From Product Model to Delivery: Where Does the “Recipe” Live?

[Arno Reintjens]

Hi everyone,

We’re currently defining IT products within our organisation and using product models to capture everything needed to deliver an end product.

For example, a Windows Server might require a virtual machine, a Windows software package, the ACC client, identity and access rules, and perhaps a firewall rule. Each of these is a product model, and together they are bundled into one product model. I think of them as the ingredients needed to deliver the Windows Server.

But ingredients alone aren’t enough—you also need a recipe. Does ServiceNow provide a way to record the delivery or fulfilment instructions for each product model?

Also, when delivering the same product to multiple customers, some may need an exception, a different parameter value, or an extra component. Is there a recommended place in ServiceNow to store and manage these customer-specific variations?

I’d be interested to hear how others have approached this. Any examples, recommendations, or pointers would be very welcome.

Cheers,
Arno

[Somchai Laotee]

Hopefully, this will be useful for understanding CSDM. CSDM Portal Data Model Explorer https://harmony-hub.tech/sn/csdm

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Arno Reintjens 

I don't see this requirement as being relevant to CSDM. CSDM just builds the service map based on records and connections. This is at a lower level - software packages or even AD OU memberships/group policies on the end device. This is a part of (e.g.) server templating that you would use in a tool like Ansible (and similar to the "recipes" you may create for something like Terraform), so if there is a home for this in ServiceNow, it is more likely to be found in Cloud Management - Cloud Accelerate, where such provisioning can be managed, rather than within CSDM or the wider CMDB (which via existing discovery tools may at least show what installed applications are present).

I hope this helps!
Mat