Need some Information about Data Certification Policy

[AkashD462166574]

Hello Everyone,

I’m trying to understand the end-to-end flow of how Data Certification works, especially around task assignment and notification.

After a certification task is generated, I want to know what happens next. For example, if the assignment policy is configured to assign the task to the "Managed by" field of a business service , how does the assigned user get notified?

I noticed that a notification is triggered when the task is created, but it seems to be sent only to specific users. This notification is linked to an OOB (Out-of-the-Box) event, and I’m trying to understand how this event is triggered.

Also, I’m curious about the behavior when the "Managed by" field is empty for some Business Services. In such cases, how does the system handle task assignment and notification?

Can anyone help me understand this flow in detail? Specifically:

• How is the event triggered for the notification?
• What happens if the "Managed by" field is empty?

Any insights or documentation references would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

[AJ-TechTrek]

Hi @AkashD462166574 ,

As per my understanding, The flow will be below.

1. Certification Definition & Policies
* You define a certification policy (e.g., certify Business Services every 6 months).
* You configure the Assignment Rule in the policy to assign tasks to a user, a group, or dynamically (e.g., to the user in the “Managed by” field of the target CI).

2. Generation of Certification Task
* When the policy runs (via scheduled job or manual run), it:
* Creates certification tasks (cert_task table) linked to each applicable CI.
* The assignment logic runs: it fetches the “Managed by” user from the CI and populates the Assigned to field of the task.

3. Event for Notification
* When a new certification task is created, it triggers an OOB business rule or script include.
* This triggers an event (commonly named something like certification.task.assigned).
* The event is picked up by the Notification (e.g., “Certification Task Assigned”) which is configured to send email to the Assigned to user.

How is the event triggered?
* On the cert_task table, there’s an OOB Business Rule (usually called something like “Cert Task Created”).
* This BR runs on insert and triggers the event:
gs.eventQueue("certification.task.assigned", current, current.assigned_to, current.number);
* The notification listens to this event, so as soon as the task is created and assigned, an email is sent.

What if "Managed by" field is empty?
* During task generation, when it tries to look up the “Managed by” field:
* If it’s empty, the task won’t have Assigned to set.
 As a result:
* The event still triggers, but since the Assigned to is empty, the notification has no recipient → no email is sent.
* The task itself will remain unassigned.
* It will appear on dashboards as “unassigned”, and an admin or process owner would have to manually assign it.

Best Practices / Solutions:
1. Make sure “Managed by” is populated for all critical CIs (via data quality policy or CMDB Data Certification itself!).


2. Use Assignment group fallback: configure the policy to assign tasks to a default group if Managed by is empty.


3. Monitor unassigned certification tasks and handle them manually if needed.

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Thank You
AJ - TechTrek with AJ - ITOM Trainer
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ServiceNow Community MVP 2025

[AkashD462166574]

Hello Ajay,

Thank you for the step-by-step explanation. Most of my queries have been answered, but I still have a few remaining questions.

As you mentioned, there is an out-of-the-box (OOB) notification that gets triggered when a task is created in the cmdb_data_management_task table. This notification is fired by the event named cmdbdatamanager.tasks.created. However, as per your suggestion, I checked all the business rules and script includes, but I couldn't find where this event is being triggered from.

This notification is sent to certain users, and in the notification configuration, the recipient is defined as "Event parm 1 contains recipient". You also mentioned that if we configure the policy to set the Assigned to field as Owned by or Managed by, then the email should be triggered to the service owner. Since this is an OOB email configured on the cmdb_data_management_task table, we can add Owned by in the "Who will receive" section.

My question is: after the task is created, how does the Owned by person get notified that the task is assigned to them? Do I need to create a sub flow for this? 

I’m currently learning ServiceNow discovery  and have gone through data certification documents , but I haven’t found much information regarding flow and . If you have any helpful documentation or YouTube video links, please share them.

Thanks again for your support!

[AJ-TechTrek]

Hi @AkashD462166574 ,

As per my understanding from Where is the event triggered?
You’re right:
* Event: cmdbdatamanager.tasks.created
* Table: cmdb_data_management_task

By default, this event isn’t directly triggered by a visible Business Rule on cmdb_data_management_task.
Instead, it is triggered:
By the Data Manager Policy engine itself — specifically in:

* Script Include: CMDBDataManagerScriptable (or similar, depends on your version)
* When a data manager policy creates a new task, it fires the event.

That’s why you won’t see an explicit business rule → event.create().
If you’d like to trace:
* Go to System Policy > Data Manager > Policies → look for active policies that create tasks.
* These policies call into the data manager engine → which fires the event.

Who receives the notification?
By default, the OOB notification “Task Created” on cmdb_data_management_task:
* Is triggered by the event.
* Uses “Event parm 1 contains recipient”
This means:
* When the event is fired, the script sends along the Assigned to user sys_id as event parameter 1.
* The notification pulls the recipient from there.

So how does the Assigned to get populated?
Good point:
* The Data Manager Policy itself (configured in cmdb_data_manager_policy table) usually defines:
* Which users or groups to assign the generated task to.

* If the policy is configured to:
* Set Assigned to = Owned by
* Or Assigned to = Managed by
then when the task is created, the Assigned to field is populated with the appropriate user.
As soon as the Assigned to is set:
* The Data Manager engine fires cmdbdatamanager.tasks.created event → with Assigned to user sys_id in parm1.
* The notification uses parm1 → and sends email to the correct user.
You do NOT need to create a subflow for this if:
* Your Data Manager Policy is correctly setting Assigned to.

What to do if it doesn’t?
If the policy is NOT populating Assigned to, then:
* The event fires with an empty parm1 → notification won't go to anyone.
* Solution:
* Update your data manager policy:
* Assign task to Owned by / Managed by.
* Or add a small business rule to populate Assigned to after task creation (not preferred; better to fix policy).

Here are some good official & community links:

 Official docs:

• ServiceNow Data Manager

• CMDB Data Manager Policies

• ServiceNow Discovery Overview

• Notifications

Videos:

• ServiceNow CMDB Data Manager Overview (YouTube)

• ServiceNow Discovery Explained (YouTube)

• ServiceNow Flows & Flow Designer

Please appreciate the efforts of community contributors by marking appropriate response as Mark my Answer Helpful or Accept Solution this may help other community users to follow correct solution in future.
 

Thank You
AJ - TechTrek with AJ - ITOM Trainer
LinkedIn:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajay-kumar-66a91385/
YouTube:- https://www.youtube.com/@learnitomwithaj
Topmate:- https://topmate.io/aj_techtrekwithaj (Connect for 1-1 Session)
ServiceNow Community MVP 2025

[AkashD462166574]

Thank you, Ajay, for such a brief and clear explanation.