How to Share a ServiceNow Dashboard Globally

Sharing dashboards globally in ServiceNow is a powerful way to ensure that important data and reports are accessible to everyone who needs them. For ServiceNow administrators and analytics teams, making a dashboard available to a broad audience can improve transparency and collaboration. A globally shared ServiceNow dashboard lets all relevant stakeholders view real-time metrics and insights in one place, eliminating the need to recreate reports for each team or individual. In this article, we'll explore why global dashboard sharing is important, and how to effectively implement it. We’ll also cover common challenges (like permission issues and notification annoyances) and provide best practices so you can confidently share dashboards with your entire organization.

Common Challenges When Sharing Dashboards Globally

Sharing a dashboard with all users in ServiceNow isn’t always straightforward. Administrators often encounter a few common hurdles:

No Out-of-the-Box "Everyone" Option: ServiceNow’s sharing feature requires specifying particular users, groups, or roles – there isn’t a single click to share with “all users” by default. For example, you might try using a role that all users have (like the snc_internal role for internal users), but find it doesn’t grant access as expected. Administrators must explicitly define who can see the dashboard, which can be tricky if you want truly global access.
Underlying Reports Not Visible to Others: A dashboard is typically a container for reports and Performance Analytics widgets. Simply sharing the dashboard layout doesn’t automatically share the data sources (reports) within it. Users might open a shared dashboard and see empty widgets or “no access” messages. One ServiceNow community expert noted that when you share a dashboard, you are not sharing the individual reports; you must share each report with the same audience for them to see the data. This is a common pain point – forgetting to share the underlying reports or widgets will result in a blank dashboard for others.
Role Restrictions and Permissions: Even if you share with all users, those users might lack required roles to view the dashboard or its data. By default, ServiceNow dashboards (especially Performance Analytics dashboards) often require the pa_viewer role to simply view the dashboard content. If a user doesn’t have this role (or an equivalent permission), the dashboard might not appear for them at all. Additionally, if the dashboard shows specific data (like HR or security reports), viewers may need related roles (for example, an HR dashboard might require the sn_hr_core_basic HR role to see its data). Ensuring the right roles are in place is a critical challenge when broadening access.
Notification Overload: By default, ServiceNow will send an email invitation to every user you share a dashboard with. If you’re sharing a dashboard globally (i.e. with a large group or everyone), this could trigger a flood of notification emails to your user base. Many administrators find this problematic, as it can spam mailboxes and confuse users.
Licensing or Security Concerns: Administrators might worry that giving many users access to dashboards could require extra licensing or pose security risks. For instance, you may question if assigning the pa_viewer role to all employees will incur license costs – in fact, it does not count against fulfiller licenses (pa_viewer is typically a free role for viewers), but this misconception can be a challenge in planning. Security-wise, admins must also ensure that sharing broadly doesn’t expose data to people who shouldn’t see it. This means carefully reviewing what data the dashboard contains and who will have access once it’s shared globally.

Understanding these challenges ahead of time will help you address them proactively. Next, we’ll look at the step-by-step process to share a dashboard globally, and then discuss how to handle roles, alternative methods, and notification settings in detail.

Step-by-Step: Making a Dashboard Accessible Globally

As a ServiceNow admin, you can follow these steps to share a dashboard with a wide audience (effectively “globally” within your instance):

Open the Dashboard: Navigate to the dashboard you want to share. Go to Self-Service > Dashboards (or Performance Analytics > Dashboards) and select the desired dashboard from the picker at the top-left. Make sure you have it open on your screen.
Click the Share icon (network/share symbol) located in the dashboard header: This will open the Share Dashboard panel on the right side of the screen.
Add Users/Groups/Roles: In the Share panel, use the "Add groups and users" field (sometimes labeled "To" or simply a search box) to find the audience you want to give access to. You can type to search for individual users, groups, or roles. ServiceNow allows sharing with any of these. For example, you could enter a specific user’s name, a group (like “Team Alpha”), or a role (like “ITIL”) and select from the suggestions. If you aim to share globally, consider selecting a group or role that effectively includes all your target users (we’ll discuss ideas for an “all users” group in the next section).
Set Permission (View or Edit): After adding the user/group/role to the recipients list, choose the access level. For each entry in the recipients list, you can typically select either Can view or Can edit. Can view means the audience can only see the dashboard, whereas Can edit would allow them to modify the dashboard. For a global share intended for general viewing, you will almost always choose "Can view" for everyone. Only grant "Can edit" to other administrators or power users who need to collaborate on editing the dashboard content.
(Optional) Disable Email Notifications when Sharing: Just below the recipients list, you’ll see a checkbox labeled “Send an email invitation”. If you leave this checked, ServiceNow will send an email to every user or group member you just added, informing them that the dashboard was shared with them. For a large audience, you might want to uncheck this box. It’s often best to inform users of the new dashboard through your own communication (e.g., an announcement or newsletter) rather than spamming them with automated emails. ServiceNow allows you to clear this checkbox to avoid sending notification emails if the recipients are already aware of the share.
Share the Dashboard: Click the Share button to confirm. The dashboard’s sharing settings will be saved. Now, all users, groups, and roles you added will have access. If you added a role or group that covers your entire user base, this effectively makes the dashboard globally accessible to everyone intended. Users can find the dashboard in their Dashboards list (and might also see a notification in the Dashboard Overview indicating it’s shared with them).
Verify Access: After sharing, always test dashboard visibility and permissions with a typical user or test account. You might use a test account or ask a colleague (with a typical end-user role) to confirm they can see the dashboard and its contents. Ensure that the data on the widgets is visible to them. If some widgets are showing blank for them, you may need to adjust permissions or sharing for those individual reports (see the next section on roles and permissions).

By following the above steps, an administrator can share a dashboard to a broad audience. The key is selecting the appropriate user group or role in step 3 to encompass everyone who should have access. In the next section, we will examine how roles and permissions come into play when sharing dashboards globally.

How Roles and Permissions Affect Dashboard Sharing

Roles and permissions are crucial when sharing ServiceNow dashboards to a wide audience. Even if you share a dashboard with "everyone," each user’s ability to actually view the dashboard and its data will depend on their roles.

Here are the main points to consider:

Dashboard Viewer Role (pa_viewer): In ServiceNow, out-of-the-box Performance Analytics dashboards require users to have the pa_viewer role to simply view a dashboard. Users with higher roles like pa_power_user or pa_admin can create or edit dashboards, but those roles are usually reserved for advanced users or admins. If you plan to share dashboards globally, you should ensure that all target users have the necessary viewer privileges.
In many instances, adding the pa_viewer role to all employee user accounts is a solution. (Note: This role is typically a free "viewer" role and does not count against your paid license allocations, so you can assign it broadly without financial impact. Always verify your licensing details, but ServiceNow generally treats pa_viewer as a non-fulfiller role.)

Group and Role Access: When using the "Everyone" share option via roles, you might pick a role that is common to all users. For example, some organizations create a custom role (like dashboard_viewer_all) and give it to every user, then share the dashboard with that role. Others might leverage an existing role that all internal users have, such as a basic role for all employees. Whichever role or group you choose to share with, remember that sharing grants access only if the user actually has that role/group. If you mistakenly choose a role that not everyone has, some people will be left out. It’s wise to double-check that the role or group truly covers your entire audience. In some companies, the snc_internal role is automatically on all internal user accounts – sharing with that role could be one way to reach all internal users (though by itself it may not be sufficient without pa_viewer as noted above). Always test with a typical user account to ensure the role-based sharing is effective.

Subject Matter Roles for Data: Beyond the dashboard viewing roles, consider what data is on the dashboard. ServiceNow will enforce field-level and table-level security (ACLs) on the data shown in reports. For instance, if your dashboard has an HR report, only users with HR roles will see the data from that report. In fact, certain out-of-box dashboards are meant only for specific roles – e.g., the HR Agent Dashboard requires the sn_hr_core_basic (or similar HR role) to view it. If you share an HR dashboard with everyone, non-HR people might see the dashboard frame but with errors or empty content due to lack of rights. So, when sharing globally, ensure the content is appropriate for a broad audience or that you have opened up the data access suitably (which might involve creating more generic reports that aren’t role-restricted).

Edit Permissions: Generally, when you share globally, you will not give edit rights to everyone (that would be chaotic). Editing a dashboard typically remains limited to owners (dashboard creators) or admins. You can share dashboards as read-only for most users. Only those explicitly given "Can edit" in the sharing settings can modify the dashboard. It’s recommended to keep the editor group small (perhaps just the admin team or specific power users) to maintain control over the content.

To summarize, roles are the gatekeepers to your dashboard. When planning a globally shared dashboard, make a list of what roles a user needs to (a) see the dashboard itself, and (b) see each widget’s data. Resolve any gaps by assigning roles like pa_viewer or adjusting ACLs on data as needed. It’s often useful to create documentation or an internal knowledge article for your organization specifying “to access the Global Sales Dashboard, a user needs X, Y, and Z roles,” so there’s clarity for onboarding new users in the future.

Alternative Solutions for Broad Dashboard Access

Sometimes, the standard dashboard sharing mechanism may not fulfill an organization’s needs for broad or global access. Here are some alternative approaches and solutions to consider:

Use a Group that Contains All Users: Since ServiceNow doesn’t have a one-click “share with everyone” button, a practical workaround is to create a user group that includes all intended users. For example, you might create a group called "All Employees" and add every user account to it (this can be automated via onboarding scripts or directory integration). Then share the dashboard with that group. This way, as long as someone is in the group, they have access – and you only have to manage sharing in one place. An expert on the ServiceNow community recommended creating a group for broad sharing: there is no out-of-the-box solution to automatically share all widgets, but you can share the dashboard and all its reports to a group that represents everyone. This approach simplifies administration: new hires added to the group automatically gain the dashboard, and departures removed from the group lose access.
Leverage the "Everyone" Role Option with Care: In the dashboard Share panel, if you choose the Visible to "Everyone" option, you still need to pick at least one role that will have access (the label “Everyone” here is a bit misleading – it means “everyone who has these roles”). You could create or identify a role that effectively everyone in your instance has (for example, a role assigned to all users through a user criteria or as part of the base user role). Sharing a dashboard with that role achieves a similar effect to a true global share. The downside is you must maintain that role assignment on all users. If using this method, ensure your user provisioning process automatically grants the chosen role to every new user.
Public Facing or External Sharing: ServiceNow dashboards are generally intended for logged-in users on your instance (there is no native way to publish a live interactive dashboard to the public internet). If your goal is to share data with people who do not have ServiceNow access, you might need a different approach. One solution is to export or schedule the dashboard content. For example, you can schedule reports (or Performance Analytics snapshots) to be emailed regularly to a distribution list. You can also use the Export to PDF feature on dashboards to generate a snapshot of the dashboard and then share that PDF. Some organizations create a summary report page on a company intranet or portal and manually update it with key charts from the ServiceNow dashboard. These approaches are outside of ServiceNow’s dashboard sharing feature but can achieve a form of broad distribution when a live dashboard view for each user isn’t feasible.
Use Homepages (Legacy) Cautiously: Before dashboards, ServiceNow had homepages which could be made global. Some admins consider using a homepage for information that needs to be seen by everyone, since a homepage can be set as the default view for all users. However, ServiceNow is moving away from homepages in favor of the newer responsive dashboards. If you’re on a modern release, it’s better to use dashboards and the techniques discussed above rather than reverting to homepages, unless you have a specific reason to. Homepages also come with their own performance issues when too many users load them. Stick with dashboards and manage the sharing via roles/groups for a scalable solution.

In summary, if the built-in sharing UI doesn’t perfectly meet your “global” sharing requirement, use the flexibility of groups and roles. By defining an "all users" group or a ubiquitous role, you can effectively give everyone access without having to individually list every user in the share panel. And if you need to share outside the platform, consider report distribution features as an alternative. Always weigh the maintenance overhead: choose a method that will be easy to keep updated as your organization grows.

Suppressing Unwanted Dashboard Sharing Notification Emails

When you share a ServiceNow dashboard with many users, the platform’s default behavior is to send an email notification to each of those users. The email typically has the subject line “Dashboard has been shared with you” and includes a link to the dashboard. While this is useful in small-scale sharing (so users know a dashboard was shared), it becomes impractical if you are sharing dashboards globally. Do you really want an email hitting every single user’s inbox? Probably not. Here’s how to manage and suppress these notifications:

Uncheck "Send an email invitation": The simplest method is during the sharing process itself. As noted in the step-by-step section, when the Share panel is open, there is a checkbox for sending an email invitation. By default, this box is checked (and ServiceNow currently does not allow changing the default – there’s no system property to turn it off by default). However, you can manually uncheck it each time you share a dashboard. If you are sharing with a huge group or role, be sure to uncheck this box before you hit Share. This prevents the system from generating any notification emails for that share action. You might then separately communicate the dashboard’s availability through other channels (like an internal newsletter or a Teams/Slack announcement), which lets you control the messaging and timing.

Bulk-sharing scenarios – use caution: If you plan to script or automate the sharing of a dashboard to many users (for example, via a script include or by adding a role to many accounts), be aware that behind the scenes ServiceNow might attempt to send emails for each added user if done through the standard mechanism. Unchecking the notification box in the UI might not apply if you add shares programmatically. In such cases, consider temporarily disabling the notification or using a technical solution as described next.

Suppress via Business Rule or Notification Settings: As of now, ServiceNow does not offer a simple toggle to disable dashboard share emails globally. The official solution to completely suppress these emails is to implement a server-side business rule or mail script that intercepts and stops them. For example, an admin could create a Business Rule on the email sending table, filtering for the condition where the email subject contains “dashboard has been shared” and prevent those from being sent. Keep in mind that doing so will block all dashboard share emails on the instance. This blanket approach is useful if you never want those emails to go out. Another approach is to find the notification configuration (if any) that triggers these emails. In some versions, the share notification might be hard-coded, but if it’s driven by an email notification or event, you could disable that notification or tweak its audience. Always test your solution: you want to be sure legitimate emails are not affected beyond the dashboard invite messages.

User Expectations: If you choose to suppress automated emails, make sure users are informed through other means that a dashboard is available to them. The worst outcome would be sharing a dashboard globally, blocking the emails, and then many users never realize the dashboard exists. So plan a communication – even a one-time email from an official mailbox explaining how to access the new dashboard – to accompany the sharing action.

In short, to avoid spamming your user base, take control of the notification process. Uncheck the invite option when sharing, or implement a technical suppression, and use a more deliberate communication strategy to let the audience know about the dashboard. This keeps your global sharing user-friendly and professional, without flooding inboxes.

Conclusion

Sharing ServiceNow dashboards globally can transform how information is disseminated across your organization. By making key dashboards accessible to all relevant users, you empower teams with self-service analytics and a single source of truth for performance metrics. However, it’s important to do it right – balancing accessibility with security and avoiding common pitfalls. Here are some key takeaways and best practices for effectively sharing dashboards globally:

Plan Your Sharing Strategy: Decide whether to use a role or a group to represent “everyone” and set up that structure in advance. This makes the sharing process smoother and easier to maintain.
Ensure Required Roles are in Place: Before sharing widely, verify that all target users have the necessary roles (e.g., pa_viewer for viewing and any subject-specific roles for data on the dashboard). This prevents the “blank dashboard” issue where people see an empty screen due to missing permissions.
Share Underlying Reports/Widgets: Remember that each report on the dashboard may need to be shared as well. Either make the reports globally visible or include them in the group/role sharing. If a user has the dashboard but not the report permissions, they won’t see the data.
Use Groups/Roles for Efficiency: Instead of adding 500 users individually to a dashboard share, use a group or role that contains those users. This not only saves time but also makes future maintenance easier (just manage the group membership going forward).
Be Mindful of Notifications: Avoid spamming users with dashboard share emails. Uncheck the email invitation option during sharing, or implement a suppression mechanism. Proactively inform users about the new dashboard through a tailored announcement.
Test with a Typical User Account: After sharing, always test what an average end-user will experience. This helps catch any permission issues or missing data. It’s better to discover and fix problems early than to have hundreds of users reporting they can’t see the dashboard properly.

By following these best practices, administrators can confidently share dashboards on a global scale, providing their organization with valuable insights at everyone’s fingertips. A well-shared dashboard means every team member – from executives to frontline staff – has access to the same up-to-date information, fostering alignment and informed decision-making. In the end, global dashboard sharing in ServiceNow is about striking a balance: maximum visibility of data for those who need it, while maintaining security and control. With the right setup and considerations, you can leverage ServiceNow’s dashboard sharing feature to its full potential and drive data-driven culture across your enterprise.

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