CI Updates/Creation (outside of Discovery)

[kathymorris]

Hi,

I would be interested in knowing how other Customers are updating their CI's. Our business unit has a request for IT people (who are new to ServiceNow and the CMDB) to be able to create CI's/ update CI's directly via the Service Catalog. Another request was for them to update the CI dependency relationships directly as well. They think that since it is their CI's there will be no issue. Any thoughts about this approach (pros/cons)? 

I know there is a Data Certification within ServiceNow. What are other businesses doing within the CMDB process to manage the data integrity of their CMDB, and make updates/create CIs that are not discoverable via Discovery?

Best,

Kathy 

[Kristen Ankeny]

Generally it is best practice to use a combination of discovery, service mapping, and integrations with sources of truth (ideally ones where data is populated systematically). There are some classes that are not discoverable and it is possible to populate the CMDB manually. However, there should be a governance board in place to define what data can be managed manually, who has that right, and the process for doing so. To support this, using CMDB Health and Data Management tools will allow you to monitor data quality (also for discovered data) and to manage the lifecycle of records in the CMDB. My advice would be to only create CIs that will add business value (they are needed for business process for example). 

[Daniel Borkowi1]

Hi @kathymorris, let me elaborate a little further. I would recommend to start with a scoping and governance of your CMDB. 

1. Define which classes and attribute you want to use.
2. Define which classes and attributes are change relevant (changes needs to be documented by Change Request) --> such attributes should only be adjusted via change request --> Standard Changes could be used and check out Proposed Change function
3. Define leading systems of classes and attributes --> Attributes which are sourced by other systems should not be changed in ServiceNow
4. Define which attributes could/should be discovered --> don't manually change fields which are automatically discovered, maybe only via change request if you use Change Management/Discovery integration

Only Attributes/Relations which are not provided by other systems or are change relevant or could be discovered can be managed manually via Catalog Items. But also here you should ensured that there is a governance in place. Someone needs to be responsible for the data quality and assurance - Data in CMDB must be accurate, up to date and complete (at least as good as possible) . 

Hope that helps.

Greets

Daniel