User criteria enables you to allow access to users based on role, department, group, location, or company. Administrators can control access to pages, widgets, widget instances, announcements, and search sources in a portal by creating and applying user criteria.

User criteria records define conditions that are evaluated against user records. When user criteria is defined, portal records are only visible to users who pass the defined conditions.

User criteria is a platform feature used in Service Portal. Learn more about user criteria in the Now Platform:

Important: After making user criteria additions or changes, you may need to log out and log back in to clear the prior configuration.

Converting role-based permissions to user criteria records

User criteria in Service Portal replaces role-based permissions. After activating the user criteria for Service Portal plugin, you must Set the user criteria for Service Portal system property to true. When the system property is set to true, any existing roles defined for a page, widget, or search source are automatically converted into user criteria records. To disable user criteria and continue using role-based permissions, set the system property to false.

User criteria checks

User criteria uses the following checks in Service Portal to verify user access.

User criteria check flow chart describing how the system verifies whether a user can access an item.

Page access user criteria

The following diagram shows how the system decides whether a user can access a page based on user criteria.

Flow chart with descriptions of different checks in the page access process.

Widget access user criteria

The following diagram shows how the system determines whether a user has access to a particular widget or widget instance.

Flow chart detailing the process the system uses to verify a user's ability to access a widget.