Configuration Management

[CMDB]
Process Guide

Updated: April 2025

Asset number: 0001261

Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................. 7
Foreword................................................................................................................................. 7
Prerequisites........................................................................................................................... 8
Process Scope......................................................................................................................... 8
Process Objectives.................................................................................................................. 8
Process Overview.................................................................................................................... 9
Process Overview Diagram................................................................................................. 10
Roles and Responsibilities..................................................................................................... 11
Configuration Management Process Owner........................................................................11
Configuration Manager....................................................................................................... 12
CMDB Admin...................................................................................................................... 13
CI Analyst or Class Owner................................................................................................... 13
CMDB RACI............................................................................................................................ 14
Process Interactions.............................................................................................................. 16
ITSM................................................................................................................................... 16
ITOM - Visibility................................................................................................................... 17
Security Operations............................................................................................................ 18
IT Asset Management......................................................................................................... 18
Strategic Portfolio Management......................................................................................... 18
Customer Service Management..........................................................................................19
CI Population......................................................................................................................... 19
CI Identification..................................................................................................................... 20
Principal CIs........................................................................................................................ 20
Common Service Data Model................................................................................................ 21
The Common Service Data Model.......................................................................................23
Population Approach.......................................................................................................... 23
Referential data.................................................................................................................... 25
Relationships......................................................................................................................... 25
Key Data Sources.................................................................................................................. 26
Corroborating Data Sources.................................................................................................. 27
Data Attributes and Population.............................................................................................28
Multi-Source Data Population and CMDB 360.....................................................................28
Viewing and Searching the CMDB.........................................................................................28
Data Maintenance................................................................................................................. 29
CMDB Workspace CMDB Health.........................................................................................29
CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard..................................................................30
Common Service Data CI Lifecycle Standards....................................................................31
Update and Maintenance.................................................................................................... 31
2
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 Data Manager Dashboard................................................................................................... 32
CMDB Attestation............................................................................................................... 33
CMDB Workspace............................................................................................................... 33
Outcomes Realized............................................................................................................... 36
Links and Resources:............................................................................................................. 36

3
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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 Mary Vanatta 8/7/2022

Process 2022 brand guidelines
Guide Added CMDB Attestation
processes
Dependent CI deletion
processes
CMDB Workspace usage

CMDB Updated Configuration Mary Vanatta 3/1/2022

Process Management Process by adding
Guidev2 request Mgmt as an 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

4
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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 Updated CSDM model to show Mary Vanatta 2/10/2023

Process SDLC components are optional
Guide and there can be 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

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

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

Process Workspace Insights, Governance
Guide and 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.

CMDB Washington updates regarding Mary Vanatta 3/18/2024

Process Data Certification moving into
Guide Data Manager which is also now
available through CMDB
Workspace.

CMDB Inserted updated screenshots for Mary Vanatta 9/26/2024

Process CMDB Workspace. Comment on
Guide Data Foundations dashboards on
in platform It is recommended
you read the product docs
regarding latest release notes.

CMDB Include new feature information Mary Vanatta 3/19/2025

5
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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

Process regarding CMDB search, CSDM 5,

Guide SGC Central and Now Assist
Agentic AI capabilities for
Deduplication, CI Summarization
and SGC debugging.

6
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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.

7
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 focus on: Orient the data that drives activities into a service or product-
oriented view to attain visibility and knowledge in areas with 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 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.

8
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 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
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. The recommendation is to use automated methods to achieve total value from
the ServiceNow platform.
Control – Ensure that team members do not add or modify any CIs without the required
authorization and record all modifications 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 – Regularly check that the information in the CMDB accurately represents the CIs
installed in the live production environment. Use the Data Certification policies within the
CMDB Workspace to set up scheduled audits for issues the CMDB Health maintenance
processes cannot detect

9
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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.

10
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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
11
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 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
 Value/Adoption champion within the organization
ServiceNow Role Required:
In ServiceNow, a CMDB process owner requires the [sn_cmdb_user] role and has read-only
access unless utilizing additional roles such as [itil or asset]. They can 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 and has read-
only access unless utilizing additional roles such as [itil or asset]. They can search and read
CMDB records, view CMDB Activity in the CMDB Workspace, and view policies in the Data
Manager. With additional roles, they can run CMDB queries and reports, fulfill requests,
configure the CI Class Manager, and create or update CMDB records. Some actions may
require an approver role at 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.

12
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 CMDB administrator requires the [sn_cmdb_admin] role. Additional roles
include [itil], Application Service Admin [app_service_admin], and [data_manager_admin].
The [itil] role provides access to the CI Class Manager, allows fulfillment of requests, and
enables updating and deleting CIs. The [data_manager_admin] role grants access to the
Data Manager, allowing the CMDB administrator to create or delete policies and assign
tasks.

A CMDB administrator can search, read, and write CMDB records and view CMDB Activity in
the CMDB Workspace. The [admin] role is required to enable CMDB Health jobs. The Data
Foundations dashboard requires the [sn_cmdb_admin] role along with either the [asset] or
[admin] role. No additional roles are needed to use the Data Certification plugin for
scheduling 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
 Ensure team members update the CMDB after successfully implementing changes.
 Collects and retains risk assessment and impact analysis information and defines how
their operational processes and secondary data sources feed into the CMDB.

13
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
  Request the CMDB admin to configure Data Manager policies to manage large amounts
of duplicate, stale, or orphaned CIs.
 Executes assigned tasks related to data certification and CMDB maintenance, addressing
data gaps.

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
Proces Configurati SN CI Class Owner
Activities s on CMDB and or CI
Owner Manager Admin Analyst(s)
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 I A I R

14
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
with correct information
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
I A R I
CMDB that require configuration
Collaborates with ServiceNow Platform Admin for
I R I
testing after upgrades and patching
Configures data management policies for bulk
I A R I
deletion, retirement, or archival
Assigns Data Manager tasks R I
Approves Data Manager tasks for deletion,
R I I
retirement, or archival
Reports issues with auto-population sources to
I C R
Discovery and CMDB Admin
Responsible for the CIs defined within the scope of
their area – Compute, Network or Application, Service I A R
or Product
Proces Configurati SN CI Class Owner
Activities s on CMDB and or CI
Owner Manager Admin Analyst(s)
Creates and maintains CI queries, CMDB groups, and
Dynamic CI groups using CMDB Query Builder I I A/R

Ensures that team members update the CMDB upon

successful change implementation. I R

Requests the configuration of Data Manager policies

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

15
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Process Interactions
ITSM
Change Management: Change Management and standard configuration management
processes work together seamlessly to ensure the CMDB accurately reflects the changes
that have taken place. Change Management utilizes the information stored in the CMDB to
assess and authorize the change requests. 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 team links the corresponding process
record to the CMDB's affected CI. The affected CI, through mapping, relates to the
application services, 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 offering a framework for defining and viewing
service-to-service and service-to-CI relationships. The CMDB contains the service and service
offerings.
Request Management: Teams can create catalog items to request fulfillment through
Service Management processes. They can discover and populate product models into the
Product Model tables. The request management process uses the Product Model tables to
assist with tracking subscribers of software, hardware models, products, or services.
The service offering table in the CMDB, related to discovered software and hardware
models, connects to a self-service consumption process by linking service offerings to a
request item. This connection occurs 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 an Application Service Software Model that helps visualize all the data in one easy-
to-use workspace.

16
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 and 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: To perform agent-based discovery, you install agents on
Windows, Linux, and MAC devices. The agents gather primary data and a unique identifier,
such as a serial number. They receive information from the installed agent and send output
data to the ServiceNow instance via the MID Server. The data then passes 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. The Agent Client Collector is
best used to update the CMDB with devices in a DMZ or hard-to-access locations.
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. Tag-
based and text-based service mapping increases the time to value when the detail from top-
down mapping is not required.
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 system populates the requested and provisioned virtual
servers 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 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
17
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 decrease without a trustworthy CMDB and configuration
management processes. Event Management uses the CIs in the CMDB to automate incident
creation and improve success with predictive artificial operation intelligence (AIOps). Using
Now Assist to summarize the logs increases the operator's efficiency.
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
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 assigning the incident to an analyst, the system
matches the affected CI against the CMDB to determine priority based on how critical the CI
and mapped business service are 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 combine into one common name as the system
discovers them—for example, HP vs. Hewlett-Packard.
Strategic Portfolio Management
Enterprise Architecture(formerly Application Portfolio Management): Enterprise
Architecture leverages information from the CMDB, including discovery data, mappings, and
current state details of application services related to the business application.
Understanding all deployments of a business application is crucial for digital transformation.
A business application supports the capability of the business. Automated discovery of CIs
and their software models, used by Software Asset Management, offers service context that
aids decision-making in portfolio rationalization and investment choices.
Technology Portfolio Management: Consumes software model data from the CMDB,
which automation populates and maps to application services, along with lifecycle data
based on normalized licensable software. TPM offers a comprehensive view of the
technology lifecycle, enabling proactive monitoring and mitigation of unsupported or end-of-
life hardware and software usage.

18
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Customer Service Management
Customer Service Management: Offers omnichannel engagement with business end-
users and routes customer cases. The install base item feature connects service providers'
managed device customer accounts to the CMDB through relationships between the install
base item and the CI—the Sold Product links to the Service Offering through Service Portfolio
Management.

CI Population
Manual data entry – ITIL users can raise configuration items directly in the CMDB
application as needed. It's best to use automated methods whenever possible, as manually
creating CIs can cause duplicates. Due to IT environments' varying maturity and size,
manually populating and maintaining the CMDB can be difficult, 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 field mappings, coalesce values, and
script actions during the import. Use the IRE engine to identify possible duplicates. Avoid
manually populating a large number of CIs.
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 – Accredited ServiceNow technology partners build
integrations to add their data to the CMDB. REST APIs enable easy integration from external
sources to create and update CIs. You can download Service Graph Connectors from the
store. Manage the numbers of Service Graph Connectors through Service Graph Central for
visibility. ServiceNow’s Now Assist Agentic AI provides the ability to debug a connection and
any IRE errors.
API Insights - Use this workspace and Service Graph API connectors to ingest API meta
data from a broad ecosystem of sources of data into the CMDB allowing you to have an
enterprise-wide view of APIs to select and support via Incident and Change Management.
Agent Client Collector Visibility – The agent installed on infrastructure components
sends basic data to the CMDB and uses the IRE to ensure accuracy.

19
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
CI Identification
This activity defines the scope and criteria for including CIs in the CMDB. Identification
involves modeling the infrastructure to determine what CIs look like and how they relate. It
also covers naming conventions, enterprise taxonomy, and CI selection.
The CI Identification and Reconciliation module provides a centralized framework to identify
and reconcile data from different sources. It helps maintain the integrity of the CMDB when
multiple data sources, such as Event Management, Discovery, Import Sets, and Manual
Entry, 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 involves uniquely identifying CIs to determine whether the CI already exists in
the CMDB or if the system must add a newly discovered CI. Manually created CIs as of the
Yokohama release will also go through the IRE engine.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation matches 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 updates in real-
time as records process. There is no staging area to verify reconciliation activities before
committing them. The process relies on reconciliation rules.
Once you request a new CI, evaluate it and determine the CI type class to create based on
the CI selection guidelines. After assigning an existing class or creating a new class, invoke
change management to create the CI in the CMDB. Assign a unique identifier to the new CI,
populate the required attributes, specify the necessary relationships, and publish the CI in
the appropriate operational state after validation.
Principal CIs
Not all CIs hold the same value. Some CI classes drive more tangible business outcomes
from the platform. This group of higher-value CIs is called Principal CIs, typically hardware
and database CIs. As your environment matures, focus on these CIs and their relationships.
Principal CIs vary depending on the business outcomes you aim to achieve. For example, the
CIs considered principal for ITSM workflows may differ from those used for SAM or Event
workflows.
ServiceNow offers guidance on which CIs are most valuable based on your 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.

20
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Common Service Data Model
With the many different process interactions and available CI classes, follow the prescriptive
Common Service Data Model to optimize the platform's value, process, and usage. The
common data in the CMDB supports reports, dashboards, and workspaces, providing the
end-to-end visibility needed to achieve digital transformation.
The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) defines a standard and shared set of service-
related definitions across our products and platform. It enables proper service level
reporting and guides service modeling within the CMDB. These service-related definitions
cover the ServiceNow® product portfolio and the Now Platform®. The data model is a CMDB
framework across our products and platform, supporting 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 tables that contain base data referenced by or linked to objects in
the records of other CSDM domains. Foundational data is critical for reports as referential
data.
Examples of foundational data include Locations, Groups, Users, Product Models, and
departmental and company data. This data does not reside 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 – Data tables in the platform help manage the business within the Enterprise
Architecture application, formerly known as Application Portfolio Management, and support
rationalizing and measuring the performance of enterprise applications within your
organization. This data also supports designing and planning upgrades, replacements, and
adding new applications to meet your organization's capabilities.
These CMDB tables help enterprise architects, IT Directors, and CIOs assess whether an
organization's key business initiatives and capabilities align with its goals. When an
application's lifecycle ends and no longer supports the organization's digital transformation,
this data helps plan the replacement with a more suitable application to achieve those
capabilities and business initiatives.
Build – Introduced in CSDM 4.0, the data tables contain information related to SDLC
components. An SDLC component represents a unique development effort. These SDLC
components don't apply to Incident, Change, or other ITSM processes. As of the San Diego
release, these components are optional. A customer can meet the requirements of CSDM 3.0
and choose not to use these data tables.
Not all Business Applications and Application Services are linked to an SDLC component. The
[cmdb_ci_sdlc_component] class supports ServiceNow DevOps.
Manage Technical Services – These tables represent the data IT Operations uses to
report on your organization's technologies and capture detailed records of network gear,
servers, databases, and cloud resources. Before the CMDB, IT departments might have
tracked server names, their purposes, and basic details about enterprise applications using
Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. Manually maintaining such lists isn't sustainable
in today's dynamic environment.
The tables in this domain support Incident, Problem, Change, and Event Management
applications in ServiceNow. Common technical services include Network, Hosting, Cloud
21
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
computing, Infrastructure, Data centers, Platforms, Storage, and Database services, which
are typical for most IT departments. Common technical offerings involve managing
application services, servers, switches, databases, and data centers. Service offerings in the
technical domain may include managing applications or servers based on factors such as
localization, geography, environment (production vs. development), support groups for
Incident management, and technical approval groups for Change management. Service level
agreements may vary for each offering.
Sell/Consume - The data in these tables represent the services consumed by your business
users. Delivering digital technologies as services and service offerings to employees or
customers must be tracked in case of an outage. Service offerings provide tools and access
that the business offers to employees, enabling them to perform tasks and meet the
organization's capabilities. For example, video conference rooms allow business users to
hold meetings and collaborate. An organization may have many conference rooms, an
application for webinars, and software that runs on end-user devices. These rooms and
applications together form a "Communication" Service. A more complex service offering
could be an enterprise application used by a specific group of business users. For instance,
an accountant may use SAP Financials to enter business expenses and have the appropriate
access to complete their work. This service offering may be part of the broader Financial
Services within the organization. Common business services include End User Services,
Collaboration Services, Financial Services, Employee Services, and Customer Services. Each
business has "Core Services," which relate to the capabilities of its industry. For example,
healthcare services may include In-Patient Services, with the service offering providing the
tools (software) and access to admit patients.

Read product documentation on the Common Service Data Model for more information.

22
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
The Common Service Data Model

Image depicts the CSDM model (source: CSDM 5.0)

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
23
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 - Linux Servers
- ESX (populated when populating vCenter datacenters)

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

24
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 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

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 works similarly to relationships by displaying associations
between CIs. They appear as attributes on a CI, representing the "one" side of a "one-to-
many" relationship. For example, a Service Offering may reference the support group,
parent service, IT application owner, or "Managed by group." A server might reference a
Support Group, Asset Tag, model ID, and Manufacturer. References are useful in forms to
narrow down CI choices by applying reference qualifiers as a filter. Once you bring a
reference into scope, apply it to all applicable CI classes. As your platform matures,
identifying the appropriate Support Group for Incidents involving Technical and Business
Service Offerings and the Assignment Group responsible for making changes to these
offerings becomes critical in reducing MTTR and avoiding incidents. Unlike relationships that
show graphical connections between CIs, reference data plays a key role in reports,
dashboards, and filtering with reference qualifiers.

Relationships
Automated discovery creates relationships between CIs. These relationships help
understand the business service. The Unified Map, formerly known as the "service map,"
visualizes these relationships. Relationships assist with visualizing the service and its related
components, while referential data is better suited for reporting. The Unified Map displays a
hierarchical view of CIs and their relationships. This feature combines the capabilities of
Dependency Views and Service Mapping into a single map experience. Available with CMDB
Workspace version 4.0, the Unified Map proves useful in day-to-day Incident, Change, and
Problem management processes. Use the Unified Map in these processes to understand the
impact of a change request by visually showing how CIs connect to other CIs.
For more information on the Unified Map, read the product documentation.

Key Data Sources

25
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Achieving business outcomes with the NOW platform requires data from several different
sources. You must integrate with your Active Directory domain or another source of truth for
sources that populate reference tables related to foundational data in the CSDM data model,
such as users [sys_user] and locations [cmn_location]. The integration process should
include a de-duplication strategy and a process for managing changes, such as users who
have left the organization or locations no longer relevant. Sources directly populating CI
tables must use the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE). Processing data sources
through the IRE helps prevent the creation of duplicate CIs, avoid CI compression, and
establish a precedence order so that only authoritative sources can make changes to CIs
once set up. As of the Yokohama release, manually created CIs are processed by IRE.
For more information on the IRE, please see the following :
Identification and Reconciliation Engine
While driving early value within the NOW platform without a trustworthy discovery source is
possible, it requires mature data management practices and constant vigilance.
Organizations serious about reducing MTTR for incident management and avoiding conflicts
in their change management process must use an automated discovery source.
ServiceNow's native Discovery tool delivers value by inherently understanding the NOW
Data Model, processing its data flow via the IRE for coordination with other sources, and
automatically maintaining the integrity of discovered references and relationships. It also
includes native Cloud Discovery capabilities.
Corroborating data sources provide several benefits. For example, if your Asset Management
process uses an external system or you work with Managed Service Providers that maintain
lifecycle data for managed infrastructure through their internal system, you must integrate
these sources into the CMDB. This integration helps establish and maintain appropriate
lifecycle states for CIs. Poor CI lifecycle management is a common issue that affects CMDB
health. Establishing your CMDB as the trusted source of truth for your IT workflows is
essential for your Digital Transformation journey. Using corroborating data sources helps
build trust and identifies "blind spots" in your current discovery practice. It also plays a key
role as you move toward the edge of your infrastructure with End User Computing and IoT
devices.
As you move into the Run phase of your implementation and transition to a more accurate
services-oriented view, data generated through logical processes play a more prominent
role. You must thoroughly vet your data management and governance practices. Aligning
the underlying infrastructure with Technical Services, their required offerings, and their
relationship to Business Services requires a cohesive data management strategy and a well-
defined data governance practice to meet audit requirements. The Information Object class,
introduced in the Run phase, is a cornerstone in understanding data with regulatory
compliance requirements and its relationship to the Business Application it supports. The
Application Services deployed to support it offer crucial visibility in the Change Management
process. This logical process also requires a robust data governance practice.

Crawl

26
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
 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

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

Walk
External Asset Management Source

HP Asset Management

27
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Run
Application Performance Monitoring Sources
Cloud API Sources
Storage Management Sources
Network Monitoring Sources

Data Attributes and Population

As part of CMDB identification, consider the attributes of the principal classes. The CMDB
classes in ServiceNow already include the attributes necessary for managing most
configuration management databases. Some business use cases, especially compliance,
require manually populated attributes. Develop a process for reporting and compliance
around the manual population of data. Compliance processes should include using health
inclusion rules and ensuring these fields are populated as recommended. While you can set
mandatory requirements for these fields, they may lead to incorrect data if users enter
information to submit or save a record. In addition to CMDB health inclusion rules, use the
Data Certification policies in the CMDB Workspace data manager to audit and verify the
accuracy of manually entered data. Use customized attributes sparingly, as they add extra
work for data population and form customizations, creating upgrade challenges. Not
developing a process causes the Out-of-the-box forms to fall out of sync, and reports may
lose value. New features may 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. CI Summarization using AI
capabilities is a Now Assist agentic AI plugin, allowing for a conversational experience to
summarize CI data

28
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Data Maintenance
CMDB Workspace CMDB Health
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: The system tests CIs for required and recommended fields that users have
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 system audits CMDB data for adherence to pre-defined certificates.
Relationships: The system tests the health of CI relationships by checking for issues like
orphan and duplicate relationships and ensuring compliance with suggested relationships,
hosting, and containment rules.
After testing CIs for various health indicators, the system aggregates the results at the class
and overall CMDB levels. The health score for relationships calculates the weight of each KPI
and metric at every level of aggregation, and you can configure most health tests as
needed.
Health indicators like duplicate CIs required CI fields and audits contribute to the CI, class,
and CMDB health scorecards. Utilizing the CMDB Workspace Health dashboard helps you
track progress as you improve your data management practices, focusing on two key areas.
To manage health issues, set up a remediation rule and associate it with a task created for a
failed CMDB health test. You can apply the CMDB remediation rule automatically or
manually to trigger a remediation workflow.
Duplicate CIs
First, the report shows the number of unresolved duplicate CIs within your CMDB.
Unresolved duplicates usually result from a flaw in the identity management logic used to
import data into the system. Resolving the duplicates is important, but finding the root
cause of their creation is even more critical to prevent the issue from worsening.
Examine which CI classes each data source informs and identify where they intersect in the
parent class. Ensure all sources at that intersection point follow the same rules. Repeat this
process until you cover all data sources. ServiceNow Now Assist Agentic AI allows customers
to preview a dedup task before executing it. The Now Assist plugin is a for-fee product.

Stale CIs
The second area where the CMDB Workspace Health feature proves useful is identifying
stale CIs. CIs not seen in over 60 days can signal an immature lifecycle management
process or a breakdown in your data management practices. You can adjust the number of
days as needed.

First, ensure that all external data feeds import regularly and that you receive notifications if
a scheduled data import fails. If you have this data management practice in place, and all

29
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
your scheduled data feeds are operating correctly, but you still have stale CI data, it's time
to review your CI lifecycle management practices.
Proper lifecycle management connects a mature Change and Asset Management practice.
Review stale CIs for clues about potential gaps in your processes and address these issues
as quickly as possible. CIs left in a stale (not seen) state beyond the 90-day mark require
manual remediation, which is time-consuming. By addressing these two critical areas of
CMDB management early, you can save hours of manual remediation and ensure more
consistent value over time.
Orphaned CIs
Orphaned CI relationships occur when one of the CIs in the relationship no longer exists in
the system, making the relationship invalid. These broken relationships can negatively
impact system performance and usability by preventing accurate visibility into the
underlying infrastructure.
Orphans typically arise from the following actions:
 Deleting a CI without reconciling its references.
 Merging a CI without reconciling relationship references.
 Migrating data across environments that causes sys_id conflicts.

Before the Tokyo version, the system could not detect or remove orphaned CIs. You can
discover these orphans by activating a recurring scheduled job called "Cleanup Orphan CIs,"
which runs every 30 minutes by default. You can adjust this interval as needed.
When the job runs, it adds orphaned CIs to the CMDB Dependent CI ledger and creates a
task titled "Dependent CI Deletion." If the "Managed by group" field is populated, the system
assigns the task to that group for remediation. If it's not populated, the task remains
unassigned. Approval is required, and the Data Manager must approve the task before
deleting the orphaned CIs. The process is logged in the [cmdb_job_context] table to track
the current state. This feature activates when you install the CSDM Activation plugin.

CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard

You can access the CMDB and CSDM Data Foundation dashboards in the CMDB Workspace
under the Management tab. These dashboards contain 35+ health scan definitions and a
playbook to help you understand the upstream causes and downstream consequences. Your
CMDB Data Maintenance process should involve reviewing this dashboard and following the
remediation playbooks to maintain the health of your CMDB. Two separate dashboards use
the standard reporting framework. Refer to the product documentation for further details on
the indicators checked and how to interpret the dashboard. Refer to the product
documentation for further details on the indicators checked and how to interpret the
dashboard.
Use the dashboard links to access the playbooks, which help you identify missing
relationships, attributes, custom attributes, or tables. These indicators support a healthy
foundation for process interactions. The playbooks provide guidance on upstream and
downstream causes, best practices, and remediation activities.
Common Service Data CI Lifecycle Standards

30
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
A CMDB CI typically goes through several operational states from its creation to when it is no
longer needed, undergoing various operations. CI Lifecycle Management defines these
states and actions for a CI, allowing you to apply the appropriate actions based on the CI's
state. CI Lifecycle Management defines these states and actions for a CI, allowing you to
apply the appropriate actions based on the CI's state. This approach ensures that CI lifecycle
management aligns with business needs. Additionally, aligning the lifecycle of CIs, assets,
and business-related applications is important.

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.
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 part of Configuration Control, which ensures that only
authorized and identifiable CIs exist in the infrastructure and that each CI has a
corresponding accurate and complete record in the CMDB. Configuration Control governs
updates to the CMDB.
Change Management handles unauthorized changes and provides instructions on how to
proceed. The CI Owner receives discrepancies and errors in the CI configuration for
resolution.
To update a CI, follow the recommended change management processes. The configuration
manager receives the change request to update an existing CI record through change
management. Authorized change requests are prioritized and sent to CMDB administration
for further processing. Rejected change requests are returned to the requestor with an
explanation.
When discovery or any other external integration source identifies new or modified CIs in the
CMDB, verify that an authorized change request exists to justify the CI's presence or update.
Alternatively, you can initiate discovery during the change request implementation or review
process. Discovery, when triggered, automatically updates the CMDB, creating a status
record linked to the configuration item and displayed in the affected CI-related list.

Managing proposed changes

31
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 during the approval stage of a
change process and implement the changes only after receiving approval. If the change is
not approved, you won't need to reverse any changes to records. A quick command applies
all the proposed changes once 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 system does not delete the CI record but saves it in a
retired operational state. The corresponding asset returns to stock or gets disposed of
according to requirements.
Data Manager Dashboard
The CMDB Admin can use the CMDB Workspace Data Manager to perform lifecycle
operations such as deletion, archival, and retirement of CMDB CIs. Configure the CMDB
health properties and adjust any CI classes. The CMDB Data Manager applies policies and
policy sub-flows. Since the Washington release, Data Certification policies within the Data
Manager will need to be configured and adjusted for your organization, and the Data
Manager Dashboard is now also accessible through the CMDB Workspace.
When a dependent CI (a CI that relies on relationships with other CIs and cannot exist
independently without them) is retired, its lifecycle updates start from the Tokyo version.
Before Tokyo, this caused incorrect lifecycle data on the dependent CI. Retiring a dependent
CI now cascades the retirement process, retiring the dependent CIs when the independent
parent CI is retired. The following diagrams illustrate the process. The scheduled job "CMDB
Cascade Retire Dependent CIs" runs this process. The CMDB Admin or Configuration
Manager must approve the tasks.

32
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
The Data Manager Dashboard should have a process, purpose, and people to use.
CMDB Attestation
Attestation is the acknowledgment from CI owners or managers that a CI physically exists.
Before the Tokyo release, attestation was a manual process where admins created and
assigned tasks to CI owners or managers without the ability to group CIs. With CMDB
attestation, the CI owner can view all assigned attestation tasks. They can reassign tasks,
send them back to the Admin for reassignment, and take actions to attest, reject, exclude,
or remove duplicates from the CI. The CI owner can bulk attest to recently discovered CIs.
The CMDB Data Manager allows you to create CMDB attestation as a policy. A scheduled job
called "Attest Computer Policy Processor" is created when the policy is published. Once the
scheduled job completes, it generates a task and assigns it for completion. Users can
manage the work from the My Work screen in the CMDB Workspace. They can also use
Intelligent Search, which employs Natural Language Processing, to search through the CMDB
class hierarchy, CIs, and their relationships.
CMDB Workspace

33
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
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 displays open Attestation tasks that require attention. The Insight tab
shows CMDB feature adoption metrics to help improve your CMDB experience. It also
includes the Application Services report widget, which displays the population method,
whether the method is defined, service types, and missing data—indicators that highlight
areas needing attention. The Management tab provides key CMDB health indicators and
links to other in-platform tools to manage the CMDB and maintain the health of the
populated data.

The image depicts the CMDB Workspace.

34
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Images depict the CMDB Workspace Insights

Images depict the CMDB Workspace Management

Outcomes Realized
35
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.
Realizing the value of embarking on a Digital Transformation journey is essential.
Transforming once manual processes into data-driven digital workflows can significantly
improve speed and quality in several key areas. CMDB serves as the data foundation for
these workflows. It creates an engine that delivers tangible results when combined with
quality data in the right schema, along with mature data management and governance
practices. An ITSM practice with a CMDB implementation following this blueprint can achieve
the following outcomes:
 Double-digit reduction in average time to resolve an incident
 Significant reduction in the number of incidents created per user
 Significant increase in the percentage of incidents resolved by problem
 Double-digit reduction in the percentage of failed changes
These KPI improvements lead to significant cost savings in labor and lost revenue for the
enterprise, demonstrating how Digital Transformation can positively impact the budget
cycle. Additionally, other value streams have emerged, resulting in further positive impacts,
including:
 Self-service activities driven by Knowledge Management
 Service delivery automation through the 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

36
© 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ServiceNow, 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.