HR Criteria, User Criteria and Audiences

Have you ever wondered if you should create HR Criteria, User Criteria and/or an Audience to secure something in ServiceNow?  I say create all three.

Each one has a specific purpose and used to secure a specific thing (e.g., Knowledge Article, HR Service). Below are some of their uses.

• User Criteria: Knowledge Article (Can/Cannot Read), Knowledge Base (Can/Cannot Read & Contribute), Catalog Item/Record Producer (Available/Not Available For), EC Quick Links

• HR Criteria:  HR Service (i.e, prevents a case from being manually opened by HR for a user that doesn't meet that criteria)

• Audience: Lifecycle Event Activity, Employee Center content (e.g., Banner, Upcoming Event), News, Listening Posts

Odds are if you need to secure a Knowledge Article to a specific group of users based on some criteria (e.g., Canada only), you may in the future need to secure a Quick Link in Employee Center or an Onboarding Activity to the same group of users.  It would be great to proactively have that same criteria available for whatever your use cases may be.  For this reason, I always recommend creating all three and start with the HR Criteria first.  If you don’t have HRSD to have HR Criteria, start with User Criteria. 

Once the HR Criteria is created and validated, you can easily create the User Criteria directly from the HR Criteria.  Then you can create an Audience by choosing the existing HR Criteria (or User Criteria).  Now all three records will exist using the same exact conditions.  If you need to change the conditions at a later day, you can update the HR Criteria, and the others will be updated as well.

It is a common misconception that HR Criteria is only created for conditions on the user’s HR Profile.  However, HR Criteria can be created on basically any table.  Some normal use cases I’ve seen are based on:

• Value on sys_user table (e.g., Department = X, Location =Y)

• Value on sn_hr_core_profile (e.g., Position = ABC, Start Date > today, Employment status = Full-time)

• Member of a group

• Value on HR Case (or other task type)

Let's step through an example together. We are implementing the Alumni Service Center (i.e., portal) and want to ensure we can have certain content created in the system that is only for the alumni, which for our example is a role we will automatically be adding to the user once they have been offboarded.

1. Navigate to HR Administration > HR Criteria

2. Select "New"

3. Provide a meaningful "Name" (e.g., Alumni User Role)

4. Select "Save"

5. Select "New" on the Conditions related list that appears

6. Complete the form

   • Name: Alumni User Role (try to keep it consistent with the HR Criteria's name)

   • Table: User Role (sys_user_has_role)

   • User column: User

   • Condition: Role is sn_asc.alumni OR ....

7. Select "Save"

8. Validate the number of records matching the condition (count will not be accurate until you save the condition)

9. Select "Update" to return to the HR Criteria record

Your HR Criteria is now created and ready for use, so it is time to create the User Criteria and Audience.

User Criteria

From the HR Criteria record, select the "Create User Criteria" related link

You will know it's complete when the "Related user criteria" field is populated.

Audience

1. Navigate to Content Publishing > Audiences

2. Select "New"

3. Populate the Name (use same name as HR Criteria)

4. Audience type: HR Criteria

5. HR Criteria: select the HR Criteria you created

6. Select "Submit"