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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

ServiceNow instance external content connector

The ServiceNow instance external content connector retrieves KB article records (and their attachments) from your ServiceNow AI Platform source instance and makes their content and metadata searchable in AI Search applications in your ServiceNow AI Platform destination instance.

The ServiceNow AI Platform instance that you want the external content connector to retrieve searchable content and metadata from is your source instance. The instance where the connector runs and populates search applications with the retrieved data is your destination instance.

Search administrators can run or schedule content crawls to retrieve updated content from your source instance, or user permission crawls to retrieve updated security principals from your source instance. Both types of crawl feed their data to AI Search for indexing on your destination instance.

In your destination instance, the indexed content and metadata are stored as records in a connector-specific indexed source. Search administrators can create search sources from this indexed source and link them to search profiles to make the indexed records searchable in AI Search applications.

Important: Your source and destination instances must be distinct from one another. The ServiceNow® instance external content connector is not designed to feed an instance's content back into itself.

User permissions

To view search results from the source instance, a user on the destination instance must satisfy the following conditions:

  • There must be a matching user account defined for them on the source instance, with the same email address.
  • Their user account on the source instance must have access to the content represented by the search results.

If these conditions are not satisfied, the destination instance user won't be able to see search results crawled from the source instance.

Parent Topic:Configuring External Content Connectors

Related topics

Create a content crawl for an external content connector

Create a user permission crawl for an external content connector