Defining the ‘Run as’ User for a Scheduled Import

Recently I had a client ask me why all of their imported records showed up as being updated and created by the person who initially created the import. The problem, they said, was that the imported records were being created and updated on a scheduled basis by the system so it really wasn’t a particular person who was creating the records. While I agreed that it was a problem, I wasn’t sure at the time why it was happening or what the solution was. Now I know!

It should be no surprise to anybody that each record created or updated in Service-now has some information about who created and last updated the record (along with when those actions occurred). When you’re doing an initial import of data directly through import sets it is accurate for the system to record that the user performing those actions performed the creation and/or update of each of those records.

With a scheduled import however, that same assumption isn’t correct. Generally you would like to have those actions attributed to system behavior rather than the person who set up the scheduled import. Enter the ‘Run as’ field on the ‘Scheduled Import’ table.

By default, this field isn’t part of the Scheduled Import form so you’ll need to personalize your form layout to see it and use it. You’ll notice that this field is automatically populated with the name or ID of the user that is creating the scheduled import record. The value in this field determines which user will run the import and, in turn, what user will be recorded in the ‘Updated by’ and ‘Created by’ fields for each record imported by that schedule.