CSDM and Operator Workspace

[Community Alums]

Per CSDM, "Business applications are the logical representation of all [Application service] instances", and "application services represent instances of a business application". This is all well and good.

However, when it comes to using Operator Workspace, it appears that the workspace does not properly roll up the alert status of Application Service instances to the Business Application level. To get a roll-up of Application Services, the Link application services documentation asks us to create new Application Services containers. This is counter-intuitive, duplicative, and not practical.

Are there plans to improve the way alerts roll up to the Business Application level and display this appropriately in Operator Workspace? Or is there some other/different method that I haven't considered?

[Barry Kant]

hi, 

I am not sure if I understand the question, so I give it a shot.

The impact is on an realized application (which is the application service level). It doesn't impact (operationally) a conceptual application (the business service). 
The only reason I can think of is if it is for a reporting purpose. 

Linking multiple Application Service to each other is primarily to understand the relations between those applications. This can be things like:

• SSO
• Interfaces
• Data syncs

These are underpinning application services, or in words they offer value to another service. 

The difficulty is that it can be very diverse:

• SSO is primarily for end-user login. 
• A payment Interface for salary might only be impact last 3 days of the month.
• Data feeds might only happen overnight.

I am not sure if I understand the purpose to roll up to Business Application level.

Can you elaborate on that?

Barry

[Community Alums]

Thanks for the reply, Barry. The scenarios you mention for linking Application Services describe  dependency and peer-to-peer relationships, and these are certainly valid scenarios for linking Application Services together.

The Business Application that owns several Application Services is a parent-child relationship that clearly has been defined in CSDM. There is a use case for being able to quickly see the operational health of the parent and all its underlying Application Services, and it does not appear that the Operator Workspace will use that existing relationship to roll up alerts into an already-defined Business Application.

[Christian Prob2]

Good Morning, @servicenowguy  

I think that the philosophy behind the Business Application concept is that it is really only to be used for APM-Strategy-Governance type actions and not for operations. As the operational health ('events' and such) is by definition operational, there is / would be no use in rolling it up.

I personally have also had some discussions on this, as I (personally) think that if there are issues = errors in the business logic / design of an application (of even in the process design), there could be a case of managing that on the business application level. However, that is is not the philosophy and hence not supported - which is totally ok, as there are other options that work just fine. 

Coming back to your question, you may want to check if your design approach is the only feasible one, or if one that is more aligned with ServiceNow and the above philosophy would be as good (or even better) and work for your organisation. 

I would be asking myself what type of aggregation I need on the Business Application level that adds value and /or do I have my application services properly defined, as that is probably the level you want to manage your health view at.

But as @Barry Kant said, not 100% sure I understand your requirements and thought process.

Hope that helps a bit,

Christian

Please mark helpful or correct if deemed so. Thank you.

[Barry Kant]

Business Applications are not an operational domain, maybe that is why I less understand the purpose. The impact is upon Services. The Business Application is a conceptual record for strategic/architecture decisions. 
If you somehow populate the alerts to this you see alerts from:

• DEV
• TEST
• QA
• PROD

all on the Business Application level. Operationally that doesn't tell you a lot. 
It would be easier to digest this information from the Business Service levels in my opinion.