Roles installed with Customer Service Management

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

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Summary of Roles installed with Customer Service Management

The Customer Service Management (CSM) application in ServiceNow uses a structured role system to control access, maintain data security, and define relationships between users. These roles differentiate internal users (such as agents and managers) from external users (such as customers, partners, and consumers). The role framework supports both Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) models, ensuring appropriate data access and permissions based on user type and business relationship.

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Primary Roles

CSM provides primary roles categorized as internal and external, each tailored for specific user types and business models:

Internal Roles: Assigned to employees within the organization, including agents and managers who support customers.
External Roles: Assigned to users outside the organization, such as customers, partners, and consumers accessing self-service portals.

Each role grants varied access levels to CSM data and actions, enabling flexible and secure management of customer relationships.

Key Primary Roles and Their Functions

Customer Service Agent: Assists customers and partners by creating, viewing, and resolving cases related to specific products or channels.
Customer Service Manager: Has all agent capabilities plus manages agents/groups and approves assigned requests.
Consumer Service Agent: Supports individual consumers by handling cases and resolving issues.
Customer and Customer Administrator: Customers can manage their own cases; administrators manage account-level data.
Customer Case Manager: Manages all cases within an account and related accounts, with privileges to create and edit cases on behalf of contacts.
Partner and Partner Administrator: Partners serve customer accounts, can create and manage cases, and administrators manage partner account data and users.
Consumer: Individuals who can create and manage cases for purchased products and view product lists.

Additional Specialized Roles

Case Contributor (Editor/Viewer): Provides limited write or read-only access to cases and related information, useful for collaboration.
Case Task Agent/Viewer: Grants access to case tasks, allowing users to manage or view tasks assigned to them or their groups.
Contact Manager and Customer Project Manager/Stakeholder: Roles for managing contacts and customer projects respectively, with project management roles provided via an additional plugin.
Customer Data Viewer: Enables read-only access to various customer data entities and related relationships, supporting data transparency without modification rights.
De-escalation and Escalation Requesters: Roles for managing case or account escalations and de-escalations.
Proxy Roles: Allow specified employees to create and manage cases on behalf of customers, enhancing internal support capabilities.
Workspace User: Provides access to case tasks within CSM Agent Workspace, including knowledge search and email creation functionalities.

Base Roles and Role Management

Primary CSM roles are built upon foundational base roles such as snesmagent and snesmadmin that provide underlying access and capabilities. Administrators can create custom roles or modify existing ones through scripting and extension points to tailor access to unique business requirements.

Security and Access Control

To maintain security, every user must have at least one role distinguishing internal from external users. External users require specific ACL configurations to access certain data views. Periodic review of user role assignments is recommended to ensure compliance with evolving business needs.

Roles Installed with Customer Service Base Entities Plugin

Additional roles come with the Customer Service Base Entities plugin, including:

CSM Admin: Full administrative access to all CSM features and data.
Service Management Agent, Partner, User, and Admin Roles: Provide varying levels of access for service management functions and integrations.
REST API Integration Role: For managing web service access related to CSM.
Document Template and Case Type Configuration Admin Roles: Support management of document templates and case type configurations.

Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

Understanding and properly assigning these roles allows ServiceNow customers to:

Securely manage access for a diverse set of users including internal staff and external customers or partners.
Support multiple business models (B2B and B2C) with tailored roles that align with specific operational needs.
Enable collaboration and case management with granular permissions for contributors, task agents, and managers.
Maintain data security by clearly separating internal and external user access and applying necessary ACLs.
Customize roles to fit unique business processes and extend capabilities via plugins and scripting.

The Customer Service Management application uses roles to provide access to information, identify internal and external users, maintain data security, and establish different types of relationships between users.

Primary roles

Customer Service Management provides several primary roles that support the following business models:

Business-to-business (B2B): With this business model, you can support accounts and contacts. Additionally, you can create relationships and account teams to support your customers.
Business-to-consumer (B2C): With this business model, you can support individual consumers.

These roles ensure access to data while maintaining data security for different types of business relationships.

Table 1. CSM primary roles
Internal Roles	External Roles
Business-to-business (B2B) sn_customerservice_agent sn_customerservice_manager	Business-to-business (B2B) Customer sn_customerservice.customer sn_customerservice.customer_admin sn_customerservice.customer_case_manager
Business-to-consumer (B2C) sn_customerservice.consumer_agent sn_customerservice_manager	Business-to-business (B2B) Partner sn_customerservice.partner sn_customerservice.partner_admin
	Business-to-consumer (B2C) sn_customerservice.consumer

For details about these roles, see CSM roles and descriptions below.

Internal and external roles

Customer Service Management includes both internal and external user roles.

Internal roles are assigned to users within your organization. These roles are for agents and managers using the Customer Service Management application to support customers.
External roles are assigned to users outside your organization. These roles are for customers, customer partners, and consumers using the self-service portals.

With these roles, you can give both internal users and external users access to your instance. This role structure gives you the flexibility to provide different levels of access to different users. As an additional security measure, every user must have at least one role so that the instance can distinguish between internal and external users.

Base roles

The primary roles available in Customer Service Management are based on the following base roles:

sn_esm_agent
sn_esm_admin
sn_esm_partner
sn_esm_partner_admin
sn_esm_user
sn_esm_user_admin

For more information about these roles, see Roles installed with the Customer Service Base Entities plugin below.

For more information about the CSM primary role structure and included roles, see CSM roles and descriptions below.

Explicit roles

You may have business requirements that change the use of these roles. In addition, the Explicit Roles in CSM feature may assign both internal and external roles to external users. It is important to regularly review user role assignments to ensure that they are set according to your business requirements.

For more information about reviewing and updating user role assignments, see:

CSM roles and descriptions

Table 2. Primary CSM roles
Role title [name]	Description	Contains roles
Customer service agent [sn_customerservice_agent]	An agent who assists customers and partners with questions, issues, and problems. This user creates cases, views and edits cases, and works with customers and subject matter experts to resolve cases. A customer service agent typically supports a specific set of products across one or more communication channels. An agent can belong to one or more agent groups.	knowledge chat_admin sn_customerservice.deescalation_requester timecard_user template_editor sn_esm_agent sn_shn.editor domain_expand_scope Note: The sn_esm_agent role contains the cmdb_read role.
Customer service manager [sn_customerservice_manager]	Customer service agent with the additional responsibility for managing agents or agent groups and overriding agent actions.	sn_customerservice_agent timecard_manager timecard_approver skill_admin sn_app_cs_social_social_profile_user sn_customerservice.consumer_agent asset sn_shn.admin sn_publications.approver contract_manager sn_app_cs_social_log_user awa_manager sn_majorissue_mgt.major_issue_manager email_client_quick_message_author workspace_admin skill_model_user sn_templated_snip.template_snippet_writer approver_user Note: For customers upgrading to Xanadu, the approver_user role replaces the approval_admin role. Users with the customer service manager role can approve the approval requests that are assigned to them. notify_view Note: The notify_view role is added to the sn_customerservice_manager role only when the Chat Zoom Connector application is installed.
Consumer service agent [sn_customerservice.consumer_agent]	An agent who assists consumers with questions, issues, and problems. This user creates, views, and edits cases and works with consumers to resolve cases. An agent typically supports a specific set of products across one or more communication channels. An agent can belong to one or more agent groups.	sn_esm_agent chat_admin sn_shn.editor template_editor knowledge
Customer [sn_customerservice.customer]	Customer role for researching questions, issues, or problems. Customers can create cases and view and edit existing cases for themselves. They can also view a list of assets belonging to their accounts.	sn_esm_user snc_external
Customer administrator [sn_customerservice.customer_admin]	Administrator role for a customer account. This user has access to data within the account.	sn_customerservice.customer sn_esm_user_admin
Customer case manager [sn_customerservice.customer_case_manager]	Customer role for managing the cases in an account and any related child accounts. The customer case manager role includes the privileges of the customer role and adds the following privileges: Create a case on behalf of another contact in the account. View a list of cases belonging to the account. Edit cases belonging to the account. Note: The customer case manager role is not automatically added to the sn_customerservice.contact_role_assignment system property. To expose this role to customer and partner administrators, navigate to Customer Service > Administration > Properties and add it to this property.	sn_customerservice.customer
Partner [sn_customerservice.partner]	Partner who is serving customer accounts. A partner can create a case for their own account or on behalf of a customer account. A partner can view and edit all of the cases that they have created: For their own account. On behalf of customer accounts that they are related to. Note: If you are establishing a new relationship between a partner and a customer, the partner or partner admin does not have access to historic cases created for the customer. This is because the historic cases do not have the Partner or Partner Contact fields populated on the Case form.	sn_customerservice.customer sn_esm_partner
Partner administrator [sn_customerservice.partner_admin]	Administrator role for a partner account. The partner administrator can do the following: Access the data within the partner account. Access the data created by the contacts in their company in the customer account. Manage users for the partner account and for customer accounts. View all of the cases created by a partner.	sn_customerservice.partner sn_customerservice.customer_admin sn_esm_partner_admin
Consumer [sn_customerservice.consumer]	Consumer role for researching questions, issues, or problems. Consumers can create cases and view and edit existing cases for products that they have purchased. They can also view a list of their products.	sn_esm_user snc_external

Table 3. Additional CSM roles
Role title [name]	Description	Contains roles
Case contributor editor [sn_customerservice.case_contributor_editor]	This role provides limited write access to the fields on the Case form. It provides limited write access to those cases for which the user already has read access provided by another role. Limited write access is available for the following fields: Work notes Additional comments Attachments State or stage changes Contributor users Contributor groups Watchlist Work notes list
Case contributor viewer [sn_customerservice.case_contributor_viewer]	This role provides read-only access to all of the tables associated with a case. With this role, a user can view the information in the related lists for a case if: The user has been added to the Contributor User field or the Contributor Group field on the Case form. The user has read-only access to cases through another role, such as the case viewer role (sn_customerservice.case_viewer) or the case task agent role (sn_customerservice.case_task_agent). With this role, a user can access the following modules in CSM Agent Workspace:All tasks I participate in	sn_shn.user wm_read
Case task agent [sn_customerservice.case_task_agent]	This role provides access to case tasks and related case information. A user with this role can work on the following case tasks: Tasks that are assigned to the user or to the user's assignment groups. Tasks that have been created by the user. With this role, the user can: View and update assigned case tasks. Create case tasks and assign those tasks to other users. View and update created case tasks. Add work notes, comments, and attachments to case tasks. Update the status of case tasks. Perform additional actions from a case task such as sending email. With this role, users have read-only access to customer information for the case: Account and contact records (for B2B cases) Consumer and household records (for B2C cases) Service organization records (business location cases)	sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer sn_customerservice.csm_workspace_user sn_customerservice.case_contributor_editor
Case task viewer [sn_customerservice.case_task_viewer]	This role provides read-only access to all case task records. Note: When combined with the case viewer role (sn_customerservice.case_viewer), a user can access all customer service cases and all case tasks.
Case viewer [sn_customerservice.case_viewer]	This role provides read-only access to all cases.
Contact manager [sn_customerservice.contact_manager]	User who can manage contacts.
Customer project manager [sn_customerservice.projectmanager]	A user who creates and manages projects for customer accounts. Creates new projects. Sets up project tasks and resource plans. Identifies customer contacts who have access to projects and project tasks. Assigns and manages tasks and dependencies. Note: This role is added with the Customer Project Management plugin (com.snc.csm_ppm)	sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer
Customer project stakeholder [sn_customerservice.projectstakeholder]	A user who is responsible for activities that require viewing customer project details and project tasks. Note: This role is added with the Customer Project Management plugin (com.snc.csm_ppm)
Customer Data viewer [sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer]	User with read-only access to customer data entities such as: Install base items Contracts Entitlements Accounts, contacts, and account team members Assets Consumers Sold product Note: Starting with the Australia release, the Customer Data Viewer [sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer] role has extended access to the following tables: Account Relationship [account_relationship] Account Relationship Type [sn_customerservice_account_relationship_type] Contact Relationship [sn_customerservice_contact_relationship] Account Consumer [sn_acct_consumer_account_consumer] Consumer Team Member [sn_customer_rel_consumer_to_user] Consumer to Consumer Relationship [sn_customer_rel_consumer_to_consumer] Household Member Relationship [sn_customer_rel_household_member_relationship] Household Team Member [sn_customer_rel_household_to_user] Responsibility Definition [sn_customerservice_responsibility_def] Related Party Configuration [sn_customerservice_related_party_configuration] Additionally, it also has access to the following menu modules and workspace lists. Menu modules: Customer, Partners, Contacts, Consumers, and Households Workspace lists: Partners
De-escalation requester [sn_customerservice.deescalation_requester]	User who can deescalate a case or account when the cause of the escalation is resolved.	sn_customerservice.escalation_requester
Escalation requester (sn_customerservice.escalation_requester)	User who can request an escalation for a case or account.	sn_customerservice.consumer_agent
Proxy case creator [sn_customerservice.proxy_case_creator]	Users with the proxy case creator role can create customer service cases directly from community questions created by contacts or consumers
Proxy contact [sn_customerservice.proxy_contact]	Role that enables employees to create cases for customer accounts and contacts. Employees can also be proxy case contacts on behalf of customers. Assign this role to employees in your company who are not fulfillers or do not have other CSM-specific roles. Users with this role can: Create customer service cases using a record producer. Add work notes and comments to any case. Update the watch list of any case. Note: The CSM Extension for Proxy Contacts (com.snc.csm_proxy_contacts) plugin adds this role.
Workspace user [sn_customerservice.csm_workspace_user]	This role provides access to case tasks from the following modules in CSM Agent Workspace: My Case Tasks My Group's Case Tasks Users can also: Use Agent Assist to search for knowledge articles (if the User Criteria is set to provide access to knowledge). Create email (if the user has write access to the record and the email_composer role). View response templates (if response templates have been configured for the record. Note: By default, this role is added to the case task agent role (sn_customerservice.case_task_agent).

For detailed information on the granular admin roles in Custmer Data Foundation (CDF) and their associated privileges, see Platform security granular admin roles.

Roles installed with the Customer Service Base Entities plugin

The following roles are installed with the Customer Service Base Entities plugin.

Table 4. Customer Service Base Entities roles
Role	Description	Contains roles
CSM admin [csm_admin]	Provides admin access to all CSM features and data.	sn_shn.admin sn_res_shaper.admin
Service management agent [sn_esm_agent]		assignment_workbench wm_read cmdb_read agent_schedule_user interaction_agent sn_publications_recipients_list_user
Service management partner [sn_esm_partner]		sn_esm_user
Service management user admin [sn_esm_user_admin]		sn_esm_user
Service management admin [sn_esm_admin]		None
Service management user [sn_esm_user]		snc_external sn_apptmnt_booking.appointment_booking_user
Service management partner admin [sn_esm_partner_admin]		sn_esm_user_admin sn_esm_admin
Role for REST APIs related to CSM web services [csm_ws_integration]		snc_internal
Document template admin [sn_csm_doctemplate.admin ]	Role required to create, view, update and delete records in the Document Template tables.	sn_csm_doctemplate.viewer
Case Type Configuration admin [sn_scm_case_type.config_admin]	Role required to create, view, update and delete records in the following tables: Case Type Service Definition Service to Service Relationship Service Definition Category Relationship Product Service Relationship Catalog Service Relationship Service Definition Customer Criteria Service definition category Service definition user criteria	sn_csm_case_type.config_viewer