Technical Service Offering to Application Service - Relationship Editor

[MellowYellow]

I'm looking at CSDM 5.0 and can see that Technical Service Offerings should have a Contains::Contained by relationship to an Application Service.

However, when going into the Relationship Editor for my Service Offering, what I see is "Class is a Dynamic CI Group" or "Class is a Business Application" as the default relationships. We haven't modified this from OOB, and evidently I can adjust and manually select the correct relation.
However, does anyone know why the "Application Service" or "Service Instance" isn't exposed by default?

We're on Zurich and won't be upgrading until Brazil.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @MellowYellow 

The Relationship editor provides records from the Suggested Relationship table. In CSDM, as part of the Service Delivery domain, ServiceNow recommends that Technology Management Service Offerings are related to Dynamic CI Groups - however whilst this works fine for (e.g.) Server Support or Network Support, it's less useful when thinking about application support.

It is perfectly acceptable to have a Technology Management Service Offering related to a Service Instance (of which an Application Service is a child class). This is also referenced in the CSDM 5 diagram and Whitepaper.

If there is no Suggested Relationship in the baseline instance, just ask for one to be created. The CI Relationship Editor and Dependency views are considered legacy - users are now pushed towards Workspaces (e.g. CMDB Workspace and its unified map feature).

I hope this helps!
Mat

[MellowYellow]

Thanks Matthew, we have tried using the Support Group inheritance mechanic however it doesn't look like the cascade to Mapped Application Services works with this.

Conceptually, we wanted to use this relationship so that our various "Platform/Portfolio" managers could be set as owners of the Application Services. Doesn't appear to work that way.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @MellowYellow 

Yes, you are correct. The sync of groups is catered for by a series of 2 Business Rules  on the Service Offering table and 1 on the Configuration Item table:

• CSDM - Sync Group Attributes
• CSDM Data Sync on TSO deletion
• CSDM Data Sync on Reclassification

For Technology Management Service Offerings only, they cascade the Assignment Group, Managed by Group and Support Group to any Dynamic CI Groups related to the Service Offering via a Contains::contained by CI Relationship, and the CIs contained within those Dynamic CI Groups (which you can view on the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table.

If you require ownership cascade then a similar mechanism to cascade the data is possible but you would have to build it - however ensure that your cascade logic is tightly controlled and only travels top-down (Service to Offering to Service Instance) and not bottom-up. It will also need to be tightly restricted as presumably not all Service Offering to Service Instance relationships will use the same logic?

I have also seen customers define the data on Business Application and cascade to deployed Service Instances, but strictly speaking the Business App is not an operational CI so not the right home for operational data like this.

I hope this helps!
Mat

[Damhoej]

Have you tried Service Builder?

In my experience the best way to go is to use the tools provided.
And Service Builder is one of my favorites, it handles the relationships by selection and you don't have to worry that it will be wrong.