Explore credentials, connections, and aliases

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated June 16, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Explore credentials, connections, and aliases

    In the ServiceNow AI Platform, application integrations rely on connections, credentials, and aliases to securely access external resources. Before running an integration, you must create and configure these elements. Understanding their roles ensures smooth integration setup:

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    • Connection: Defines the integration endpoint or system details (e.g., IP address, database specifics).
    • Credential: Contains authentication information like IDs and passwords.
    • Alias: Acts as a reusable naming tag that bundles connection and credential information, simplifying the integration process and supporting environment-specific setups (e.g., QA, development, production).

    Key Features

    • Alias Types: Credential aliases (link only to credentials) and connection plus credential aliases (link both connection and credentials). Child aliases can be created under parent aliases to manage multiple connections with distinct credentials.
    • Benefit Highlights: Centralized credential management, reduced repetitive configuration, enhanced security, and enabling non-admin users to use predefined credentials and connections.
    • Supported Features: Flow Designer, IntegrationHub, Cloud Management, Discovery, Orchestration, and Service Mapping all utilize connections, credentials, and aliases.
    • Setup Methods: Aliases can be configured via the Connections and Credentials module or IntegrationHub dashboard (the latter requires a subscription).
    • Credential Synchronization on MID Servers: MID Servers cache credential data to accelerate access during network discovery and service mapping, syncing via a credentialsreload job. Custom fields added to credentials are included in sync but can impact performance; system properties allow control over this behavior.
    • Scope and Domain Separation: Credentials and connections can be scoped and protected to prevent unauthorized access, supporting domain separation for logical data and process segregation.
    • Configuration Templates: Admins and flow designers can use standardized forms to create spoke integrations efficiently with third-party systems.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging connections, credentials, and aliases, you can streamline the integration process, securely manage authentication details, and reuse configurations across multiple applications and environments. This structured approach reduces administrative overhead, enhances security compliance, and supports scalable integrations across your ServiceNow AI Platform ecosystem.

    All application integrations in the ServiceNow AI Platform use connections, credentials, and aliases to enable applications to access resources.

    Before you can execute an application integration in the ServiceNow AI Platform, you must create and configure connection information, corresponding credentials, and add an alias. To understand how ServiceNow defines these terms:

    Connection
    A connection is an integration with a system, such as an IP address or endpoint with protocols. It contains specific details, such as database particulars, when integrating with a database.
    Credential
    A credential is the authentication data required to make the connection, such as an ID and password.
    Alias
    An alias is a naming convention, or tag, that ties to a set of connections or credentials on your instance. An alias contains the necessary connection and credential information to make an application integration. Rather than enter that information every time you integrate, you can use an alias. For example, you can designate an alias to house your QA, development, and production credentials for the same application integration. The alias resolves the application integration for each environment.
    The ServiceNow AI Platform distinguishes different types of aliases:
    Credential Alias
    This alias associates to credential data only, and resolves during runtime.
    Connection and Credential Alias
    This alias associates to connection information and the credential data required to complete the integration, and resolves during runtime.

    Within connection and credential aliases, you can also create additional aliases called child aliases. Child aliases allow you to create multiple connections within the same application integration. When you create a child alias, the alias you created it under becomes a parent alias. While child aliases inherit properties from their parent alias, child aliases carry their own connection and credential information.

    Benefits to using Connections, Credentials, and Aliases

    • Central location to store and manage credentials to an external service
    • Define once and reuse for multiple platform features
    • Minimize configuration of other platform features
    • Allow non-administrators to use predefined connections and credentials
    • Increased security

    Features using Connections, Credentials, and Aliases

    The following features use connections, credentials, and aliases:
    • Flow Designer
    • IntegrationHub
    • Cloud Management
    • Discovery
    • Orchestration
    • Service Mapping
    You can set up aliases on the ServiceNow AI Platform in one of two ways:

    Credential synchronization on MID Servers

    Each MID Serverin your network synchronized with the instance keeps a copy of every credential that you create. The Management, Instrumentation, and Discovery (MID) Server is a Java application that enables communication and the movement of data between a ServiceNow instance and external applications, data sources, and services. This synchronization speeds up the reading of credentials when applications like Discovery or Service Mapping need to access multiple devices on the network. The MID Servers synchronize when they find a credentials_reload job in the ECC Queue. The reload job instructs the MID Server to make a SOAP call to the instance to get the entire list of credentials in the Credentials [discovery_credentials] table, including all the field values. To learn more, see MID Server.

    The SOAP response that your instance sends to each MID Server also includes custom fields that you added to any credential form that you customized. If you added reference fields, the data in the referenced table is also sent as part of the SOAP response. This can lead to performance issues when credential synchronization occurs with multiple MID Servers. To control this, manually add these properties to the System Properties [sys_properties] table:
    Note:
    To change the values in these properties, add them to the System Properties [sys_properties] table. If you do not add them, the system uses the default value.
    Property Description
    com.snc.credentials_user_fields Includes all customized fields in credential sync. Set this property to false if you do not want to include the fields that you added to credential forms.
    • Type: true | false
    • Default value: true
    com.snc.credentials_recursion_depth Defines the number of tables to traverse when the credential-sync mechanism collects fields from reference tables. Lower this number if you are experiencing performance issues and you have customized credential forms that include reference fields to tables that also have reference fields.
    • Type: integer
    • Default value: 3