Domain separation and Advanced Work Assignment

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation and Advanced Work Assignment

    Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) automates the distribution of work items to qualified agents through queues tied to specific service channels. It supports domain separation, which allows ServiceNow customers, especially Managed Service Providers (SPs), to segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical domains. This separation controls user access and visibility of data and work items, enabling multiple tenants to operate securely within a single instance.

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    How Domain Separation Works in Advanced Work Assignment

    In instances with domain hierarchies, AWA helps ensure work items are visible only to authorized agents within their domains and routes work appropriately. Key capabilities include:

    • Routing Work by Domains: Admins can configure routing conditions on queues to restrict or route work items based on domain membership. For example, queues can be limited to a specific domain or include a domain and its child domains using domain path conditions.
    • Assigning Work to Agents in the Appropriate Domain: Assignment groups linked to queues must contain agents who belong to domains authorized to see the routed work items. If an assignment mismatch occurs, AWA temporarily assigns the work but then rejects it with a “No access” reason and reassigns it to a proper agent. Work items can get stuck in queues if assignment configurations are incorrect, requiring admin intervention.

    Support and Configuration

    • AWA’s domain separation support is standard and includes domain-aware application properties and business logic tailored for multi-tenant use cases.
    • Instance owners must configure minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters per tenant to meet application needs.
    • Admins can specify domain-specific behaviors, such as requiring comments on record closure for one tenant but not another.

    Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers using AWA with domain separation can effectively manage multi-tenant environments by:

    • Ensuring secure and clear separation of work items and data visibility between tenants.
    • Configuring queues and routing conditions to align with domain hierarchies and assignment group memberships.
    • Avoiding assignment conflicts and work item assignment failures by maintaining proper domain alignment in assignment groups.
    • Monitoring and troubleshooting stuck work items due to domain or assignment misconfigurations.

    Domain separation is supported in the Advanced Work Assignment feature. 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: Standard

    • Includes all aspects of Basic level support.
    • Application properties are domain-aware as needed.
    • Business logic: The service provider (SP) creates or modifies processes per customer. The use cases reflect proper use of the application by multiple SP customers in a single instance.
    • The instance owner must configure the minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters per tenant as expected for the specific application.

    Sample use case: An admin must be able to make comments required when a record closes for one tenant, but not for another.

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

    Overview

    Advanced Work Assignment enables the automatic assignment of work items to qualified agents using work item queues defined for specific service channels. Managed Service Providers can create domain-specific queues by specifying a particular domain as a queue routing condition.

    How domain separation works in Advanced Work Assignment

    When an instance has a domain hierarchy where users and groups belong to different domains, you may need to restrict the visibility of work items to certain agents in a domain. You may also need to ensure that work items are routed to agents in the proper domain. AWA admins can configure service channels and associated work item queues to:
    Route work by domains
    To push work items to agents in domains where only certain tasks or interactions are visible to them, use a routing condition that routes those items to the appropriate queues. For example:
    • To restrict a queue to only items that match exactly to a particular domain X, specify this condition: [Domain] [is] [X]
    • To route all work items in domain X and its child domains to a queue, use the Domain Path field and specify a condition such as: [Domain Path] [starts with] [!!!/!!#/]
    Assign work to agents in the appropriate domain
    To assign work items to agents in the appropriate domain, ensure that the assignment groups specified in the queue Eligibility Assignment pools have agents that belong to the domains where they can see the work items routed to the queue.

    If a mismatch occurs, and agents in an eligible assignment group cannot see a work item in a queue, AWA may temporarily assign an item to an agent. However, before the item is moved to the agent's inbox, AWA automatically rejects the assignment with the reason No access. AWA reassigns the work item to a different agent who might have access. If none of the available agents can see the work item, the item could be rejected multiple times.

    Warning:
    The item can get stuck in the queue until the AWA admin corrects the eligible assignment configuration.