Prefixes for Service Identification

[Tone1]

Hi everyone,

I’m currently in a bit of a heated debate with our integrator. We’re implementing CSDM from the ground up, and he suggests using prefixes to identify services, for example “AS- …” for Application Services (or with 5.0 now SI - for Serivce Instance), “BS- …” for Business Services, and so on.

This would lead to names like:
“AS - OnPrem Microsoft Exchange - Production”.

I come from a CMDB background (not exclusively ServiceNow), and over the years I’ve learned that duplicating metadata in the name field is a bad practice and usually creates more problems than it solves.
Since the class of the record already clearly identifies the object type, adding prefixes feels redundant, and in my opinion, it also makes the names harder for end users to read and understand.

So my main questions are:

Are these prefixes considered common or recommended?
Should I actually use them in a CSDM-aligned implementation?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

[CasperJT]

Hi Tone,

I have not seen anyone use this approach for logical components such as service instances or business services. It is not uncommon for physical entities that require an asset tag (server might be "srv-xxx".

The services are exposed to end users and I would argue adding meta data in the name will not serve them in any positive manner.

Additionally the service instance classes (application service for example) may change names over time, meaning your naming convention would need to be updated along with any records within those classes.

In summation, , I would advice against that approach.

If the reason for including the class in the name is to make it visible to users when selecting a record, I would insted opt for including the info in the reference field using ref_ac_columns.

Hope this helps.

//CasperJT