI capabilities by using quick actions in Agent Chat in only one domain.
    • Create a variant of a skill to test one prompt in one domain while another domain uses the default prompt for the skill.

    Granting a domain access to AI skills

    Domain separation is possible at the skill level and at the individual configuration level. When using the guided setup in the AI Admin Hub, each configuration option has its own record that you can separate by domain. To create a record in a different domain, you must set up the skill while in the scope of your preferred domain.

    1. Navigate to the ServiceNow Otto Skill Config (sn_nowassist_skill_config) table.
    2. Add the Domain field to the list. If it isn't present, select the gear icon at the top of the list and add the Domain field into the Selected column, then select OK.
    3. Find the skill that you want to enable on a domain-by-domain basis. Set Active to false on the skill that is in the global scope. Change the scope to edit the record.
    4. Change your current domain to the domain that you want to enable the skill in.
    5. Navigate to All > AI Admin Hub > AI Skills.
    6. Navigate to the skill that you want to activate according to domain and select Activate skill.
    7. Configure the skill as usual. For more information, see Activate an AI skill.
    8. Return to the AI Skill Config (sn_nowassist_skill_config) table. There should be a new record in the current domain. Open the new record.
    9. In a different browser tab, return to the ServiceNow Otto Skill Config table and open the deactivated skill record in the global domain.
    10. Compare the global skill record to the one created within your domain. Records on the related list may not be present in the domain-specific skill. If they are not there, you must recreate those records in your domain and attach them to the related list in your domain-specific skill.
    11. Repeat the process for each skill and each domain where you want to have the skill available.