Who’s Logged Into Your Instance
Based on the size of your company, you could have potentially thousands of end users in your ServiceNow environment at any given time.
As a ServiceNow Admin, you can see who is logged into your ServiceNow instance, and you can see what they’re looking at.
You have complete control over who’s in your instance, their IP information, etc.
In IT, security is interlocked with every role in the organization. It’s important for all ServiceNow Admins to understand how to control user sessions.
There will be times when you have to lock user sessions out, not always for malicious purposes – but these events do occur.
Every ServiceNow Admin could be called on to lock out a user session, at any given time.
Learn how to see who’s in your instance, and how to lock their session out if necessary.
To view your “Logged in Users”, simply navigate to the “Logged in Users” module (User Administration > Logged in Users)
See What Users Are Viewing
The “Logged In Users” module is a list view of the users that are logged in, in real time.
Every record represents either a human or a system that are consuming services of your ServiceNow Instance.
There is a User Session Logs table, which is a related list to the Logged in User application [syslog_transaction].
The User Session Logs show a tremendous amount of data related to the existing user session.
You can see what URL they’re looking at, how long their SQL transactions are taking to run, what Scope they’re currently logged in under, etc.
For example, if a SQL transaction is taking a long time to run, you know that the user is running massive queries.
Take a look at the columns in the above screenshot to see all of the detailed information ServiceNow provides. There’s more information here than people realize.
Every single click or URL an end user hits, is all tracked here.
But this isn’t an opportunity to stalk your end users, instead – it allows you to properly manage and better administer the ServiceNow Platform.
How To Terminate Their Session – Lock Them Out
Use this feature with caution.
The impact is immediate in real time – the user us logged out of the ServiceNow instance as soon as the button is clicked (you can even do it for your own user session).
There may be times when you need to lock someone out.
Maybe it’s a suspicious user that you’re not aware of, a security event or even an Admin that you need to terminate a session for.
Don’t be afraid to lock a user out if necessary.
Many times I’ve had to ask my other ServiceNow Developer to lock my user session out after I’ve had a transaction that was running for too long and that hung up my user account (where I couldn’t log out manually).
To lock a user out, find their Logged in User record, and simply click “Lock Out Session”.
After a moment, there are no prompts or info messages – the user is logged out automatically.
Now you know how to fully manage user sessions and see who’s looking at what.
Let us know if you have any questions related to user sessions.
