Use of CMDB category and subcategory

[Sandeep Bharate]

Hi Guys,

We have noticed that in our CMDB "Category" and "Subcategory" attributes are populated for some classes. But lot of CI  classes are missing category and subcategory field values. Does anyone know what is the use of these attributes in the CMDB or asset systems? They get filled in with values from the cmdb_categories table when a new CI is added. The defaults are based on the CI class. Are they used by any system processes.

Is there any solution or suggestion present which we can use to categorize or define the missing classes in cmdb_categories table as per best practices.

Thanks in advance!

[Gunjan Kiratkar]

Hi @Sandeep Bharate,

You will get the use of Category and Subcategory in the below thread:-

CMDB Categories

A quick summary for that is "Using Category/Subcategory structure will help to avoid another custom attribute in that table. Additionally, the value of multiple Category/Subcategory structures per one CI table is in helping to differentiate among CIs in the same class that is used in different operational scenarios"

Although I'm not aware of best practices to populate the Category and Subcategory.

Please mark my answer as helpful/correct if it resolves your query.

Regards,

Gunjan Kiratkar

Consultant - ServiceNow, Cloudaction

Rising Star 2022

[Maik Skoddow · Accepted solution]

Hi @Sandeep Bharate 

the fields "category" and "subcategory" are from the very beginning of ServiceNow's CMDB. In this time there was not yet the fine-grained class hierarchy we know today.

For example, if someone was creating a Linux server an automatic population had set "category" to "Hardware" and "subcategory" to "Computer" because there was an entry in "CMDB Categories [cmdb_categories]" with values "Name: cmdb_ci_linux_server, Category: Hardware, Subcategory: Computer".

To my mind you can ignore that fields and instead follow the leading practices of the today's CSDM.

Kind regards
Maik

[Taha6]

@Maik Skoddow What would be the best way to differentiate between Laptops and Desktops because both are added in the cmdb_ci_computer, we need to filter laptops or desktops in some forms. I was thinking to use the category. Do you have another suggestion?

Thanks!