What exactly is Data Certification vs CI Attestation?

[Suggy]

What exactly is Data Certification vs CI Attestation? What are the use cases for- each of them? In which scenario which feature should be used?

[Tony Branton]

Reasons why Attestation and Certification are separate today:

• Attestation preceded Certification as a Data Manager user case
• Attestation is focused on CI records and relies on dedicated fields in CI tables
• Attestation is intended to identify CI records that can subsequently be retired/archived/deleted if the records are marked as rejected.
• Certification can be performed on CI and non-CI tables and does not use dedicated fields in the tables
• Data Manager-based Certification initially is a replacement for the legacy version that is being deprecated with the aim of providing an equivalent capability.

If Attestation were to be combined with Certification:

• It would only be available for certifying records in CI tables since these are the only tables with fields specific to attestation
• An option would be added to the Certification policy type allowing records to be attested during certification
• Some attestation features may not be supported in Certification e.g.
  • Marking records as duplicates
  • Excluding CIs
  • "Smart Detection"
• We would need to determine the criteria for attesting/rejecting a CI record e.g.
  • Is a CI rejected if all fields fail certification?
  • Is a CI attested if at least one field passes certification?
  • Should a separate control (e.g. checkbox) be used to attest/reject a CI record?
• How to handle CI records attested via certification by separate [overlapping] Attestation policies

There's merit in the idea, however there's some complexity involved. Although we plan to explore this capability, there's no commitment that it will be delivered at this stage.

[Ofer1]

I view attestation as a simpler subset of certification. I would choose one depending on the use case, but not both.
Here is a video I posted about Data Certification.
https://youtu.be/TlrWqTZx0XU?list=PL5DgOfLBA3RanN94xRB4tZGY6aoKeFM_b

[Tony Branton · Accepted solution]

Data Attestation focuses on data currency.  You use Attestation to verify that a CI record represents a resources that still exists in your organization. If a CI record fails attestation (e.g. the resource it represents no longer exists) then it becomes a candidate for being retired and removed from the CMDB.

Data Certification focuses on data quality. Fields in records (in CMDB or non-CMDB tables) are reviewed for accuracy and can be updated, or marked as failed and subsequently updated with accurate values.

[Ronald Lucas TA]

@Tony Branton, I was told by someone at ServiceNow support that Data Certification isn't being updated because it will be depreciated at some point in the near future. Is this true?

[Tony Branton]

Hi,

Yes, the legacy Data Certification plugin is being deprecated as it is being replaced with the Data Certification capability based on CMDB Data Manager and included with CMDB Workspace.  The new capability became available in the February store release of CMDB Workspace and will continue to be updated.

Data Manager includes a migration utility that will process Certification Schedules and Certification Filters from the legacy version and create draft Certification policies.  The migration utility does not migrate certification tasks from the legacy version - these will need to be managed and closed in the legacy version.

The legacy version can continue to be used, however the plugin is no longer available for installation on new instances and support will end when it is deprecated.