Process administration
Summarize
Summary of Process administration
Process administration in ServiceNow enables administrators to configure domain-specific policies that control system behavior. Policies set in lower-level domains override those set in higher-level or global domains, allowing for tailored configurations within different organizational units.
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Key Features
- Domain-Specific Policies: Administrators can define policies for client scripts, system policies, application and module names, application roles, and module filters within specific domains.
- Policy Override Mechanism: When modifying a policy from a higher domain, the system creates a new overriding record in the current domain instead of altering the original. This preserves higher-level policies while allowing domain-specific customizations.
- Sysoverrides Field: This field tracks when a domain-level policy overrides a higher-level policy, ensuring the correct policy is applied during transactions.
- Policy Resolution Order: The system determines applicable policies based on the record’s domain first, then searches up the domain hierarchy to the global domain if no policies are found at lower levels.
- Admin Role Privileges: Users with the admin role can access all system features and data across domains, bypassing domain-specific restrictions, so this role should be assigned carefully.
Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers
Customers can leverage process administration to enforce customized policies that reflect organizational structure and requirements. By managing policies at the appropriate domain level, administrators ensure that domain-specific needs are met without impacting global settings. The system’s override mechanism maintains policy integrity and simplifies updates by creating domain-specific records rather than modifying global policies directly.
Understanding the domain hierarchy and policy resolution process helps administrators predict which policies will apply in various contexts, ensuring consistent and expected system behavior. Additionally, caution is advised when assigning the admin role due to its unrestricted access across domains.
Process administration allows administrators to set domain-specific policies.
The policies set lower in the domain hierarchy override policies set higher in the domain hierarchy. While in a domain, administrators can set domain-specific versions of these global policies and settings:
- Client scripts
- System policies
- Application and module names
- Application roles
- Module filters
When users have the admin role, then all policies in the instance are available to them regardless of the assigned domain. They can enter a specific domain, and then only policies in that domain or higher are visible and processed during a relevant transaction. When an administrator modifies a policy that is in a higher domain or the global domain, the system automatically creates a new record for that administrator's current domain. It does not modify the original policy, application, or module record. This new record overrides the original.
To make changes to a policy in a lower-level domain, go into that domain and modify the policy. This approach creates the policy record in your domain that overrides the original, higher-level policy record.
Do not change the higher-level policy and then change the Domain field on that policy. This approach does not create a policy record in your lower-level domain, nor does it keep the policy record for the higher-level domain.
The sys_overrides field indicates that a policy, application, or module at a lower level in the hierarchy overrides a record at a higher level. The system automatically sets this field when an administrator attempts to modify a policy, application, or module that belongs to another domain higher in the hierarchy.
Rather than changing the higher-level record, the attempted update is changed into an insert, and the sys_overrides field is set to indicate the higher-level policy, application, or module that is being overridden. Later when the records for a relevant transaction are loaded, the overriding domain-specific policy, application, or module is used instead of the original.
Domains for process administration
By default, process administration always uses the record's domain to determine what policies to apply.
The record's domain takes precedence over the user's domain. If there are no policies in the record's domain, delegated administration checks for policies in the next highest level of the domain hierarchy. The search for domain policies continues up the domain hierarchy until reaching the global domain. If there are no domain policies lower in the domain hierarchy, processes administration uses the policies for the global domain.
For example, Fred Luddy is a user in the Acme domain who can see records in the child domains of Acme: Atlanta, Acme: San Diego, and Acme: NY child domains. When this user opens a record in the Acme: San Diego domain, process administration first checks for policies in the Acme: San Diego domain. If there are no policies at this level of the domain hierarchy, process administration checks for policies from the Acme domain. If there are no policies in the Acme domain, process administration uses the global domain polices as there are no other domains higher in the domain hierarchy.