ServiceNow MCP Server Console documentation

Overview

ServiceNow's official MCP server is MCP Server Console, a Store application that runs on your ServiceNow instance and exposes platform capabilities as governed MCP tools. Any standards-compliant MCP client — such as Claude, Copilot Studio, or Moveworks — connects to a server on your instance and calls the tools published there.

Official Integration:

This is a ServiceNow-maintained server, not a pip package. There is no public shared endpoint: each server runs on your own instance URL, and clients must be registered by an administrator.

Key Features

🛡️

Governed Access

OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Grant on every connection, with existing roles, ACLs, and field-level security still enforced

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Quickstart Server

A pre-configured server that ships with incident and case lookup and summarization tools

🧰

Multiple Tool Types

Expose Now Assist Skills, Knowledge Graph, Scripted REST APIs, Subflows, and Actions as MCP tools

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Access Control

Administrators decide which tools each server exposes; a client only sees the catalog of the server it connects to

Available Tools

Quick Reference

The Quickstart Server ships with the following tools. Which ones are present depends on the Now Assist store applications installed on the instance.

Tool	Purpose	Availability
`lookup_incident_records`	Look up incident records to enable summarizing them with the Incident Summarization tool	Now Assist for ITSM
`incident_summarization`	Get a summary of details in an incident record generated by ServiceNow Otto	Now Assist for ITSM
`lookup_case_records`	Look up case records to enable summarizing them with the Case Summarization tool	Now Assist for ITSM plus HRSD or CSM
`case_summarization`	Get a summary of details in a case record generated by ServiceNow Otto	Now Assist for ITSM plus HRSD or CSM

Servers you build yourself can expose additional tools from Now Assist Skills, Knowledge Graph, Scripted REST APIs, Subflows, and Actions. Their names come from the capabilities you publish, so they are not fixed by ServiceNow.

Detailed Usage

lookup_incident_records▶

Looks up incident records so they can be summarized with the Incident Summarization tool.

incident_summarization▶

Summarizes the details of an incident record using ServiceNow Otto.

lookup_case_records▶

Looks up case records so they can be summarized with the Case Summarization tool.

case_summarization▶

Summarizes the details of a case record using ServiceNow Otto.

Available Resources

MCP resources and prompts are not supported by MCP Server Console at this time; access is through tools. The tool types available for your own servers are:

Now Assist Skills — pre-built and custom GenAI capabilities, including incident summarization, case summarization, and knowledge generation
Knowledge Graph — semantic graph queries across people, assets, services, and processes
Scripted REST APIs — developer-defined endpoints exposed as governed tools; GET, POST, and PUT are supported
Subflows — synchronous Flow Designer subflows exposed as MCP tools
Actions — synchronous Flow Designer actions exposed as MCP tools

Installation

No Package Install:

There is no pip, npx, or Docker install. MCP Server Console is installed on the instance from the ServiceNow Store and activated with a Now Assist application.

Prerequisites

MCP Server Console store app
Zurich Patch 9 or Australia Patch 2 as the minimum platform version
Now Assist SKU for the relevant domain (ITSM, ITOM, etc.)
An OAuth client configured for your MCP client

Activate the Quickstart Server

Install MCP Server Console from the ServiceNow Store. It is available with activation of a Now Assist application.
Open All → MCP Server Console.
On the Configuration tab, select Servers.
Select the Quickstart Server. It ships pre-configured, so no tool setup is required.
Connect your MCP client to the server URL shown for that server.

The Quickstart Server requires no tool configuration. Add your own tools to it later, or build separate servers per use case.

Authentication Methods

OAuth 2.0 with the Authorization Code Grant is the only supported flow. OAuth Client Credential Grant is not currently supported for MCP Server Console connections.

Human users complete the browser redirect themselves and tool calls execute under their own ServiceNow identity, roles, and ACLs.
Autonomous agents authenticate once as a dedicated integration user; the token is reused and every call executes under that account's roles and ACLs.
Dynamic Client Registration is not supported. Every client must be registered by an administrator before its first connection.
Client ID Metadata Document (CIMD) is available from Australia Patch 1 / Zurich Patch 7 onward for clients that support it.

Common Use Cases

Incident Triage

Look up an incident and summarize it before deciding on next steps:

use_mcp_tool({ server_name: "servicenow", tool_name: "lookup_incident_records" });
use_mcp_tool({ server_name: "servicenow", tool_name: "incident_summarization" });

Case Review

Look up a case record and summarize its details:

use_mcp_tool({ server_name: "servicenow", tool_name: "lookup_case_records" });
use_mcp_tool({ server_name: "servicenow", tool_name: "case_summarization" });

Custom Workflow Tools

Publish a synchronous Subflow or Action, or a Scripted REST endpoint, as a tool on a server you build. Scripted REST tools require their inputs to be supplied explicitly — a record number, date range, or filter value cannot be inferred.

ServiceNow Permissions Required

MCP does not bypass ServiceNow access controls. Existing role-based access, contextual script ACLs, row and field-level security, and deny-unless-permitted defaults all apply.

Human users can only retrieve or change what their own ServiceNow permissions allow.
Autonomous agents are limited by the integration user's roles, so apply minimum necessary permissions.
Tool-level ACLs also apply. For custom servers using Now Assist Skills, configure an execute ACL and Role Masking for each skill; without them tools may return empty results instead of an error.
Subflows and Actions need an invoke_from_ai AI ACL before they can be selected as tools.

Troubleshooting

Connection Issues

Check the Connection and Credential records in ServiceNow and confirm they are configured as expected
Verify an OAuth token has been requested in the Credential record and has not expired
Verify the redirect URL matches exactly
Confirm the instance meets the minimum version (Zurich Patch 9 or Australia Patch 2)

Tools Not Discoverable

If tools do not appear after setup, the most likely cause is an ADC routing issue. Open a case with ServiceNow Support.

Permission Errors

Verify the authenticated user or integration account has roles covering the tools being called
Check tool-level ACLs, including invoke_from_ai for flows and subflows
Confirm the tool and its server are in the same application scope — mixing global and scoped apps causes tools to be silently excluded

Advanced Configuration

Server Design

Create one server per use case rather than a single server holding every tool. Clients load the full tool list at connect time, so large catalogs consume tokens before the first query and can degrade tool selection. A shared tool definition is not copied between servers — editing it affects every server it belongs to.

Enabling Flows and Subflows as Tools

Flows and subflows are blocked for AI consumption by default:

Open the flow or subflow in Flow Designer
Go to More Actions → Manage Security
In the Access Controls section, select New
Create an ACL with operation invoke_from_ai
Add the ACL record to the ACLs field and click Update

Flows with approval steps, wait conditions, or other async logic are not eligible regardless of ACL configuration.

Tool Descriptions

Tool descriptions drive tool selection. State both what the tool does and when it should be called, and for Scripted REST tools list required inputs and their formats in the description.

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