Domain separation and Change Management

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain Separation and Change Management

    Domain separation in Change Management allows ServiceNow customers to logically separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This separation controls user access to data and supports multi-tenant environments, ensuring that data is correctly routed according to service provider use cases. Change Management itself provides a structured method to manage the lifecycle of IT changes, minimizing disruption while supporting beneficial updates.

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    Key Features

    • Domain Separation Support: Change Management supports domain separation at runtime, including user interface segmentation, cache management, reporting, rollups, and aggregations.
    • Data Isolation: Change requests and related records are created within the domain of the user initiating them, preserving data isolation between tenants.
    • Global Properties: Certain properties stored in the sysproperties table are global and affect all domains, as this table is not domain separated.
    • Domain-Separated Tables: Key tables like changerequest, cabdefinition, cabmeeting, and new Change Schedule tables (chgsocdefinition and related) are domain separated to ensure proper data segmentation.
    • Change Advisory Board (CAB) Integration: CAB meetings and definitions are created in the user's domain, with domain relationships maintained for related records. Meetings created manually without an associated definition reside in the user’s domain.
    • Change Schedule Feature: Change Schedule definitions and related ancillary records are domain separated, allowing users to view schedules within their domain or globally when appropriate.

    Practical Use Cases

    • Service providers can respond to tenant-customer messages while ensuring visibility only within the appropriate domain.
    • An ITIL user in a specific domain creates a change request, which resides securely within that domain.
    • CAB managers create definitions and meetings tied to their domain, with all related records maintaining domain consistency.
    • Users accessing Change Schedules can view relevant schedules based on their domain context, supporting multi-tenant operations.

    What to Expect

    With domain separation enabled in Change Management, ServiceNow customers can expect robust support for multi-tenant environments, ensuring data and process isolation between domains. This setup helps maintain security, compliance, and operational clarity when different business units or tenants share a single ServiceNow instance. Users benefit from domain-aware workflows, reporting, and change lifecycle management that respect the boundaries defined by domain separation.

    Domain separation is supported in Change Management. 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.

    Change Management overview

    Change Management provides a systematic approach to controlling the life cycle of all changes, facilitating beneficial changes with minimum disruption to IT services.

    How domain separation works in Change Management

    Change management involves the management of change requests. A change request allows you to implement a controlled process for the addition, modification, or removal of approved and supported configuration items (CIs). The request records the detailed information about the change, such as the reason for the change, the priority, the risk, the type of change, and the change category.

    • A change request is an extension of a Task. Records are created in the domain of users creating the task they have in session.
    • All change properties are global, meaning they are the same for every application that uses the [sys_properties]table properties. The table is not domain separated so any changes made impact all domains.

    Domain separated tables

    Change Request [change_request].

    Use case

    An ITIL user in the Acme domain logs in and creates a change request. The change request is created in the domain that the user has selected.

    How domain separation works in Change Advisory Board (CAB) Workbench

    • CAB meetings synchronize with the CAB Definition table if the meeting was generated via a definition, or the meeting was created manually and has the CAB Definition field populated.
    • CAB Meetings are created in the domain of the user if the meeting is created manually without an associated CAB definition.
    • Meeting records are not supported if in a different domain from the associated definition.
    • All other CAB records have their domain master set to the associated CAB Meeting record.
    Domain separated tables
    • CAB Definition [cab_definition]
    • CAB Meeting [cab_meeting]
    Domain tables (linked to domain of its associated cab_meeting)
    • CAB Attendee [cab_attendee]
    • CAB Agenda Item [cab_agenda_item]
    • CAB Runtime State [cab_runtime_state]

    Use cases

    • A CAB manager creates a new CAB definition and generates 20 meetings while in the ACME domain. The result: Both the definition and meetings are created within the ACME domain.

    • A CAB manager creates an ad-hoc CAB meeting from the related list on the CAB definition form. Result: The meeting is created in the domain of the CAB meeting.
    • All other use cases behave in the same way as when domain separation is not enabled.

    How domain separation works in Change Schedules (New feature)

    • Change Schedule definitions encapsulate all the configuration options and related records used to display a given Change Schedule.
    • Records are created in the domain of the current user.
    • Ancillary records are created in the domain of the Change Schedule definition.

    Domain separated tables

    • Change Schedule Definition [chg_soc_definition]
    • Related Definition [chg_soc_definition_child]
    • Style Rule [chg_soc_definition_style_rule]
    • Style Rule [chg_soc_style_rule]
    • Style Rule [chg_soc_def_child_style_rule]

    Use cases

    An ITIL user in the ACME domain logs in and navigates to the Change Schedule landing page. The user can view the Change Schedules in both their current or global domain.