servicenow get assignment group name

Advanced ‘getMyGroups’ Function

I f you’ve taken a look at the ‘My Groups Work’ module (or maybe a particular security rule or report) you may have noticed that the condition or filter for that record makes a function call to return a list of values to compare against the value in the given field. In the case of the ‘My Groups Work’ module under the ‘Service Desk’ application there is a function called ‘getMyGroups’ that is used to identify task records where the assignment group value is one of the groups for which the current user is a member.

The ‘getMyGroups’ function simply returns an array of group sys_id values for the groups that a user belongs to. I saw a forum posting recently that pointed out (correctly) that the ‘getMyGroups’ function only returns group membership, but doesn’t return groups where the user is listed as the manager. The function also doesn’t attempt to return child groups of the groups where a person is a manager or group member. So, if I am the Director of Operations and I want to see a list of all tasks for the Operations group (which I am a manager of) as well as the sub-groups of that group, I would have to be added specifically to each sub-group to have all of the groups that I am interested in tracking be displayed in the list.

With some help from John Andersen, I’ve created the ‘Advanced getMyGroups’ function. This function is designed to give users a better way to display group membership information. It is used in the same way that you would use the ‘getMyGroups’ function, but also includes an optional parameter that allows you to return groups managed by an individual and/or sub-groups of a given group where I am a member or manager. The ‘maxDepth’ parameter returns the values as shown below…

• No maxDepth returns groups where user is a group member (Same as current ‘getMyGroups’ function)
• maxDepth of 0 returns groups where user is a group member or a manager
• maxDepth greater than 0 returns groups where user is a group member or a manager PLUS all child groups up to ‘maxDepth’ levels deep

The most common usage of this function is probably in a filter on a module or a report. So, if I were creating a module to show all tickets where I am a member of the group OR where I am the group manager, PLUS all of the sub-groups up to 5 levels deep I could use the following in my filter…

‘javascript:getMyGroupsAdvanced(5)’

Mark Stanger

Date Posted:

May 4, 2010

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33 Comments

How do I make this work?

javascript:getMyGroupsAdvanced(5).GetGroupFilter(‘database,network’)

I don’t think that you do. As far as I’ve seen, the ‘GetGroupFilter’ function is used for reference qualifiers but wouldn’t be applied in this way for a module or report filter.

Great script!

thank you for all your work!

Thanks for this, greatly appreciated! Perfect timing too, I started looking for a way to do exactly this on the same day you posted it.

Excellent, thank you very much, Mark! Works great!

I’ve also noticed that getMyGroups returns groups from above, i.e. parents of any groups you are a member of.

I am a member of Problem, which has a parent of SLM

when running getMyGroups I also get tickets assigned to SLM, I’m only interested in Problem group tickets.

Oddly, the filter also displays the parent group as though I’m only filtering on that.

Tasks-ASSIGNMENTGROUPIS SLM

This is great, thanks for this. Kind of weird there is no option in ServiceNow to do this automatically. Any ideas on how we would get this code to work in the report section. i.e. if we give users the ability to create reports for their groups, out of the box they can create reports for their groups and any of the associated parent groups of the child groups they belong to. We need this to be the other way around, i.e. if you are a member of a parent group and you click on the visible to: Group button you should see that parent group and also the parent s children??

The report page is back-end XML so there’s no way to directly manipulate the behavior of that page. You might be able to use a UI script to manipulate the functions there but that would be a pretty significant hack that would probably end up breaking during an upgrade. It’s probably best to request this as an enhancement with ServiceNow support.

Thanks for the reply Mark, I find it strange that this is not something that is easily amended, i.e. to change the search on groups for the user. Im sure this is something that many people have come across. It doesnt make sense not to be able to see the applicable hierarchy you are in, so it really does seem like a big limitation. Thanks again for the information and advice.

This seems to be working, but for some reason along with all the managers groups, it also shows tasks without an assignment group. Anyway to stop this from happening?

p.s. Adding a filter that says Assignment Group is not blank does not seem to work.

Sounds like maybe the issue is with your instance then. Can you reproduce this in the ServiceNow demo instance?

Discovered the actual problem I’m having is that when trying to return closed and open tasks, the open tasks return fine but closed tasks display without details. I haven’t yet discovered how to resolve this.

This did not work at all for me. I also tried it on the demo site and it did not work. The Assignment Group came back blank. Any ideas? Are there any other steps besides creating the function in the Global Business Rules?

Please let me know. Thanks! Jeff

I just tested this at https://demo13.service-now.com and it works fine there. I’ve modified the ‘My Groups Work’ module to use the function. You can validate that it works correctly by impersonating Don Goodliffe. Make sure to check that your business rule is set up on the ‘Global’ table and that the ‘Client callable’ checkbox is checked.

I have a user defined field called Division on my sys_user table, this field is just a reference field back to cmn_department.

I wanted to create a function similar to getMyGroups() & getMyAssignments() to use in filters.

This is not working for me. Here is my getMyDivision business rule: Name = getMyDivision table = Global[global] Client callable = true Active = true Script:

function getMyDivision(){

var MyDivision; var uID = gs.getUserID();

var user = new GlideRecord(‘sys_user’); user.addQuery(‘user’, uID); user.query();

while(user.next()){ MyDivision = user.u_division.toString(); //u_division is simply a reference field back to cmn_department }

return MyDivision; }

All the other examples (getMyGroups) seem to simply return an array of Strings, where each string is the sys_id. That is what I am basically doing here, but my reports don’t seem to work when I use the javascript:getMyDivision()

I have also tried returning an array of Strings, a cmn_department variable, and an array of cmn_department variables nothing works

Is something wrong with my script? I couldn’t seem even find the getMyGroups function to look at that code, but did find some reference that makes me believe that is a server side function tied to the User class.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

I think you could simplify this quite a bit. Try putting this within the ‘getMyDivision’ function.

return gs.getUser().getRecord().getValue(‘u_department’);

Gee thanks! much simpler and the function now works in my filters. So, the getValue function grabs the actual sys_id, where in my script the u_division.toString() was probably not neccessary.

Anyone else having issue with this business rule after Berlin upgrade? It was working fine before upgrading. After upgrading to Berlin, it works only for users with “admin” role. It does not return any groups if the user does not have “admin” role.

This still works for us, but please note, In order to get this to work initially (prior to Aspen or Berlin) I needed remove the following lines:

//Remove any duplicates from group string groupArr = checkDuplicates(groupArr);

Not sure is that will help you or not. good luck!

Thanks Jeff.

I figured what was causing this. The property “glide.script.use.sandbox” was enabled. When I disabled it, the business rule started working again for non-admin users. Are you having this property disabled?

Disabling that property probably isn’t a good idea, and it shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve got the ‘Client callable’ checkbox checked in your global business rule.

The property was enabled before Berlin and the business rule was running fine. After Berlin, the issue started. The ‘client callable’ checkbox was always checked.

I don’t have High Security Settings plugin enabled. Could this be the reason?

It may be due to the lack of High Security, but I doubt it since this solution was in place before High Security was the norm. I just tested this again on my Berlin release (with High Security enabled) and it works fine. You could confirm by testing in a ServiceNow demo instance.

This was working fine for us until we started testing Calgary and then I ran into the same issues discussed above. This only works for users who have the admin role. We currently do NOT have the High Security plugin enabled so that isn’t the issue. I tried commenting out the following line as suggested by Jeff above with no luck:

Did anyone find a solution to this with Berlin?

another note…if I go to demo and put this into an instance with Calgary it works. It seems to be related to the upgrade with this in place.

Hi Mark, I did this in Dublin and it spits out this warning when I save the rule”getMyGroupsAdvanced Business Rule contains code outside of a function. Code which exists outside of a function will run against every transaction; therefore, all code should be within a function and invoked as needed.”. I am a bit hesitant to turn it on now, as it seems serious.

Any ideas? Regards, Howard Elton

I haven’t ever had anyone report an issue related to this. The only code outside of a function are a couple of variable declarations so there shouldn’t be a huge concern.

I’ve just updated this to use a script include instead of a global business rule. That should solve the error you’re getting. Performance should really be the same, but this will follow current best-practice more closely.

We have been successfully using this for a number of years now. We are currently on Calgary testing Eureka. In Eureka when I go to “My Groups Work”, in the assignment group field of the filter it is blank. We have indeed changed the old global Business Rule to the new Script Includes. I know we have a lot of groups that the manager is not an assignee in the group but wants that visibility which this has done. Any thoughts?

I should have dug through the thread better. The problem I was experience was addressed by Ahmed Abdrabalnabi above. After reading the thread I checked and sure enough the issue would not occur if the user had the admin role. So I checked the system property of “glide.script.use.sandbox” and found it was set to true…changed that to false and it now works. I will admit that it still doesn’t make complete sense because that property itself states “If enabled, only those business rules and script includes with the “Client callable” checkbox set to true are available” and as stated, the script includes here has “Client callable” checked. I did confirm that I didn’t miss that. Just a bit strange.

I notice this pulls from the Task table but I need to get a state from the incident table, any suggestions on how I can accomplish this?

I’ve got the same problem on Geneva. If the user is non admin and glide.script.use.sandbox is true then the returned groups from the module ‘My Groups work’ is empty. What is strange is when the same function is called from a script in an application menu is works. I try to set glide.script.use.sandbox to false but I got and error message saying this operation is unsafe.

Finaly I’ve succeeded with the following code :

var GMGA = Class.create(); GMGA.prototype = Object.extendsObject(AbstractAjaxProcessor, { type: ‘GMGA’ }); var maxDepth;

var groupArr = []; var finalArr = [];

GMGA.getMyGroupsAdvanced = function (inputDepth) {

The rest of the code is untouched. For calling the function use : javascript:GMGA.getMyGroupsAdvanced(5)’

For me it’s a kind of black magic!

I tried using a similar script to add a parent group member to child groups upon insert. Do you have a business rule or SI that is similar to accomplish this?

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ServiceNow Group Naming Convention

2.0  - Updated on 2023-09-13 by Michael Mears

1.0 - Authored on 2023-05-24 by Michael Mears

In ServiceNow, groups are used to organize users and control access to resources. Choosing a consistent and clear naming convention for your groups can help improve visibility, simplify administration, and make it easier for help desks to find the right assignment groups. In this article, we'll provide some best practices for group naming conventions as well as what group types are used at NC State.

Naming Convention Guidelines:

• Department example, "OIT_Wordpress" or "ENGR_Security".
• Module example, "GRC_Admin" or " HRM_Admin"
• For example, "CALS_HORT" can be renamed to "CALS_Horticulture" but "ENGR_AIF" might be seen as too long if renamed to "ENGR_Analytical_Instrumentation_Facility".
• While ServiceNow allows special characters in group names, they can cause issues with some integrations or workflows. Stick to alphanumeric characters and avoid using spaces, special characters (with the exception of underscores).
• In addition to a descriptive name, a good group description can help provide clarity on the purpose and function of the group. Keep the description concise, but include enough information to help users understand what the group is for and how it relates to their work.

Naming convention requirements:

• For example, "HR".
• For example, "HR_Benefits" or "HR_Payroll"
• For example, "HR_Benefits_Support" or "HR_Payroll_Approvers"
• Write a clear and concise group description in the appropriate box.

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Assigned to and Assignment group

The Assigned to [assigned_to] field is a reference  field type that points to the Users [sys_user] table. This field is generally used to designate a user to work on, or be responsible for the task. By default, this field has a reference qualifier (role=itil) set on its dictionary record that prevents any non-itil user from being assigned to a task. You can override this reference qualifier on tables that extend task though, as the Project Task and Service Order tables do, if you have the relevant plugins installed.

The Assignment group [assignment_group] field serves pretty much the same purpose. The reason for having both, is that a workflow might automatically assign a certain type of task ticket to a group, ...

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Approval Groups vs Assignment Groups

Best Practice help required here.

We have a number of tech assignment groups. Within those groups is a subset of people that can approve changes and requests.

Firstly, does anyone else have this? I'm a process owner/designer and our ServiceNow developer is saying this is a stupid way of doing things.

Secondly, does anyone have an idea of how to do this so that we can't assign incidents to the Approval group and assign Approvals to the Incident/Problem groups?

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Issue populating assignment_group in servicenow via REST API

I am trying to create Servicenow incident ticket using REST API. Here is the link and body: https://<mydomain>.service-now.com/api/now/table/incident and body:

Incident ticket is getting created with all fields populated as requested except assignment_group and description fields. I know these are reference fields. I tried all combination but information is not getting populated for these two fields. Any one has any suggestions? I tried for assignment_group the sys_id value also like "assignment_group":"4ikilo9f1bb43740ddfa315bcd4kmj89" and "assignment_group":{"sys_id":"4ikilo9f1bb43740ddfa315bcd4kmj89"} etc.

• Is it possible you have a business rule unsetting assignment group on insert or update? –  Jace Commented Jan 2, 2020 at 15:43
• Thank you Jace for your comment. No, there is no business rule that is unsetting. I can go and create a ticket and it would create with assigned group but not through API. –  Mark W Commented Jan 3, 2020 at 20:37
• Do you perhaps have write ACLs on those fields which might be preventing your REST API user from writing to them? –  blendenzo Commented Jan 3, 2020 at 22:00
• "assignment_group":"4ikilo9f1bb43740ddfa315bcd4kmj89" should work. Try doing this on a PDI. –  Jace Commented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:12
• Jace, i tried as you suggested. Same result. Ticket got created but with no assigned group info. @blendenzo: Can service now has ACL at field level? Like I have mentioned, I was able to create ticket using API but not these two fields. Not sure if Servicenow can restrict update access at field level? If so, why do they do that way? I will double check with my security group on that. –  Mark W Commented Jan 6, 2020 at 21:28

pass the id of the assignment group within the API call than directly giving the name of the group, this worked for me :)

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