Configuration Management [CMDB]

Process Guide

Updated: October 2023

Asset number: 0001261

Table of Contents
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................................6
Foreword.........................................................................................................................................................................6
Prerequisites....................................................................................................................................................................7
Process Scope..................................................................................................................................................................7
Process Objectives..........................................................................................................................................................7
Process Overview............................................................................................................................................................8
Process Overview Diagram.........................................................................................................................................9
Roles and Responsibilities............................................................................................................................................10
Configuration Management Process Owner.............................................................................................................10
Configuration Manager.............................................................................................................................................11
CMDB Admin...........................................................................................................................................................12
CI Analyst or Class Owner........................................................................................................................................12
CMDB RACI................................................................................................................................................................13
Process Interactions......................................................................................................................................................15
ITSM.........................................................................................................................................................................15
ITOM - Visibility......................................................................................................................................................16
Security Operations...................................................................................................................................................17
IT Asset Management...............................................................................................................................................17
Strategy Portfolio Management (formerly ITBM)....................................................................................................17
Customer Service Management................................................................................................................................18
CI Population................................................................................................................................................................18
CI Identification............................................................................................................................................................19
Principal CIs..............................................................................................................................................................19
Common Service Data Model.......................................................................................................................................20
The Common Service Data Model............................................................................................................................22
Population Approach.................................................................................................................................................22
Referential data.............................................................................................................................................................24
Relationships.................................................................................................................................................................24
Key Data Sources..........................................................................................................................................................25
Corroborating Data Sources..........................................................................................................................................26
Data Attributes and Population.....................................................................................................................................27
Multi-Source Data Population and CMDB 360........................................................................................................27
Viewing and Searching the CMDB..............................................................................................................................27
Data Maintenance.........................................................................................................................................................28
CMDB View Dashboard...........................................................................................................................................28
CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard....................................................................................................30
Common Service Data CI Lifecycle Standards.........................................................................................................30
Update and Maintenance...........................................................................................................................................30
Data Manager Dashboard..........................................................................................................................................31
CMDB Attestation.....................................................................................................................................................32

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 CMDB Workspace....................................................................................................................................................33
Outcomes Realized.......................................................................................................................................................35
Links and Resources:....................................................................................................................................................35

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Date Updated or
Version Updates Updated by
Reviewed

CMDB Rebranded template to match 2022 brand Mary Vanatta 8/7/2022

Process guidelines
Guide Added CMDB Attestation processes
Dependent CI deletion processes
CMDB Workspace usage

CMDB Updated Configuration Management Mary Vanatta 3/1/2022

Process Process by adding request Mgmt as an
Guidev2 external process.
Tested and updated ServiceNow roles
and responsibilities
Added RACI as related to configuration
management in ServiceNow

Add notes on CMDB Workspace – San

Diego update.

Update CSDM guidance to include

version 4.0

CMDB Updated branding Mary Vanatta 7/5/2022

Process
Guide

CMDB Updated CSDM model to show SDLC Mary Vanatta 2/10/2023

Process components are optional and there can be
Guide a direct relationship from a Business App
to an Application Service.

Added Links and Resources to other

ServiceNow content

Grammatical Fixes

Utah updates not in this document are

provided at these links:
CMDB Intelligent Search
CMDB 360

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Date Updated or
Version Updates Updated by
Reviewed

CMDB UTAH Updates for CMDB 360 and Mary Vanatta 3/10/2023
Process CMDB Workspace Intelligent Search
Guide

CMDB Vancouver updates for CMDB Mary Vanatta 9/20/2023

Process Workspace Insights, Governance and
Guide Management. Add paragraph on
relationships and information on Unified
Map. Removed reference to Cloud
Provisioning and Governance and added
Cloud Discovery and Cloud Operations
Workspace information, updated CSDM
Model graphic.

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Introduction
This process guide explains how the configuration management process is enabled within the ServiceNow®
platform. The process, if followed, helps ServiceNow customers at every maturity level.
ServiceNow® encourages simple, lean processes, reflected in the out-of-the-box design. Customers may add
functionality to what is offered; however, this should only be in scenarios where a required business outcome could
not be achieved using an out-of-the-box method. Following this approach should also ease the upgrade paths and the
ability to expand their platform use.

Foreword
Digital Transformation is seldom understood at a level necessary to create meaningful business outcomes. The
CMDB is a centralized information store in a relational model critical to driving workflows that have undergone
digital transformation. For years, organizations have struggled with implementing and maintaining a CMDB. Much
of the documentation and practice for successfully attempting this was driven by academic frameworks surrounding
the larger configuration management discipline and how it underpins successful service management. Lost in the
academic references were translations to business value and how to achieve a meaningful digital transformation that
leads to service automation and the velocities necessary to gain a competitive advantage in today's business
landscape.
To help you achieve these critical business capabilities, we must avoid industry frameworks and focus on the
necessary data elements that derive business value. As a customer, you may have multiple desired outcomes and
questions in which order the data elements should be implemented. This process guide is only the "how" of the
initial implementation and knowing which data elements are critical to achieving value on Day 1. We guide ongoing
data management and governance processes (Day 2) that lead to the ongoing success necessary to drive business
value.
Much of the value of the ServiceNow® platform lies in our ability to create workflows that support the design,
implementation, and operation of your crucial business capabilities. Your business capabilities should be expressed
via a product and services-oriented taxonomy that seeks to connect the logical constructs to the underlying
technological infrastructure and have them consumable internally and externally via various Service Offerings.
ServiceNow's Common Services Data Model realizes that product and services-oriented taxonomy. Seek to
understand what products and services are utilized across various scenarios and when to implement these logical CIs
earlier in your journey to drive proper alignment of other workflows to this product and services-oriented taxonomy.

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Prerequisites
Outside of the market hype, Digital Transformation is a genuine activity crucial for enterprises to execute and
leverage to remain relevant. The NOW platform is a significant enablement piece for the core of this transformation,
and the CMDB is its heart. To successfully leverage this transformational toolset, executives need to understand,
enable, and support the efforts of those tasked with implementing the technology and the inherent cultural shifts
accompanying it. Those seeking to wrap the software around their existing processes are doomed to rob themselves
of the benefits of this transformational journey.
Key areas should be focused on here: Orient the data that drives activities into a service or product-oriented view so
that visibility and knowledge can be gained on areas where there is an opportunity to reduce Operational
Expenditures. Streamline the effort it takes to accomplish tasks across various parts of the organization by digitizing
workflows to create efficiency. Create a solid body of centralized data to drive operational velocity through
automation. Capture data at key intersections of the workflow streams to maintain regulatory compliance at velocity.
One of the essential success factors of a ServiceNow implementation is a senior executive who understands and
believes in these concepts and the cultural shifts they bring. A clear line of sight into what the technology can enable
and the organizational and process changes necessary to engender these activities before implementing the
technology that drives them is foundational to a successful outcome. Engage and listen to key stakeholders in the
process chains, and getting buy-in from them, beyond lip service, is essential.

Process Scope
The scope of Configuration Management includes tracking and managing all CIs and relationships that support the
live environment, including:
 Products (Digital Portfolio Management)
 Services (Service Portfolio Management)
 Service Assets (e.g., technology or infrastructure required to deliver Service)
 Support Documentation (e.g., maintenance and warranty information)
 Processes (documentation and procedures associated with running, supporting, and maintaining the live
environment)
Process Objectives
The objectives of Configuration Management are to:
 Ensure principal CIs under control are identified and adequately managed throughout their lifecycle
 Identify, control, record, report, audit, and verify services and other principal CIs, including versions, baselines,
constituent components, attributes, and relationships.
 Account for, manage, and protect the integrity of principal CIs through the service lifecycle by working with
change management to ensure that only authorized components are used and only authorized changes are made.
 Ensure the integrity of principal CIs and relationships required to control the services by establishing and
maintaining an accurate and complete CMDB.
 Maintain accurate configuration information on the historical, planned, and current state of services and
principal CIs.
 Support efficient and effective service management processes by providing accurate configuration information
for decision-making purposes.
 Provide foundational platform data for the successful execution of ServiceNow Products.
 Align CMDB structure to pre-established business use cases that align with key business initiatives.
Process Overview
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Configuration management (CM) is the ongoing process of identifying and managing changes to deliverables and
other work products.
Identify – Following our guidance, use a phased approach with the CMDB Ci Classes population. Automated
methods are recommended to achieve total value out of the ServiceNow platform.
Control – Ensure that no CIs are added or modified without the required authorization and that the modifications
are adequately recorded in the CMDB.
Record – Ensure that all changes to CIs are recorded and used in reporting on the health of the CMDB.
Status – Follow documented processes to update the CIs through the lifecycle.
Audit – Perform regular checks, ensuring that the information in the CMDB accurately represents the CIs installed
in the live production environment. Use the Data Certification plugin, a free subscription to set up scheduled audits
that cannot be determined through the CMDB Health maintenance processes.

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Process Overview Diagram
Service Asset and Configuration Management process flow.

The standard Service Asset and Configuration Management processes do not include all the external processes the
ServiceNow platform provides. This diagram misses the Event Management, DevOps, and Service Operation
processes. As organizations' digital transformations become service-focused, the focus on an individual CI becomes
less important.
This image is a high-level configuration management process flow recommended for the ServiceNow Platform. It
includes the ServiceNow processes that populate the CMDB and continual service management application
processes like Event Management. This diagram assumes the processes have been defined and communicated.

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Roles and Responsibilities
Managing these processes takes resources across the organization to ensure success. These resources may be people
in your organization who can take on a role and may not be full-time resources. Network, Compute, and Application
teams need to help maintain their data, update the lifecycle of the CIs, and ensure the non-discoverable data on the
record is accurate. Maintaining a CMDB depends on your organization's size and maturity. The key is not to under-
manage or over-manage the CMDB.
Configuration Management Process Owner
The Configuration Management Process Owner's primary objective is to own and maintain the Configuration
Management process. The Process Owner is usually a senior manager with the ability and authority to ensure the
process is rolled out and used by all stakeholders.
Responsible for:
 Defining the overall mission of the process
 Establishing and communicating the process mission, goals, and objectives to all stakeholders
 Documenting and maintaining the process and procedures in a configuration management plan
 Communicates processes to CI/Service/Product Owners and subject matter experts
 Resolving any cross-functional (departmental) issues
 Ensuring proper staffing and training for execution
 Ensuring consistent execution of the process across the organization
 Monitoring, measuring, and reporting on the effectiveness of the process to senior management
 Continually improving the process
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 Value/Adoption champion within the organization
ServiceNow Role Required:
In ServiceNow, a CMDB process owner requires the [sn_cmdb__user] role. Read-only access unless utilizing
additional roles such as [itil or asset]. Has access to search and read CMDB records, view CMDB Activity in the
CMDB Workspace, and view policies in the Data Manager.
Configuration Manager
The configuration manager executes the determined CMDB processes and maintains governance following the
various CI, product, or service owners. The configuration manager provides gatekeeper alignment.
 Ensuring configuration management activities operate in line with service level targets
 Approve or reject CMDB requests for new CI selection and attribute determination
 Coordinates and interfaces between the configuration of other processes
 Review and analyze CMDB reports and configuration management and management metrics and trends to
proactively seek improvements
 Approve Verification and Audit requests
 Provides communication to stakeholders on the health of the CMDB and population gaps by CI/Service and
Product Owners that update and maintain their assigned CMDB records
ServiceNow Role Required:
In ServiceNow, a configuration manager requires the [sn_cmdb_admin] role. Read-only access unless utilizing
additional roles such as [itil or asset]. Has access to search and read CMDB records, view CMDB Activity in the
CMDB Workspace, and view policies in the Data Manager. Additional roles can be created and run CMDB queries
and reports, fulfill requests, configure CI Class Manager, and create/update CMDB records, and It may require an
approver role for an additional cost.
The CMDB's process owner and configuration manager may be the same for smaller or resource-constrained
organizations. Keep lines of delineation clear. Having a Process Owner, CMDB Manager, and Admin does not
allow for proper separation of accountability and may leave an organization vulnerable.

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CMDB Admin
The CMDB Admin is responsible for configuring and executing the approved change requests to manage and
administer the configuration of the CMDB. ServiceNow systems admin and CMDB courses are needed to
administer the CMDB in the ServiceNow platform.
Responsible for:
 Executes the change requests for CMDB configuration
 Provides user acceptance testing through instance upgrades
 Utilizes Data Manager to bulk update CIs for retirement, deletion, or archival
 Creates CMDB queries and Dynamic CI Groups
 Collaborates with the ServiceNow Admin or Developer to configure the CMDB Health preferences
 Creates reports for the Configuration Manager and assigns tasks to CI class owners or analysts to resolve
inaccurate or missing data.
ServiceNow Role Required:
In ServiceNow, a configuration manager requires the [sn_cmdb_admin] role, and additional roles include [itil] role,
Application Service admin [app_service_admin], and [data_manager_admin] role. Adding the [itil] role allows
access to CI Class Manager, fulfilling requests, updating, and deleting Cis. With the additional role
[data_manager_admin], the CMDB admin would have access to the Data Manager to create or delete policies or
assign tasks. Can search and read/write to CMDB records and view CMDB Activity in the CMDB Workspace. The
[admin] role is required to turn on CMDB Health jobs. The Data Foundations dashboard requires a
[sn_cmdb_admin] role and the additional role of [asset] or [admin] role. No additional roles are required for the
Data Certification plugin to set up schedule verification and data audits.
CI Analyst or Class Owner
The CI analyst is responsible for updating and managing CI classes. The CMDB record displays a group of CI
owners as the Managed by Group. They may also be subject matter experts who help resolve Discovery errors in
computing, networks, applications and databases, and cloud resources. The CI Class owner may also be considered a
Service or Product Owner.
Responsible for:
 Responsible for the CIs defined within the scope of their area – Compute, Network or Application, Service or
Product
 Assure automated data sources are populating discoverable attributes
 Creates and maintains CI queries, CMDB groups, and Dynamic CI groups using CMDB Query Builder
 Ensures the CMDB is updated upon successful change implementation
 Collects and retains risk assessment and impact analysis information and defines how their operational
processes and secondary data sources feed into the CMDB.
 Requests Data Manager policies to be configured to manage large amounts of duplicate, stale, or orphaned CIs
from the CMDB admin
 Executes assigned tasks related to data certification and CMDB maintenance regarding data gaps.

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 ServiceNow Role Required:
The [itil] role is required in ServiceNow and includes the [cmdb_query_builder] role. It may require additional roles
such as [asset] to view the CMDB Data Foundations and the CMDB Health dashboard and utilize the playbooks to
resolve issues and data gaps found in the CMDB. Service and IT Application owners may require additional roles.
See CSDM Workshop for defined roles or product documentation.
In small or resource-constrained organizations, a CMDB Admin and a CI Analyst may be the same person(s). Still,
they should not be accountable for ensuring the process is defined and meeting the organization's needs. Likewise,
these roles are more tactical and should not define the strategy, auditing, or verification requirements. Defining roles
and responsibilities depends on an organization's size, level of maturity, and documented processes.

Here is guidance in a RACI matrix to define who is responsible, accountable, consulted for advice or data analysis,
and who needs to be informed.

CMDB RACI
SN
Process Configuration CI Class Owner and
Activities CMDB
Owner Manager or CI Analyst(s)
Admin
Defines business use case, missions A/R C
Define End to End process A/R C/I I I
Produce Configuration Management Plan A/R C I I
Continued updates and improvements of the process and
configuration plan A/R C I I
Establish and communicate processes A/R C I I
Configuration identification and approval I A/R I I
Collaborates to define the best source for auto-population I A/R I C
Configuration of CI Classes and Attributes in ServiceNow I A R C
Coordinates and interfaces between the configuration of other
external processes (Discovery, Incident, Change, Request, Event,
SecOps, Vulnerability) I A/R I I
Create Data Verification and Audit Processes A/R C I I
Schedules Data Certification Audits or Approves Audit requests I A R
Configures Data Verification Schedules I C R
Executes Assigned Data Verification Tasks I I R
Authorizes Requests or makes requests for additional CMDB
reports and Health Status not found in Health Dashboards or
Workspaces A R
Creates and delivers requested reports I R R
Populates and Updates non-discoverable attributes with correct
information I A I R
Distributes high-level analysis to stakeholders and alerts to process
breakdowns I A/R
Analyze CMDB Health Status Reports and Define gaps in the
process I R I I
Executes requested approved changes to ServiceNow CMDB that
I A R I
require configuration
Collaborates with ServiceNow Platform Admin for testing after
I R I
upgrades and patching
Configures data management policies for bulk deletion, retirement,
I A R I
or archival

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Assigns Data Manager tasks R I
Approves Data Manager tasks for deletion, retirement, or archival R I I
Reports issues with auto-population sources to Discovery and
I C R
CMDB Admin
Responsible for the CIs defined within the scope of their area –
Compute, Network or Application, Service or Product I A R

SN
Activities Process Configuration CI Class Owner and
CMDB
Owner Manager or CI Analyst(s)
Admin
Creates and maintains CI queries, CMDB groups, and Dynamic CI
groups using CMDB Query Builder I I A/R

Ensures the CMDB is updated upon successful change

implementation I R

Requests Data Manager policies to be configured to manage large

A I R
amounts of duplicate, stale, or orphaned CIs
Executes tasks assigned to the CI Class group to ensure data
A C R
accuracy
R: Responsible A: Accountable C: Consulted I: Informed

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Process Interactions
ITSM
Change Management: Change Management and standard configuration management processes are designed to
work together seamlessly for the CMDB to reflect the changes that have taken place accurately. Change
Management utilizes the information stored in the CMDB to assess and authorize requests for change (RFCs). The
CMDB contains relationships between CIs, facilitating this process for Change Management. It provides an impact
analysis of configuration items to business applications and services.
Incident Management: There is a strong relationship between Configuration Management and Incident
Management. Incident Management utilizes information from the CMDB for incident recovery and for informing
users on the status of services and their underpinning infrastructure CI. The CMDB is the central source of truth.
Incident Management relies on information captured within the CMDB about CIs and their related services and
service offerings to perform its activities; it should be able to rely on the CMDB to provide accurate information.
Problem Management: Problem Management procedures must ensure that each time a problem or known error
occurs and is recorded, the corresponding process record is linked to the CMDB's affected CI. The affected CI,
through mapping, relates to the application services that the business services and their offerings.
Service Portfolio Management: The logical CIs populated in the CMDB, from business, technical, and
application services to related services offerings, are core foundational populated tables for Service Portfolio
Management (SPM). SPM uses the CMDB data that aligns with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) to
properly define the Service and CIs required to offer services via a service catalog request. The CMDB provides
value to SPM by consolidating service information and providing a framework for defining and viewing bot service-
to-service and service-to-CI relationships. The service and service offerings are found in the CMDB.
Request Management: Catalog items can be created to request items to be fulfilled through Service Management
processes. Product models can be discovered and populated to the Product model tables. Product model tables are
used in the request management process to assist with tracking subscribers of software, hardware models, products,
or services.
The service offering table, as found in the CMDB and related to discovered software and hardware models, offers a
connection to a self-service consumption process by connecting service offerings to a request item. This connection
is found when licensing and using Service Portfolio Management.
Digital Portfolio Management is the starting point where you navigate all aspects of your services, applications,
and portfolios related to a specific product. The Application product model ties the Business Application to the
Software Model of the Application Service, creating a Application Service Software Model that helps visualize all
the data in one easy to use workspace.

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ITOM - Visibility
Discovery: Discovery is an automated means of populating the CMDB with hardware and applications, software
installations, and running processes that use a MID Server that runs an agentless Java program within your
environment. Discovery uses Application Dependency Mapping to map the relationships between principal CIs and
supporting CIs. This interaction is the key to understanding and gaining visibility of the connections between
computing and network devices. The data goes through an identification and reconciliation (IRE) engine to ensure
that the CMDB is updated when a CI exists or created if a CI does not exist.
Cloud Discovery: Configuration items that are discovered and populated in the CMDB from the following
providers: Amazon AWS Cloud, Microsoft Azure Cloud, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud Platform,
and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Cloud Discovery collects the logical data centers associated with the
account, as well as any subaccounts. Collecting information about resources on the cloud is relevant for companies,
organizations, and cloud companies providing Platform-as-a-Service solutions.

Agent Client Collector Visibility – is an agent-based form of discovery. Agents are installed on Windows, Linux,
and MAC devices. It gathers primary data and a unique identifier as a serial number. It receives information from
the installed agent and sends output data to the ServiceNow instance via the MID Server. The data then goes through
the IRE engine to ensure the accuracy of the CMDB. The agent-client collector does not map related CIs or visually
display the connections in a dependency map. Agent Client Collector is best used to update the CMDB with devices
in a DMZ or hard to access.
Service Mapping: Service Mapping depends on an automated means to map relationships between physical CIs and
logical CIs, such as application services and the configuration profiles used in business services. Today's CMDBs
are large, with many relationships and mappings to other systems and cloud environments. With the advent of
virtualization, containers, and cloud resources, keeping a CMDB populated and manually mapped is not a winning
proposition. Service Mapping maintains a complete history of the service topology, allowing users to see IT changes
made to the Service between any two points. Machine learning helps reduce noise levels from traffic-based
discovery and is native to the ServiceNow CMDB, creating a service-aware approach to a single system of record.
Service Mapping depends on the logical CIs for application services, otherwise known as stacks, systems, digital
products, or deployed application instances, as the foundation to crawl through the landscape in a top-down
approach. The mapped application services relate to the business application used by an organization to meet the
organizational capabilities.
Cloud Operations Workspace: Multi-cloud adoption and deployments are part of the digital transformation. First,
the requested and provisioned virtual servers are populated into the CMDB. Configuration management workflows
can then open and close automated RFCs. The Cloud Provisioning and Governance application discovers cloud
resources and updates the CMDB. Event-driven discovery updates the CMDB in near real-time based on triggers
from cloud provider APIs. Tagging of cloud resources provides information to the CI.
Event Management: Detects events and alarms from application services, infrastructure CIs, and applications and
determines the proper control action. The CMDB provides the foundation CIs required in event management and
improves changes to prevent service outages with accurate and connected data for Configuration items and their
dependencies. Event management takes a service-centric approach that correlates events using the mapped CIs to
services created by service and application dependency mapping, showing which CIs are experiencing issues or may
cause the Event. Without automated discovery to populate the CMDB and Service mapping to map the relationships
to services, Event management capabilities are decreased without a trustworthy CMDB and configuration
management processes. Event Management uses the CIs in the CMDB to automate creating incidents and increase
success with predictive artificial operation intelligence (AIOps).
Health Log Analytics: Predicts events based on machine learning and artificial intelligence related to the CMDB
CIs. Health Log Analytics has no use case value without an auto-populated, healthy CMDB. Automating the
resolution by script and code depends on the CI being accurate and available in the CMDB.
Security Operations
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SecOps and GRC: As the number of configuration items grows in an organization, this data related to infrastructure
and services is at risk from data breaches, hacks, and ransomware. You cannot protect what you cannot see in your
IT landscape. A service-aware CMDB and health CMDB processes work natively for core SecOps use cases like
security incident response, threat detection, and vulnerability management. These work cohesively with the CMDB
and incident management. Before the incident is assigned to an analyst, the affected CI is matched against the
CMDB to determine priority based on how critical the CI and mapped business service is to your business.
IT Asset Management
Software and Hardware Asset Management: When populating the CMDB, a CI to Asset synchronization occurs
for Hardware Assets. When using ServiceNow Discovery software, software models and installations are discovered
and normalized. Software Asset Management optimizes software license usage based on this data stored in the
CMDB. The CMDB does not track consumables or software licenses. The CMDB provides an accurate inventory of
hardware and software installed across your IT estate as the vital information required for successful Asset
Management and to support software vendor audits. Before starting a Software Asset management implementation,
turn on the Data Normalization Plugin to ensure that vendor names are combined into one common name as they are
discovered. E.g., HP vs. Hewlett Packard
Strategy Portfolio Management (formerly ITBM)
Application Portfolio Management: Application Portfolio Management consumes information from the CMDB
through the discovery, mapping, and current state details of Application services related to the Business Application.
Knowing all deployments of a business application is essential to digital transformation. Automated discovery of
CIs and their software models used by Software Asset Management helps provide service context in the decision-
making process with portfolio rationalization and investment decisions.
Technology Portfolio Management: Consumes software model data from the CMDB that has been populated with
automated means, mapped to application services, along with the lifecycle data based on normalized licensable
software, providing a comprehensive view of the technology lifecycle to proactively monitor and mitigate the use of
unsupported, end of life hardware and software.
Customer Service Management
Customer Service Management: Offers omnichannel engagement with business end-users and routes customer
cases. The install base item feature to determine service providers' customer accounts of managed devices are
connected to the CMDB through relationships between the install base item and the CI. The Sold Product relates to
the Service Offering through the utilization of Service Portfolio Management.

CI Population
Manual data entry – Itil users can raise configuration items directly in the CMDB application as required. It is
recommended to use automated means as much as possible. Manually creating CIs can cause a duplicate population
of CIs. With the varying maturity and size of IT landscapes, it may be difficult to populate and maintain the CMDB
manually, even for small organizations.
Bulk upload using import sets allows you to import data from various sources and map it to a specific table. The
transform map lets you define a field mapping, coalesce values, and scriptable actions during the import. Use the
IRE engine to identify possible duplication. A manual population of a large number of CIs is not recommended.
ServiceNow Discovery – The Discovery product automatically populates the CMDB. Discovery runs patterns to
collect information on hardware on the network, installed software, and the relationships between all the items
found. This information is sent back to the ServiceNow instance and is used to populate the CMDB.
Service Graph Connectors – Built by accredited ServiceNow technology partners who want to integrate their data
into the CMDB. REST APIs allow easy integration capabilities from external sources to create and update CIs.
Service Graph Connectors can be downloaded from the store.

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Agent Client Collector Visibility – Installed agent on infrastructure components that sends basic data to the CMDB
and uses the IRE to assure accuracy.

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CI Identification
This activity determines the scope and criteria of CIs being included in the CMDB. Identification includes modeling
the infrastructure to determine what CIs look like and how they are related. It also includes naming conventions,
enterprise taxonomy, and CI selection.
The CI Identification and Reconciliation module provides a centralized framework for identifying and reconciling
data from different data sources. It helps maintain the integrity of the CMDB when multiple data sources such as
Event Management, Discovery, Import Sets, and Manual Entry are used to create and update CI records.
Using multiple sources increases the risk of inconsistencies through duplicate records. To maintain the integrity of
the database, it is important to correctly identify CIs and services so that new records are created only for CIs that
are genuinely new to the CMDB. Identification and Reconciliation help you prevent duplication of CI records,
reconcile CI attributes, reclassify CIs, and allow only authoritative data sources to update the CMDB. Using the
Multi-Source CMDB feature reduces the risk of inconsistencies.
Identification
Identification is the process of uniquely identifying CIs to determine if the CI exists in the CMDB or if a newly
discovered CI must be added to the CMDB. The identification engine performs identification processes, relying on
identification rules.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation reconciles CIs and CI attributes by allowing only designated authoritative data sources to write to the
CMDB at the CI table and attribute level. The CMDB is updated in real-time as records are being processed. There
is no staging area to verify the reconciliation activities before they are committed. The process relies on
reconciliation rules.
Once the request for a new CI is created, evaluate the request and determine the new CI type class to be created
based on the CI selection guidelines. Once an existing class is assigned or a new class is created, invoke change
management for the CI to be created in the CMDB. Assign a unique identifier to the new CI and populate the
required attributes. Specify the appropriate relationships required and publish the CI in the appropriate operational
state upon validation.
Principal CIs
All CIs are not created equally, meaning that certain CI classes are much more important to deriving tangible
business outcomes from the platform. This group of higher-value CIs is referred to as Principal CIs. As you mature
your environment, these CIs and their relationships and references should be the primary focus. Principal CIs vary
depending on the business outcomes you are trying to achieve, so what may be considered principles for ITSM
workflows may differ from those utilized for SAM workflows, which may differ from those utilized for Event
workflows.
ServiceNow provides guidance on those CIs that may bring the most value based on maturity and phase of
implementation.
Create a process to manage the list of classes included in the Principal Class filter to restrict the CIs that appear in
CIs list views to only specific classes you need. You can add or remove CMDB classes from the Principal Class
filter. Apply the filter within the CI Class Manager.

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Common Service Data Model
With the many different process interactions and available CI classes, it is recommended that the prescriptive
Common Service Data Model be followed to optimize the platform's value, process, and usage. The common data in
the CMDB is used in reports, dashboards, and workspaces and provides the end-to-end visibility needed to achieve a
digital transformation.
The Common Service Data Model (CSDM)represents a standard and shared set of service-related definitions across
our products and platform that enable and support proper service level reporting while providing prescriptive
guidance on service modeling within the CMDB. These service-related definitions span the ServiceNow® product
portfolio and the Now Platform®. The data model is a CMDB framework across our products and platform that
enables and supports multiple configuration strategies.
The Common Service Data Model contains five domains. Each domain is color-coded to represent the areas of your
business, from planning, design, operating, and servicing.
Foundation – Represents those tables containing base data referenced from or to objects in the records of other
CSDM domains. Foundational data is critical referential data used in reports.
Some examples of foundation data are Locations, Groups, Users, Groups, Product models, and departmental and
company data. This data is not stored in the CMDB.
Starting any implementation of ServiceNow, you should take considerate care to ensure the data brought into
ServiceNow is clean and accurate and has an automated source that aligns with other applications used within your
organization.
Design – These tables are utilized in managing the business within the Application Portfolio Management and used
for rationalizing and measuring the performance of enterprise applications within your organization. This data is
also used to design and plan to upgrade, replace, and add new applications to meet your organization's capabilities.
These CMDB tables assist enterprise architects, IT Directors, and CIOs when they want to know if an organization's
key business initiatives and capabilities are being met and provided. Suppose an application lifecycle ends and is not
aligned with the organization's digital transformation. In that case, it takes this data to plan to replace that enterprise
application with something more suitable to meet those capabilities and business initiatives.
Build – Contains tables related to SDLC components. SDLC component is something that represents a unique
development effort. These SDLC components would not be used in Incident, Change, or other ITSM Processes. As
of the San Diego release, these components are optional and will become more available over the next few releases.
The SDLC component [cmdb_ci_sdlc_component] can be installed as part of the store app CMDB CI Class Models
(v1.33).
Not all Business Applications and Application Services relate via an SDLC component. This class
[cmdb_ci_sdlc_component] is targeted for ServiceNow DevOps.
Manage Technical Services – These tables represent the tables used by IT Operations. The data is used to report on
your organization's technologies and capture detailed records on your network gear, servers, databases, and cloud
resources. Before the advent of a CMDB, IT departments may have used Excel spreadsheets and Access databases
to track the names of servers, their purpose, and basic information on what enterprise applications may have been
running on them. Manually maintaining lists like this is not sustainable in today's dynamic environment.
The tables within this domain are used for Incident, Problem, Change, and Event Management. Common technical
services include Network, Hosting, Cloud computing, Infrastructure, data centers, Platforms, Storage, and Database
services. These are common to most IT departments. Common technical offerings include administering those
application services, servers, switches, databases, and data centers. Service Offerings in the technical domain may
include offerings to administrate applications or servers based on localization or geography, environment
(production vs. development), support groups for Incident management, and technical approval groups for Change
management. Service level agreements can be different for each offering.
Sell/Consume - The data in these tables represent the services consumed by your business users. Digital
technologies are being offered in the form of services and service offerings. The service offerings are the tools and
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access provided by the business that are "offered" to employees used to perform the work to meet the capabilities of
the business. A simple use case is video conference rooms. These are offered for business users to hold meetings and
collaborate. An organization may have many conference rooms, an application used for webinars, and possibly
software that runs on end-user computing devices. The rooms and applications together make up a
"Communication" Service. A more complex service offering might be an enterprise application used by a specific
set of business users. An accountant needs to enter business expenses; they are offered SAP Financials and the
correct access to complete their work. This service offering may be one of many that make up Financial Services
within an organization. Some common business services are as listed: End User Services, Collaboration Services,
Financial Services, Employee Services, and Customer Services. Each business has "Core Services," which relate to
the capabilities of the organization's particular industry. Typical services for healthcare would be In-Patient
Services, and the service offering is the access and tool (software) to admit patients.
Read the Common Service Data Model Whitepaper for more information.

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The Common Service Data Model

Image depicts the CSDM model (source: CSDM 4.0 Whitepaper)

Population Approach
The following is a list of Principal CI classes in a Crawl, Walk, Run approach for populating the CMDB and shared
data referenced and prevalent throughout the platform. The CMDB cannot be complete and trustworthy without this
foundational data. Where you are in your implementation maturity dictates the data needed to be considered for that
maturity phase. Your data management processes, in many ways, also dictate your CMDB health within the NOW
platform.
Crawl
A crawl implementation provides the CIs needed for early-maturity ITSM Processes as defined above.
Foundational Data (non-CMDB) Integration to platform
Company
Users
Locations
Support Groups
Approval Groups
CMDB Groups
Product Models
Contracts

Operational/Technical Data
Servers by OS
- Windows Servers
- Linux Servers
- ESX (populated when populating vCenter datacenters)

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 Network Gear
- Switches
- Routers
- Firewalls
- UPS
- PDUs
- Wireless Access Points

On-Prem Datacenter (VMWare)

- Review data collected during the Discovery
Templates, ESXi hosts, Storage Volumes, logical data center, vCenter Clusters, etc.
Network Printers
Application and End User Business Service Data
Laptops/Desktops
Non-discoverable CIs and CSDM-aligned data points
Application Focused
- Business Applications
- Application Services
Service Focused
- Services (Business)
- Service Offerings (End User Service, Desktop Software, and Support)
- Application Services

Walk
Technical Operational Data Day 2

Servers by OS
- AIX
- Hyper-V
- Solaris
- HPUX

Databases
- SQL
- Oracle
- MySQL

Network Devices
- Load Balancer Discovery

Storage Discovery

Technical Service Logical Data – This can start in the Crawl phase based on maturity level, after
Discovery, and before Service Mapping and Event Mgmt.

- Technical Services
- Technical Service Offerings
- Dynamic CI group creation

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Run/Fly
Software Discovery
Network Devices
- Layer 2 Devices
Storage Discovery –
Cloud Environment discovery – AWS, Azure, Google, IBM
Service Portfolio Data and Application Rationalization Data:
- Business Services – continue to build out by defining a service taxonomy
- Service Portfolio
- Business Capabilities

Referential data
Using References within the CMDB is like relationships in that they display associations between CIs. They are
shown as attributes on a CI, representing the "one" side of a "one to many" relationship cardinality. An example
would be a Service Offering that refers to the support group, parent service, or "IT Application owner" and
"Managed by group." Likewise, a server might have a reference to a Support Group, Asset Tag, model ID, and
Manufacturer. They are useful within forms to narrow down CI choices utilizing reference qualifiers as a filter
condition. Once a reference is brought into scope, it should be applied to all applicable CI classes. As you mature
your platform, identifying the appropriate Support Group for Incidents involving Technical and Business Service
Offerings and the Assignment Group making changes to these offerings are critical in reducing MTTR and Incident
Avoidance. Unlike relationships that show a graphical connection between CIs, reference data is vital to reports,
dashboards, and filtering with reference qualifiers.

Relationships
Relationships are created at the time of automated discovery. Relationships are used to understand the business
service. These are depicted in the Unified map, formerly known as the "service map." Relationships are used for the
visualization of the Service and the related components, whereas referential data is best used for reporting. The
unified map shows a hierarchical map of CIs and the relationships between them. The Unified Map feature
combines some of the capabilities of Dependency Views and Service Mapping into a single map experience. The
Unified Map is available with CMDB Workspace version 4.0. The unified map is useful for day-to-day Incident,
Change, and Problem management processes. The unified map should be used in these processes to help understand
the impact of a change request by visually showing how CIs are connected to other CIs. For more information on the
Unified Map, read the product documentation.

Key Data Sources

It takes several different kinds of data sources to achieve business outcomes with the NOW platform. For sources
populating reference tables related to the foundational data in the CSDM data model for users [sys_user] and
locations [cmn_location], you would need to consider integration with your Active Directory domain. The
integration processes should include a de-duplication strategy and a process that dictates how changes (such as users
who have left the organization and locations that are no longer applicable) to existing references are accounted. For
sources directly populating CI tables, these sources must utilize the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE).
Processing data sources via the IRE is the best method of avoiding the creation of duplicate CIs, avoiding CI
compression, and setting up a precedence order for sources so that only authoritative sources make changes to CIs
once they are established.
For more information on the IRE, please see the following :
Identification and Reconciliation Engine

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While it is possible to drive early levels of value within the NOW platform without a trustworthy discovery source,
this requires a mature set of data management practices and constant vigilance. An automated discovery source is a
must-have for organizations serious about reducing MTTR for incident management and avoiding collisions within
their change management process. Value is achieved using ServiceNow's native Discovery tool as it inherently
understands the NOW Data Model without translation, processes its data flow via the IRE for coordination with
other sources, and automatically maintains the integrity of horizontally discovered references and relationships. It
also contains native Cloud Discovery capabilities.
Corroborating data sources are helpful on several fronts. Suppose your Asset Management process utilizes an
external Asset Management system, or you have Managed Service Providers operating within your eco-system that
are maintaining lifecycle data for managed infrastructure, utilizing their internal system. In that case, these sources
must be integrated into the CMDB to establish and then help maintain appropriate lifecycle states for CIs. Poor CI
lifecycle management is one of the most common issues concerning poor CMDB health. Establishing your CMDB
as the trusted source of truth for your IT workflows is essential to your Digital Transformation journey. Utilizing
corroborating data sources is key to establishing that trust and helps determine "blind spots" in your current
discovery practice. It is also instrumental in establishing CIs as you move towards the edge of your infrastructure,
where you have End User Computing and IoT devices.
As you move into the Run phase of your implementation and mature into an accurate services-oriented view, data
generated via logical processes play a more prominent role. Your data management and governance practices need
to be thoroughly vetted. The alignment of the underlying infrastructure to Technical Services and their requisite
offerings and how they relate to the Business Services requires a cohesive data management strategy for the
consumption of data and a well-defined data governance practice to ensure adherence to audit requirements. The
Information Object class introduced in the Run phase of implementation is a cornerstone object in understanding
data with regulatory compliance requirements and the object's relationship to the Business Application it supports.
The Application Services deployed to support it becomes a crucial visibility gain in the Change Management
process. Again, this logical process requires a robust data governance practice.
Crawl
Discovery – Data collected by discovery
Active Directory – Users and Groups, Locations, Business Units
Service Graph Connectors – SCCM, JAMF, Qualys, Dynatrace, etc.
Agent Client Collector – Visibility - Hardware CIs that have an installed agent
Manual Imports – This is not recommended for the long-term sustainability and growth of the platform's
capabilities.

Walk
Service Mapping

Agent Client Collector – Monitoring

Run
Discovery
Service Mapping
Agent Client Collector -Visibility

Corroborating Data Sources

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Crawl
Server Software Distribution/Patching Source
Server Monitoring Source
Virtualizing Technology Source
Cloud API Sources

Walk
External Asset Management Source

HP Asset Management

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Run
Application Performance Monitoring Sources
Cloud API Sources
Storage Management Sources
Network Monitoring Sources

Data Attributes and Population

As part of the CMDB identification, consider the attributes of the principal classes. The CMDB classes in
ServiceNow have the attributes already available for managing most configuration management databases. Some
manually populated attributes are required in business use cases, especially compliance. Develop a process,
reporting, and compliance around the manual population. Compliance processes would include using health
inclusion rules and assuring these fields are recommended to be populated. Mandatory requirements can be set on
these fields but can lead to incorrect data being entered to submit or save a record. In addition to CMDB health
inclusion rules, use the Data Certification plugin to check and audit the accuracy of the manually entered data. Use
customized attributes sparingly as they add more work for the data population and form customizations, causing an
increase in upgrade challenges. Out-of-box forms will become out of sync if a process is not developed, and Reports
will hold a lesser value. New features will not take advantage of custom attributes.
Multi-Source Data Population and CMDB 360
You may choose a hybrid model to populate the CMDB through Discovery, Agent Client Collector, Integration
Hub, Import Sets, and Service Graph connectors. CMDB 360 retains a history of discovery sources and the proposed
values that involve the updates of CI attributes.
The CMDB 360 view is accessible through the CMDB Workspace.

Viewing and Searching the CMDB

Use CMDB Workspace is a central place for working with the CMDB. It is new and available as of the San Diego
release. Use the workspace to search and explore the CMDB, understand health, view activity trends, access various
tools, and interact with the CMDB to support tasks in your organization. It provides an overview of the CIs in the
CMDB and replaces the former searching in the navigational filter.

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Data Maintenance
CMDB View Dashboard
Monitoring and maintaining the health of the CMDB is essential to the practical and continuous use of the product.
The health of the CMDB data is monitored and reported for the following KPIs, each further consisting of sub-
metrics:
Completeness: CIs are tested for required and recommended fields that are not populated.
Correctness: CIs are tested against pre-defined data integrity rules such as identification rules (to detect duplicate
CIs), orphan CI rules, and stale CI rules.
Compliance: The CMDB data is audited for adherence to pre-defined certificates.
Relationships: The health of CI relationships is tested for indicators such as orphan and duplicate relationships. And
for compliance with suggested relationships, hosting, and containment rules.
After CIs are tested for various health indicators, the results are aggregated at the class level and eventually at the
overall CMDB level. Configured health score for relationships calculates the weight of each KPI and each metric at
every level of the aggregation. For most health tests, you can configure the health tests themselves.
Health indicators such as duplicate CIs required CI fields and audits contribute to calculating health scorecards at the
CI, class, and CMDB levels. Implementing the CMDB Health Dashboard assists you in tracking your progress as
you mature your data management practices, particularly in two key areas.
Set up a remediation rule and associate it with a task created for a failed CMDB health test. A CMDB remediation
rule is applied automatically or manually to execute a remediation workflow.
Duplicate CIs
First, it shows the number of unresolved duplicate CIs within your CMDB. Unresolved duplicates are usually caused
by a flaw in the identity management logic you use to import data into the system. Resolving the duplicates is
essential, but more important is getting to the root cause of the creation of the duplicates in the first place so this
problem does not snowball on you.
Examine what CI classes are being informed by what sources and go to the parent class where they intersect. Ensure
all sources at that intersection point utilize the same rules to process all sources at that intersection point. Repeat this
process until all data sources are accounted.

Stale CIs

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The second area where the Health Dashboard is helpful is in stale CIs. CIs not seen over 60 days can be a leading
indicator of an immature lifecycle management process or a breakdown in your data management practice. The
number of days can be adjusted.
First, ensure that all external data feeds are being imported regularly and that you have set up a process to receive
notification that a regularly scheduled data import has failed. Suppose you have this data management practice, all
your scheduled data feeds operate correctly, and you still have stale CI data. In that case, you need to examine your
CI lifecycle management practices.
Proper lifecycle management is the intersection of a mature Change and Asset Management practice. Examine the
stale CIs for clues as to where a hole in your processes may exist and close this gap as quickly as possible. The
status of CIs left in a stale (not seen) state as you go beyond the 90-day mark must be manually remediated. This
task is time-consuming. Getting ahead of these two critical areas of CMDB management early in your journey saves
you many hours of manual remediation and inconsistent value realized.
Orphaned CIs
Orphaned CI relationships mean that one of the CIs in the relationship is no longer in the system and that the
relationship is invalid. These invalid relationships adversely affect how you use the system and how your system
performs. An orphan occurs when the CI may be deleted without reconciling its references. You may have merged a
CI without reconciling any relationship reference or migrated data across environments and created sys_id conflicts
on the CIs. Broken relationships may not give you visibility into the underlying infrastructure. Before the Tokyo
version, there was no way to detect and purge. Finding and discovering these is through activating a scheduled job,
which is recurring and time-bound to 30 minutes at a time. This default time can be adjusted. This scheduled job is
called "Cleanup Orphan CIs." Once the job runs, it pulls the orphan CIs into the CMDB Dependent CI ledger. A task
is created called "Dependent CI Deletion." If the "Managed by group" is populated, it is assigned to that group for
remediation. If not, it remains unassigned. Approval is requested, and the Data Manager must approve the task to
delete the orphaned CIs. It logs the process on the [cmdb_job_context] table to understand the current state. This
feature is activated when the CSDM Activation plugin has been installed.
CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard
CMDB and CSDM Data Foundation dashboards can be downloaded and installed from the ServiceNow store. There
are 35+ health scan definitions to review and a playbook that helps you understand the upstream causes and
downstream consequences. Your CMDB Data Maintenance process should include reviewing this dashboard and
following the remediation playbooks to ensure the health of your CMDB. Two separate dashboards are installed that
use the standard reporting framework. Review the product documentation to help further understand what indicators
are checked and how to read the dashboard.
Use the dashboard links to the playbooks to understand where missing relationships, attributes, custom attributes, or
tables may occur. These indicators help support a healthy foundation for the various process interactions listed
above. The playbooks cover upstream and downstream causes, best practice guidelines, and remediation activities.
Common Service Data CI Lifecycle Standards
From its creation to when it is no longer needed, a CMDB CI would typically transition through several operational
states while undergoing various operations. CI Lifecycle Management provides the mechanism to define states and
actions for a CI and lets you apply appropriate actions based on a CI's state to tailor the management of the CI
lifecycle to business needs. The lifecycle of CIs, Assets, and Business-related applications requires alignment.

The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) provides standard fields and values for tracking life cycle stages and
stage statuses for CIs. Using these standard values consistently across applications helps track assets through their
life cycle transitions.
Use the Lifecycle Status and Lifecycle Stage in all new implementations.

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For current and previous implementations, develop a strategy to streamline life cycle management by migrating all
life cycle fields and field values across the platform into a CSDM standard set of fields with a standard set of values.
Then, to maintain consistency, continue to use only the standard fields and values when updating or creating CIs.
Using standard life cycle values is important in scenarios such as:
 Event Management and Health Log Analytics need to know if a CI is in maintenance to handle alerts
accordingly.
 Cloud Insights need to know the state of a CI to be able to report cost data effectively.
 Audit and compliance must use standard life cycle values to generate consistent tasks and workflows.
Use the Lifecycle Status and Stage Migration tool to help map the legacy statuses to the new Lifecycle stage
and status.
Update and Maintenance
CI Update and Maintenance is a part of Configuration Control that ensures that only authorized and identifiable CIs
are in the infrastructure and that a corresponding accurate and complete CI record represents the CI in the CMDB.
The Configuration Control activity governs updates to the CMDB.
Unauthorized Changes are forwarded to Change Management for instructions on how to proceed. Discrepancies and
errors in the CI configuration are forwarded to the CI Owner for resolution.
Any CI update shall be done by following change management processes as recommended. The configuration
manager receives the change request to update an existing CI record via change management. Authorized change
requests are prioritized and forwarded to CMDB administration for further processing. Rejected change requests are
returned to the requestor with an explanation of the rejection.
In case new CIs or modified CIs are identified by discovery or any other external integration source with CMDB,
verify that an authorized change request exists to justify the presence of a CI or the CI update. Alternatively, during
the implementation or review of the change request, discovery can be initiated from the change record, specific to
the associated CI, to update the CMDB automatically. When discovery is triggered, a status record is created, linked
to the configuration item, and shown in the affected CI-related list.
Managing proposed changes
The proposed changes feature allows you to pre-configure changes to configuration items and their associated
relationships. These pre-configured changes are prepared to be implemented but do not happen until they are applied
later.
When you view a CI, the proposed changes can be displayed to see what is planned.
This feature is useful when you want to make modifications while a change process is in the approval stage and only
implement the changes after the approvals are complete. If the change is never approved, no changes to records must
be reversed. A quick command applies all the proposed changes if the change is approved.
You can make the following proposed changes to a CI:
 Modify any field on the CI form.
 Add or delete a relationship to that CI.
When a CI is decommissioned, the CI record is not deleted but is saved in a retired operational state. The
corresponding asset is returned to stock or disposed of per requirement.
Data Manager Dashboard
The CMDB Admin can utilize the Data Manager to perform lifecycle operations such as deletion, archival, and
retirement of CMDB CIs. It is recommended that CMDB health has been configured and understood what CI
Classes need to be adjusted. The CMDB data manager uses policies and policy sub-flows.

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When a dependent CI, which is a CI that has a relationship with other CIs and cannot exist independently in the
absence of relationships, is retired, the dependent CI lifecycle as of the Tokyo version is updated. Before the Tokyo
version, this caused incorrect lifecycle data on the dependent CI. When a dependent CI is retired, it cascades down
and retires dependent CIs when the independent parent CI is retired. The process is diagrammed in the following
images. The scheduled job "CMDB Cascade Retire Dependent Cis" runs the following process. The CMDB Admin
or Configuration manager is responsible for approving the tasks. The CSDM Activation plugin must be installed.

The Data Manager Dashboard should have a process, purpose, and people to use.
CMDB Attestation
Attestation is an acknowledgment from the owners or managers of the CI that the CI physically exists. Before the
Tokyo release, attestation was a manual process, which means tasks are created manually and assigned to
owners/managers of a CI. There is no ability to group CIs. With CMDB attestation, the CI Owner can see all the
attestation tasks assigned to them. They can reassign a task to someone else or send it back to the Admin for
reassignment. They can take actions to attest, reject, exclude, and remove the duplicate on the CI. The CI owner can
bulk attest CIs that were recently discovered. The CMDB Attestation can be created as a policy in the CMDB Data
Manager. A scheduled job called "Attest Computer Policy Processor" is created when the policy has been published.
Once the scheduled job is complete, it creates a task and then is assigned to be completed. The work is managed
from the My Work screen in the CMDB Workspace. The users can use Intelligent Search that utilizes Natural

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Language Processing. Intelligent Search is tailored to the CMDB, searching only through the CMDB class hierarchy
for class tables, CIs, and their relationships.
CMDB Workspace
The CMDB Workspace provides a comprehensive user experience for three personas: basic CMDB users or
viewers, CI data owners who manage CI records, and CMDB administrators. In past releases, users had to navigate
through a navigational menu to locate CIs. Roles to access the CMDB Workspace, you must, at a minimum, have
one of the following roles: [sn_cmdb_admin], [sn_cmdb_editor], and [sn_cmdb_user]. The CMDB Workspace
provides:
 Conditional search filters allow five conditions based on attributes specific to the selected class. In the results
list, click a CI to see details about the CI, including a timeline, health overview, and attributes for the CI. For
more information, see the 'CI details page' section.
 Overview of the CIs in the CMDB, grouped by common class categories such as Applications, Cloud,
and Server.
 Overview of the CIs in the CMDB, grouped by common class categories such as Applications, Cloud,
and Server.
 Displays CMDB Data Manager tasks assigned to you.
Daily work processes should utilize the Workspace for governance, Insight, and Management.
The Governance tab will show the Attestation tasks that are open and need to be addressed. The Insight tab shows
CMDB feature adoption to help improve your experience with CMDB, as well as the Application Services report
widget that will display the population method, whether the method is defined, service types, and missing data.
These are indicators that work needs to be done. The Management tab displays key indicators on the CMDB Health
and provides links to other in-platform tools to manage the CMDB and the health of the populated data.

The image depicts the CMDB Workspace

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Images depict the CMDB Workspace Insights

Images depict the CMDB Workspace Management

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Outcomes Realized
Essential to the Digital Transformation journey is realizing the value derived from entering the transformation in the
first place. The metamorphosis of what were once highly manual processes into data-driven digital workflows can
significantly improve velocity and quality in several key areas. CMDB is the data that fuels these digital workflows,
and quality data in the right schema, combined with mature data management and governance processes, creates an
engine that produces tangible results. The following results can be expected for an ITSM practice with a CMDB
implementation following this blueprint.
 Double-Digit Reduction in Average Time to Resolve an Incident
 Significant reduction in the Number of Incidents Created per User
 Order of Magnitude Increase in Percentage of Incidents resolved by problem
 Double-digit reduction in the percentage of Failed Changes
These KPI improvements represent tremendous cost savings in labor expended and lost revenue to the enterprise and
demonstrate how Digital Transformation can positively affect the budget cycle. Beyond this, other value streams
have been unlocked where other positive impacts can be felt:
 Self Service activities fueled via Knowledge Management
 Service Delivery automation via Request Catalog
 Automated Patch Management executed by intelligent Change Management Workflows
As you transcend past the Run phase of your ITSM and ITOM blueprint, you begin to understand that the data you
have populated and the relationships and references implemented have put you in a position to understand what
services are being delivered to and consumed by the business. Furthermore, you can understand the services'
efficacy in a cost/value quantization. Then, you can understand what can be rationalized, what is inefficient and
needs to be re-designed, and what services are at risk due to End of Support and End of Life dependencies. The
visibility into these areas gives the enterprise a competitive advantage and positively impacts operational spending
and the IT budget.

Links and Resources:

CMDB Governance
Configuration Control Board Charter
Configuration Management Roles and Responsibilities
CMDB Data Manager
CMDB Data Certification
CMDB Health Configuration
Video – Data Foundations and CMDB Health Dashboard Review
CMDB Product Documentation

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