Domain separation in Live Feed

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Domain separation in Live Feed

    Domain separation in Live Feed allows ServiceNow customers to logically separate data, processes, and administrative tasks by domains, controlling user access and visibility. Parent and child domains define what Live Feed content users can see and share. Users in a parent domain can access content within their domain and all child domains, whereas users in a child domain can only see content within their own domain, not the parent or sibling domains.

    Show full answer Show less

    Enabling and Managing Domain Separation

    Domain separation for Live Feed is available from the Eureka release onwards. Upgrading to Eureka adds a sysdomain field to Live Feed tables to support domain separation without affecting existing records, which default to the global domain. Administrators can control the visibility of the Live Feed application per domain, including displaying it in the application navigator and enabling users to follow and view feeds for domain-specific records.

    Using Live Feed with Domain Separation

    • Posting and Sharing Content: Users in a child domain can interact only within their domain. Parent domain users can interact within their domain and all child domains. Messages added by parent users to child threads inherit the child domain’s visibility.
    • Viewing Content: Users see content filtered by their domain hierarchy. My Feed displays messages, teams, and hashtags according to the user's domain, and viewing another user’s feed respects domain visibility.
    • Hashtags: Hashtags are domain-separated. Child domain users can use hashtag functions within their domain, while parent domain users have access to hashtags in their domain and child domains.
    • Teams: Teams are also domain-separated. Users can join, follow, and invite others only within their domain; parent domain users have access across their domain and child domains. New teams are created in the user’s domain unless linked to a record with a different domain, in which case the team inherits the record’s domain. Team threads follow the existing team’s domain. When a document’s domain changes, associated Live Feed records update accordingly.
    • Email Notifications: Users can subscribe to notifications only from users and teams within their domain.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This domain separation capability in Live Feed enhances data security and governance by ensuring users only access appropriate content within their domain boundaries. It supports organizational hierarchies and multi-tenant environments, enabling streamlined collaboration while maintaining strict access controls. Administrators can tailor visibility and interactions to fit their domain policies, improving operational efficiency and compliance.

    This is an overview of domain separation and Live Feed. 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.

    Overview

    Support: Level 2

    Parent and child domains define the Live Feed content that can be viewed and shared with other users.
    • A user in a parent domain can see users and content within their domain and within all child domains that are lower in the domain hierarchy.
    • A user in a child domain can see users and content within their domain but cannot see the parent domain or other child domains at the same level in the domain hierarchy.

    Enable domain separation for Live Feed

    Domain separation for the Live Feed application is available starting with the Eureka release. For users upgrading to Eureka, a sys_domain column is added to existing live feed-related database tables. For existing database records, the value of the sys_domain field is set to empty (global). This allows the domain separation feature to work with existing Live Feed records.

    Show or hide the Live Feed application for a domain

    The administrator can Live Feed visibility for a domain. This includes:
    • Displaying Live Feed in the application navigator.
    • Following a document feed for a record.
    • Viewing Live Feed from a record.

    Use Live Feed with domain separation

    All of the Live Feed features are available to users within a domain and work the same way, with some exceptions to visibility.
    • Posting and sharing content
      • Users in a child domain can interact with other users in the same domain. This includes posting and replying to messages, deleting messages, attaching files and links, and rating content.
      • Users in a parent domain can interact with other users in the same domain and with users in any child domains. Messages that are added to child threads by parent users are given the visibility of the child domain, not the parent domain.
    • Viewing content
      • Users in a child domain can view content that resides within their domain. This includes filtering by feed, sorting, searching, and viewing older messages.
      • Users in a parent domain can view content that resides within their domain and within any child domains.
      • My Feed shows messages, teams, and hashtags based on the user's domain. Showing another user's feed only shows posts visible in the current user's domain.
    • Using hashtags
      • Hashtags are separated by domain. Users in a child domain can use all of the hashtag functions within their domain. This includes tagging messages, viewing available hashtags, changing hashtag names, and searching and filtering by hashtag.
      • Users in a parent domain can use all of the hashtag functions within their domain and can see hashtags in any child domains.
    • Using teams
      • Teams are separated across domains. Users in a child domain can join and follow teams within their domain, and can invite other users within their domain to join teams.
      • Users in a parent domain can join and follow teams that belong to their domain or to any child domains.
    • Exceptions to teams
      • New teams are created in the user's domain. However, if the team has a record associated with it, the team is created in record's domain.
      • New threads in an existing team are created in the domain of the existing team.
      • When a user is creating a new team from a document, if the document domain is not empty or global, the team domain needs to be changed to be the document's domain.
      • For a document-generated team, when the domain of the document changes, the domain of all related Live Feed records changes as well.
    • Subscribing to email notifications

      Users can subscribe to email notifications from users and teams within their domain only.