Service Portfolio - Business Service Offerings of service class 'Technical Service' vs Technical Service Offerings?

[Louis28]

Hello,

Recently my team and I have endeavored into the realm of CSDM 3.0, We've watched numerous webinars, sliced & diced the white paper, and reviewed all training available via Now Learning.

A support case brought to my attention the existence of the 2 tables, 'cmdb_ci_service' and 'cmdb_ci_service_technical'. What I'm trying to figure out is the intent behind having a separate table for seemingly the same function of storing offering specific information. In both cases, we can then assign to specific catalog items for requesting. 

We've been in the process of aligning our current services & offerings with the taxonomy provided in TBM 3.0.2. TBM has been a great framework for us to use in identifying the different Service Types (Portfolios), Service Categories (Node), and Service Names (Service). For TBM-to-CSDM reference, see How to implement TBM taxonomy according to CSDM 2.0 Model.

Our original intent was to have what TBM would allude to as Technical Services, such as Identity & Access Management, Mainframe, Domain Services, Load Balancing, System Integration, etc. (all that exist under the Delivery Services, Platform Services, and Infrastructure Services service types), be populated in the table 'cmdb_ci_service_technical'. We understand this would limit our Service Portfolio Management functionality. We are accepting of the limitations.

After reviewing a related post, Business Services vs Technical Services, it seems that there may instead be a specific purpose for using the 'cmdb_ci_service_technical' table for ITOM-specific activities (Event). For this reason, would it instead make sense to assign what TBM would allude to as "Technical Services" (Delivery Services, Platform Services, and Infrastructure Services) to the table 'cmdb_ci_service' but with the service classification of 'Technical Service'? This would combine our Technical & Business Services into the cmdb_ci_service table while reserving cmdb_ci_service_technical for ITOM specific activities. With all of this said, we also have the cmdb_ci_query_based_service to come into play! 

From your experiences, am I on to something or am I instead going down a possibly old rabbit hole, Service Classifications, that only still exists to support earlier implementations of CSDM use cases?

tl;dr

Should all services that are technical in function [Delivery Services, Platform Services, Infrastructure Services] be placed within the 'cmdb_ci_service_technical' table or instead exist as Technical Services within 'cmdb_ci_service'?

Thanks in advance!

-Louis

[Florian Zemsky]

Hi Louis,

as per the past community post that you linked ('Business Services vs Technical Services') please be aware that this is not really valid anymore.
With Paris we have renamed what was initially called a Technical Service to what is now named Dynamic CI Group. Under the hood you can still see this in the table name beeing 'cmdb_ci_query_based_service'. Before Paris & CSDM 3.0 'Query Based Services' were ITOM only functionality and would be one way of managing infrastructure within the Event Management Dashboard / Operator Workspace of ITOM Health.

Dynamic CI Groups on the contrary are now platform functionality and will be more and more used in the future to:

• Reduce manual effort (e.g. when linking Technical Service Offerings with infra CIs)
• Make life easier (e.g. in Change Management / for syncing support information to the infra CIs)
• Bring extended functionality (e.g. using the CMDB Query Builder to populate a CMDB Group & leveraging Dynamic CI Groups as Application Services).

Currently the only value of what is as of Paris and the CSDM 3.0 named as Technical Service (table name 'cmdb_ci_service_technical') is if you want the label to read Technical Service vs Business Service.
You are right that at the moment this would limit your Service Portfolio Management functionality as it is supposed to be for the consumer facing services (Business Services).

In future releases of ServiceNow and the CSDM there might be more definitions going in the direction of your question - unfortunately I don't have any specific details to share.

Best Regards,
Florian

[Barry Kant]

Hi Louis,

I can understand from a datamodel point of view that it is confusing.

From a concept point of view it is clear that it is not ITOM specific, but it is more the support side of the house (where ITOM has a big play).

Above is the mapping of TBM in CSDM context. It is missing the data model details. For the Consume area this will likely be the service portfolio tables. For the Manage area I am not entirely sure. 

Cheers,

Barry