Diving Into CI Relationships...

The other day I was on the phone with a customer who wanted to write a business rule that understood CI relationships. In particular, he was trying to make a business rule that could tell if a CI had ...

Here a Table, There a Table...

"Why does a list of computers show servers?" Have you asked yourself a question like that? I've heard several variations of this from our customers, and when I've poked at it a bit, it generally turns...

Nominate Service-now.com for SDI vendor of the year

Please take a a couple of minutes to nominate Service-now.com for the Service Desk Institute vendor of the year. The nomination form can be found here (nominations now closed).[flickr-photo:id=3194869...

Estimate Your Geekitude...

How geeky are you? A friend passed along this little test, the intent of which is to estimate just how much of an IT and programming geek you are. For each of the web sites below, give yourself three ...

It's Out!

Our Winter 2009 release is out — woo hoo! It's got all sorts of spiffy new things, but here I'm going to focus on the Discovery enhancements and changes. Read the change notes for the entire release, ...

Diving Into WMI...

The other day, one of our customers asked me "What the heck is this WMI stuff you keep blathering about?" To someone like me who's been working in the dark and dusty recesses of major operating system...

MID Server Capacity...

How much Discovery work can a single MID server do? This is one of the questions people frequently ask when implementing Discovery, and what they really want is an answer like this: "13,214 devices". ...

Diving Into System Identifiers...

If you've done any scripting to customize your Service-now instance, you've probably run into a system identifier (sys_id) or two — those funny-looking values like "46e2fee9a9fe19810049b49dee0daf58". ...

Diving Into Invalid Serial Numbers...

I've written about serial numbers before, and even mentioned the invalid serial number table (Discovery Definition → Invalid Serial Numbers). Like the soldiers at right take care of the bad guys to ...

Diving Into Process Classifier Criteria...

You've probably heard that astronomers have changed Pluto's classification from "planet" to a mere "solar system body". Though this happened a couple years ago, there's still considerable debate about...

New Feature: CI Consolidation...

Many folks use Discovery as the sole means of populating their CMDB in Service-now. But if you're one of those who also imports items into your CMDB, or who manually enters CIs into your CMDB, CI Cons...

The Way Things Work: Detecting Related Systems...

Have you wondered how Discovery can figure out that one system (perhaps an accounting application) is related to another (such as the database used by the accounting application)? I've been asked this...

Diving Into MID/CI Relations...

There's an old saying with several variations, most of which are about like this:You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your relations.For instance, I'm pretty certain the fellow at right is re...

Diving Into Port Probes...

Port probes… Doesn't this sound like something unpleasant, possibly involving rectal thermometers? Don't worry, they're not as bad as all that. In fact, they're pretty darned useful — and quite fundam...

New Feature: NetWare Support...

Frankly, we've been quite surprised just how much NetWare is still running around enterprises. Quite a few of you have asked if it might be possible for us to support NetWare — even if all we did was ...

Do Your Own Thing: Setting the IOS Version Number...

If you're managing a bunch of switches and routers, there's a good chance that most of them are made by Cisco. In that case, one of the things you'll likely care about is the IOS version. Out-of-the-b...

How She Got What She Wanted...

In a conversation a few days ago, one of our customers said to me, a little wistfully, "I really like Service-now, but I sure wish there was a way for me to see the exact things I want to see..."Well,...

Diving Into Discovery Devices and History...

If you've used Discovery at all, you're familiar with the Discovery Status form — but you may not realize that there's another, deeper layer of information available to you. This layer gives you the h...

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Diving Into ECC Queue Attachments...

I've discussed the ECC Queue before; it's the way that messages are sent from the Service-now instance to MID servers, and vice versa. Today I'm going to talk about a detail concerning these ECC Queue...