Contributor user roles

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Contributor user roles

    The contributor user data model in ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) defines several roles to manage user access to cases, case tasks, and related customer data. These roles are distributed across multiple plugins—Customer Service, CSM Contributor User, Business Location, and CS Base Extension Entities—allowing organizations to tailor contributor permissions according to specific business needs.

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    Key Roles and Their Capabilities

    • Customer Service Plugin Roles
      • Case task agent: Enables users to work on assigned or created case tasks with full capabilities to view, update, comment, attach files, change status, send emails, and create/assign tasks. Provides read-only access to relevant customer data (accounts, consumers, households, and service organizations).
      • Case task viewer: Grants read-only access to all case tasks; when combined with the case viewer role, users can access all cases and tasks.
      • Case viewer: Provides read-only access to all cases.
      • Case contributor editor: Allows limited write access to specific case form fields (work notes, comments, attachments, state/stage changes) if the user already has read access.
      • Case contributor viewer: Grants read access to all case-related tables for cases where the user has read access, including access to the "All tasks I participate in" module in the CSM Agent Workspace.
    • CSM Contributor User Plugin Roles
      • Account contributor: Enables users to create cases for any account.
      • Consumer contributor: Enables users to create cases for any consumer.
      • Self contributor: Enables internal users to create cases for themselves.
      • Case contributor creator: A top-level role that enables case creation; included within other contributor roles.
    • Business Location Plugin Role
      • Service organization contributor: Allows users who are members of a service organization to create cases on behalf of that organization.
    • CS Base Extension Entities Plugin Role
      • Relationship contributor: Allows users who are members of account, contact, or household teams to create cases for related customers. Requires activation of the CSM Contributor User plugin.
    • Additional Roles
      • Customer data viewer: Provides read access to customer data including accounts, consumers, households, and related lists.
      • Workspace user: Grants access to case task modules within CSM workspaces, enabling users to interact with cases, search knowledge articles via Agent Assist, create emails (with proper permissions), and view response templates. This role is included by default in the case task agent role.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    Understanding and assigning appropriate contributor roles allows you to control and customize user access to cases and related data effectively. This ensures that users have the right level of access to perform their tasks—whether it is viewing, contributing, or managing cases—while maintaining data security and compliance. Activating the relevant plugins and assigning these roles according to business requirements enables efficient case collaboration and customer service operations.

    The contributor user data model uses several roles that can be assigned to users to control case access, case tasks, and case-related information based on different business needs.

    These roles are included with several different plugins:
    • Customer Service (com.sn_customerservice)
    • CSM Contributor User (com.snc.csm_contributor_user)
    • Business Location (com.snc.business_location)
    • CSM Base Extension Entities (com.snc.cs_base_extension)
    See the following tables for detailed role descriptions.

    Roles included with the Customer Service plugin

    The following table lists the contributor roles that are included with the Customer Service (com.sn_customerservice) plugin along with their descriptions and associated roles.

    Table 1. Customer service roles
    Role Description Contains roles
    Case task agent

    [sn_customerservice.case_task_agent]

    		 This role provides access to case tasks and related case information.
    A user with this role can work on the following case tasks:
    • Tasks that are assigned to the user or to the user's assignment groups.
    • Tasks that have been created by the user.
    With this role, the user can:
    • View and update case tasks.
      • Add work notes, comments, and attachments.
      • Update the status.
      • Perform additional actions from a case task such as sending email.
    • Create case tasks and assign them to other users.
    With this role, users have read-only access to customer information for the case:
    • Account and contact records (for B2B cases)
    • Consumer and household records (for B2C cases)
    • Service organization records (business location cases)
    • sn_customerservice.csm_workspace_user
    • sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer
    • sn_customerservice.case_contributor_editor
    Case task viewer

    [sn_customerservice.case_task_viewer]

    		 This role provides read-only access to all case tasks.
    Note:
    When combined with the case viewer role (sn_customerservice.case_viewer), a user can access all customer service cases and all case tasks.
    Case viewer

    [sn_customerservice.case_viewer]

    		 This role provides read-only access to all cases.
    Case contributor editor

    [sn_customerservice.case_contributor_editor]

    		 This role provides limited write access to some of the fields on the Case form if the user has read access to the case through another role.
    Limited write access is available for the following fields:
    • Work notes
    • Additional comments
    • Attachments
    • State or stage changes
    • Contributor users
    • Contributor groups
    • Watchlist
    • Work notes list
    Case contributor viewer

    [sn_customerservice.case_contributor_viewer]

    		 This role provides read access to all tables associated with a case if the user has read access to the case through another role.

    The user can access the All tasks I participate in module in CSM Agent Workspace.
    • sn_shn.user
    • wm_read

    Roles included with the CSM Contributor User plugin

    The following table lists the contributor roles that are included with the CSM Contributor User (com.snc.csm_contributor_user) plugin along with their descriptions and associated roles.

    Table 2. Roles for the contributor user plugin
    Role Description Contains roles
    Account contributor

    [sn_customerservice.account_contributor]

    		 This role enables users to create cases for any account. sn_customerservice.case_contributor_creator
    Consumer contributor

    [sn_customerservice.consumer_contributor]

    		 This role enables users to create cases for any consumer. sn_customerservice.case_contributor_creator
    Self contributor

    [sn_customerservice.self_contributor]

    		 This role enables users with snc_internal role to create cases for themselves. sn_customerservice.case_contributor_creator
    Case contributor creator

    [case_contributor_creator]

    		 This role enables users to create cases and is included in the top-level contributor roles.

    Roles included with the Business Location plugin

    The following contributor roles are included with the Business Location plugin (com.snc.business_location).

    Table 3. Roles for the business location plugin
    Role Description Contains roles
    Service organization contributor

    [sn_customerservice.service_organization_contributor]

    		 This role enables users to create cases for their service organization (business location).
    Note:
    A service organization contributor must be a member of a service organization to create cases on its behalf.
    		 sn_customerservice.case_contributor_creator

    Roles included with the CS Base Extension Entities plugin

    The following contributor roles are included with the CSM Base Extension Entities plugin (com.snc.cs_base_extension).

    Table 4. Roles for the CS base extension entities plugin
    Role Description Contains roles
    Relationship contributor

    [sn_customerservice.relationship_contributor]

    		 This role enables users to create cases for customers with which they have an established relationship.
    Note:
    • The CSM Contributor User (com.snc.csm_contributor_user) plugin must be activated.
    • A relationship contributor must be a member of an account, contact, or household team to create cases on their behalf.
    		 sn_customerservice.case_contributor_creator

    Additional roles

    Table 5. Additional contributor roles
    Role Description Contains roles
    Customer data viewer

    [sn_customerservice.customer_data_viewer]

    		 This role provides read access to customer data, including account, consumer, and household data, and the information included in the related lists.
    Workspace user

    [sn_customerservice.csm_workspace_user]

    		 This role provides access to case tasks from the following modules in the CSM workspaces:
    • My Case Tasks
    • My Group's Case Tasks
    Users can also:
    • Use Agent Assist to search for knowledge articles (if the User Criteria is set to provide access to knowledge).
    • Create email (if the user has write access to the record and the email_composer role).
    • View response templates (if response templates have been configured for the record.
    Note:
    By default, this role is added to the case task agent role (sn_customerservice.case_task_agent).
    • agent_workspace_user
    • canvas_user
    • sn_templated_snip.template_snippet_reader
    • email_composer