Exploring Granular Delegation

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

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Summary of Exploring Granular Delegation

Granular Delegation in ServiceNow Australia release enables employees to delegate their tasks and approvals to other employees with fine-tuned control. This feature enhances flexibility when users are out of office, tasks are misassigned, or require escalation. It extends base delegation capabilities by allowing separate delegation of approvals and assignments using configurable rules and conditions.

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Key Features

New Tables:
- Granular Delegate [sysgranulardelegate]: Defines who is the delegate, delegation timing, and notification preferences.
- Delegation Rule [sysdelegationrule]: Defines conditions determining which task records get delegated.
Application Menu: Users can manage delegation rules, view delegates they assigned tasks to, and see tasks delegated to them.
Separate Delegation for Approvals and Assignments: Delegates can be granted authority for approvals or assignments individually, based on delegation rules specifying applicable records.
Role Requirements: Delegates must have appropriate roles (e.g., itil for task access, approvaluser or businessstakeholder for IT approvals) to access delegated records; granular delegation does not grant roles.
Notifications: Delegates receive email notifications at delegation start, for each delegated assignment or approval, with options to receive all notifications or meeting invitations. Notification settings help control sensitive information exposure by allowing exclusions.
System Property glide.approval.delegation.version: Administrators configure which delegation features to enable (v1 = original, v2 = granular only, v3 = both).
Scheduled Jobs: Includes jobs to notify new delegates and clean up delegation records.
E-signature Support: Delegates must authenticate via credentials to fulfill approvals requiring e-signatures.

Important Considerations

Flows and workflows do not honor granular delegation rules; existing service delegation features must be used for approvals/assignments managed via flows.
The approval role validation for IT requests applies in Employee Centre but not in Core UI 16 due to ACL complexities.
Delegates only see tasks and approvals matching the conditions set in delegation rules.

Practical Benefits

ServiceNow customers can use granular delegation to precisely control task and approval delegation, improving operational continuity when employees are unavailable or tasks need reassignment. The feature ensures secure, role-based access and provides configurable notifications to keep delegates informed without compromising sensitive data. Administrators can tailor delegation functionality via system properties and maintain delegation hygiene with scheduled jobs.

Use Granular Delegation to allow your employees to delegate their tasks to other employees.

The base system provides your employees with the ability to delegate their tasks to other employees. This feature provides flexibility to your employees when:

Out-of-the-office
Assigned tasks are for the incorrect employee
Assigned tasks require escalation

Tables

Granular delegation introduces two new tables:

Granular Delegate [sys_granular_delegate]

This table specifies:

Who the service delegate is
When the service delegation occurs
What notifications to send the delegate

Delegation Rule [sys_delegation_rule]

This table specifies the condition for which task records are delegated if the rule is used in a delegation.

Application menu

Users can access the granular delegation tables from the Granular Delegation application menu.

Delegation Rules: Link to the Delegation Rule [sys_delegation_rule] table.
Delegation Rule Tables: Link to the Delegation Rule Table [sys_delegation_rule_table].
My delegates: Link to the Delegate [sys_granular_delegate] table showing records where the current user has delegated tasks to another user.
Delegated to me: Link to the Delegate [sys_granular_delegate] table showing records where the current user is the delegate.

Approvals and assignments

Granular delegation allows you to delegate approvals and assignments separately. Task records include extensions of the Task table such as Change, Incident, and Problem records. Use a delegation rule to grant a delegate approval or assignment authority.

Note:

Flows and workflows ignore delegation rules. If you use flows or workflows to manage task approvals or assignments, you must use the existing service delegation features instead.

Approvals: Approval authority allows a delegate to approve or reject approval requests. Add delegation rule conditions to specify which records your delegate can approve. Only records matching the condition appear in the delegate's list of approvals.
Note:
A user must have the approval_user or business_stakeholder role to approve IT requests (does not apply to HR approvals) on Employee Centre. This role validation has not been implemented in Core UI 16 because modifying ACLs in UI16 might have broader implications at the NowPlatform level.
Assignments: Assignment authority grants a delegate access to the task records assigned by delegation. Add delegation rule conditions to specify which records your delegate has access to work on. Only records matching the condition appear in the delegate's list of task assignments.

Granular delegation does not change a delegate's access to records. To access records, a delegate must already have the necessary roles. For example, to delegate task records, a delegate must have a role such as itil to access the Task table and its extensions.

Some HR records explicitly grant access to delegates.

Notifications

Each time you authorize a delegate, the delegate receives the following email notifications:

Start of delegation: The delegate receives a notification at the start of the delegation period.
Assignment by delegation: The delegate receives a notification each time an approval or task is assigned.; You can also specify additional notifications options.
All notifications: Option to send the delegate a copy of all notifications you receive during the delegation period. Select this option when you want the delegate to receive the delegation notification. For example, you want the delegate to receive notifications about activity stream or record updates. It is set to False by default to avoid concerns around getting notifications that has critical and sensitive data.; All columns are contained in the Granular Delegate [sys_granular-delegate] table.
Note:
Notifications with the Exclude Delegates option enabled override the True setting of this option. Use the Exclude Delegates option to prevent delegates from seeing confidential or protected information.
Meeting invitations: Option to forward delegates meeting invitations. Select this option to forward the delegate any meeting invitations the instance generates or receives for you. It is set to False by default.

System property

Administrators can specify which versions of service delegation they want to support from the glide.approval.delegation.version system property.

The glide.approval.delegation.version system property specifies the service delegation features to support. Choices include v1, v2, and v3.

Enter v1 to support only the prior service delegation features. This value disables support for granular delegation features.

Enter v2 to support only granular delegation feature. This value disables support for the existing service delegation features.

Enter v3 to support both granular and existing service delegation features.

Type: string
Default value: v3
Choices: v1, v2, v3
Location: System properties

Scheduled jobs

The following scheduled jobs are provided:

Notify new delegates
Clean Granular Delegation Records

E-signature support

Granular delegation supports Approvals with e-Signature (com.glide.e_signature_approvals). When enabled, the system requires delegates to enter their credentials to fulfill an approval.