Content Ownership

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Content Ownership

    Content Ownership allows system and content admins to control who can create, publish, and view content within ServiceNow. It establishes exclusive access for content managers across three main areas: audience visibility, publishing locations, and content creation permissions.

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    Key Features

    • Who - Audience: Assign content managers to publish content for specific employee groups based on criteria like geographic location or employment type.
    • Where - Topic or Portal Page: Designate specific topics or pages for content managers to publish on, ensuring relevant content is placed in the right areas.
    • What - Content Item: Control which content items content managers can create, particularly for sensitive topics like legal announcements or company changes.

    Content Managers can create audiences only if the "Allow Ownership for Audiences" option is disabled. When enabled, they will lose the permission to create new audiences.

    Impact on Roles

    System admins have complete control over Content Publishing, while Content Administrators have full access to manage content within restricted areas. Content Managers have limited authoring and publishing capabilities based on their assigned records.

    Activating Content Ownership

    To activate Content Ownership, the following plug-ins are necessary: Employee Center Pro, Content Publishing, and optionally, Content Governance and Content Experiences. After activation, enable the Content Manager Ownership properties to display related lists for audiences, content items, topics, and portal pages.

    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
      content managers 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.