Can cmdb_ci Category and Subcategory attributes be used freely?

[Jacques Clement]

Hi -

I am looking for a way to categorise Business Applications (e.g. IT4IT vs. Customer Facing -- these are just examples). I'd like to use OOTB as much as possible and am currently considering two options:

1. Tagging
2. Leveraging the Category and Subcategory attributes that are at the cmdb_ci level (both string fields). There is some basic logic for defaulting these fields using the cmdb_categories table (basically a mapping between the class name and values for cat/subcat). Besides this defaulting logic, I don't see any part of ServiceNow using those two fields.

So question is: is it safe to use them for my own categories/subcategories or am I going to break something if I use them for that purpose.

Thanks in advance.

JC

[Anshu_Anand_]

Obvious OOTB should not be touched.

I think Tags would be good option.

Regarding category and subcategory

In the definition of this field there is a dynamic filter that calculates the value of this field when a CI is created. The filter is "Get CMDB Item Category". This filter goes to the table "CMDB Categories [cmdb_categories]" and looks for the corresponding category and subcategory of the CI that is being created.

For example, if we are creating a linux server the filter will set category to "Hardware" and subcategory to "Computer" because there is an entry in "CMDB Categories [cmdb_categories]" with values "Name: cmdb_ci_linux_server, Category: Hardware, Subcategory: Computer".

https://community.servicenow.com/community?

id=community_question&sys_id=87e0dba9dbdcdbc01dcaf3231f961945

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