Domain separation in the Now Assist Admin console

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated November 20, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation in the Now Assist Admin console

    Domain separation in the Now Assist Admin console allows ServiceNow customers to logically partition data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This enables control over data visibility and access, ensuring that users only interact with data relevant to their domain. It supports multi-tenant scenarios where service providers can securely manage multiple clients within the same ServiceNow instance.

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    Generative AI capabilities in Now Assist are organized into skills, which by default belong to the global domain but can be configured or duplicated per domain once domain separation is enabled on the instance.

    Key Features

    • Domain-based data access: Users only access data within their domain, which applies to AI skills such as summarization that operate solely on domain-specific material.
    • Skill configuration per domain: Skills can be reconfigured or new variants created in different domains to tailor AI functionality, inputs, roles, triggers, and prompts to domain-specific needs.
    • Support for multi-tenant use cases: Service providers can separate tenant data and administrative tasks, while Now Assist usage is tracked at the instance level via the Subscription Management dashboard.
    • Granular activation: Skills and individual configurations can be activated per domain by editing records in the Now Assist Skill Config table and switching the domain context accordingly.

    Practical Steps for Customers

    • Enable domain separation on your ServiceNow instance before configuring Now Assist skills.
    • Use the Now Assist Skill Config (snnowassistskillconfig) table to manage skill records and add the Domain field for domain-specific configuration.
    • Deactivate global skills where domain-specific versions are to be used, then activate and configure those skills within the target domain’s scope.
    • Recreate related configuration records within domains if missing, to ensure full functionality.
    • Leverage domain separation to customize AI skill behavior, access roles, and triggers to fit different tenant or domain requirements.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Improved data security and privacy by restricting AI skill data access to appropriate domains.
    • Flexible, domain-specific AI skill customization to meet diverse business or tenant needs within a shared instance.
    • Streamlined management for service providers handling multiple clients, ensuring clear separation of tenant data and administration.
    • Ability to test and deploy skill variants safely in targeted domains without impacting others.

    Domain separation is supported for the Now Assist Admin console. 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.

    Support level: Basic

    • Business logic: Ensure that data goes into the proper domain for the application’s service provider use cases.
    • The application supports domain separation at run time. The domain separation includes separation from the user interface, cache keys, reporting, rollups, and aggregations.
    • The owner of the instance must set up the application to function across multiple tenants.

    Sample use case: When a service provider (SP) uses chat to respond to a tenant-customer’s message, the customer must be able to see the SP's response.

    For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.

    Overview of domain separation in the Now Assist Admin console

    In the Now Assist Admin console, generative AI capabilities are organized into skills. Each skill can be configured differently for each domain or you can create a variant of a skill for a domain. By default, all skills exist in the global domain.

    How domain separation works in the Now Assist Admin console

    You must enable domain separation on your instance first before you can use it for Now Assist skills.

    Now Assist works with domain separation. When you use Now Assist in a domain-separated environment, users are only able to access data within their domain. For example, if a user uses the summarization skill, Now Assist only uses material that exists within the user's domain when generating that summary. When a skill is domain separated, only users who are in that domain can use the skill that you have configured for that scope.

    If you're a service provider that hosts multiple clients in the same instance, you can set up domain separation to separate tenant data, processes, and administrative tasks. However, Assist consumption is tracked according to instance without differentiating between tenants. You can track your Now Assist usage in the Subscription Management dashboard.

    If you want a domain to have a different version of an existing skill, you can reconfigure and activate the skill or create a variant in the preferred domain. See the section on granting access to Now Assist skills to a domain.

    Use cases

    You can configure the inputs, roles, triggers, and prompts when you’re activating or editing a skill or a later variant of the skill.

    Some use cases include the following examples:
    • Use the Activity field as an input in the incident summarization in one domain but only use the short description and description fields in another domain.
    • Grant certain roles access to the Now Assist panel in one domain while another domain has no role restrictions.
    • Trigger the generative AI capabilities by using quick actions in Agent Chat in only one domain.
    • Create a variant of a skill to test one prompt in one domain while another domain uses the default prompt for the skill.

    Granting a domain access to Now Assist skills

    Domain separation is possible at the skill level and at the individual configuration level. When using the guided setup in the Now Assist Admin console, each configuration option has its own record that you can separate by domain. To create a record in a different domain, you must set up the skill while in the scope of your preferred domain.

    1. Navigate to the Now Assist Skill Config (sn_nowassist_skill_config) table.
    2. Add the Domain field to the list. If it isn't present, select the gear icon at the top of the list and add the Domain field into the Selected column, then select OK.
    3. Find the skill that you want to enable on a domain-by-domain basis. Set Active to false on the skill that is in the global scope. You might need to change the scope to edit the record.
    4. Change your current domain to the domain that you want to enable the skill in.
    5. Navigate to All > Now Assist Admin Console > Features.
    6. Navigate to the skill that you want to activate according to domain and select Activate skill.
    7. Configure the skill as usual. For more information, see Activate a Now Assist skill.
    8. Return to the Now Assist Skill Config (sn_nowassist_skill_config) table. There should be a new record in the current domain. Open the new record.
    9. In a different browser tab, return to the Now Assist Skill Config table and open the deactivated skill record in the global domain.
    10. Compare the global skill record to the one created within your domain. Records on the related list may not be present in the domain-specific skill. If they are not there, you must recreate those records in your domain and attach them to the related list in your domain-specific skill.
    11. Repeat the process for each skill and each domain where you want to have the skill available.