how do you relate dependencies between applications in CSDM?

[Ravish Shetty]

Hi all,

What is the best way to define that a certain application depends on another application from a CSDM perspective?

Should we define Service Instance of Business application A depends on Service Instance of Business application B?

If that's the way to go, how does ServiceNow leverage this relationship? We did a quick test on the incident management module where we created an incident against 'Service Instance of Business application B' as the CI and did a refresh on impacted service using the UI action and this did not bring the 'Service Instance of Business application A' as the impacted service.

Thanks,

Ravish

[AustinN]

It should be tracked at the Service level, although I think you are to use the Sends/Receives Data relationship type. Regardless of relationship type, I don't think ITSM picks up those relationships OOTB. At least not what we have seen.

[Ravish Shetty]

thanks, is it technology management service to technology management service or business service to technology management service relationship?

[Mathew Hillyard · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ravish Shetty 

In  terms of dependencies between applications you have these options:

• Platforms - have one Business Application as a Platform Host and have other Business Applications as Platform Applications that run on the Host
• Application Services* (for impact analysis): One Application Service has a Depends on::used by CI Relationship to another Application Service**
• Application Services (to trace how data flows): One Application Service has a Sends data to::receives data from by CI Relationship to another another Application Service
• APIs and Integrations (to trace how data flows between applications and using which mechanism): Use Digital Integration Management to define Interfaces with provider and consumer Business Applications

*For Application Service also read Service Instance for CSDM v5.0

** Note that when configuring impacted services for Incident and Change Management, parent-child Application Service relationships are not considered - if you wanted to bring these into impacted services you would need to customise, but do this on change of the impacted services, do not attempt to populate the Service Configuration Item Association table directly as any changes you make will be deleted by the automated functionality each time the structure of an Application Service map changes.

Your final point - not seeing impacted services at all - is probably because you have not configured Incident Management to consume CSDM services. See the articles below for advice, but the key step is to review and activate the necessary Incident Properties to populate the "impacted" related lists:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-articles/how-to-configure-incident-management-to-align-wit...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model/application-services-how-to-use-them/...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model/refresh-impacted-services-improved-ou...

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Ravish Shetty]

Thanks Mat