User accounts in ServiceNow are, for the most part, just another type of record in the database. User records are stored in the Users [sys_user] table, and define the users that can log in and access the instance. Related tables (specifically, the Roles [sys_user_role] table) control our users' level of access, but it's the Users table that defines and contains the account itself, including additional data like the user's email address, phone number, user ID (which is used to log in to ServiceNow), and even password (stored as a one-way encrypted hash):

A user is a record that corresponds to a set of permissions (roles) and groups, and of course, to a real person! User accounts can also correspond to licenses which must be purchased from ServiceNow, if they have roles. As of right now, ServiceNow does not generally charge licensing fees for users that don't require fulfiller access or any special roles. These non-roled/non-ITIL users are referred to as self-service users,...