Force APM Business Capability hierarchy ID

[Jim Federline]

I am planning a migration of our company's existing business capability map into APM. I've run into a snag - we already have assigned hierarchy ID's. But ServiceNow attempts to manage these itself. I need to replicate the hierarchy by ID - I cannot accept "whatever ServiceNow generates".

In playing around with things here, I've think I've found a way that I can "stack the deck" with the exact hierarchy ID's that I want. It is be better for an organization with their own existing capability map, which is likely indexed with hierarchy ID's already, to defeat the auto-numbering in ServiceNow somehow. It would be best if ServiceNow APM allowed this explicitly.

Here's what I did; I'm looking to find out if this is acceptable:

1. For non-leaf nodes, I used the "Order" field. This worked good for the root nodes. However, it does not work for the leaf nodes below it - it is seemingly ignored. If this had worked, I would not have had to do #2, next...
2. For leaf nodes, after I input them, I was left with hierarchy ID's that did not match our internally published capability map. One cannot modify Capability ID in a Business Capability form UI. But, you can in a list view. You have to be careful not to create duplicates at any stage, or it doesn't work. But if you are careful, the ID's seem to stick through subsequent executions of the "Update Capability Level and HierarchyID" UI Action.

CORRECTION added as an "edit" to this post:  I was mistaken. #2 does not make it stick in some cases, which I cannot pin down. 

I dislike that I need to do this. I would like the "Update Capability Level and HierarchyID" UI Action to, say, honor the "Order" within a level under a parent.

Thoughts? Does anyone else have an enterprise that has already indexed a capability map?

[johnflannagan-y]

Thank Jim.  This worked exactly as I was hoping.  Great instructions.

It is also good to see we have another shop in the Twin Cities using APM.  It would be great if we could get together and share portfolio management war stories as we continue down this journey.  Let me know if you are up for it.