As businesses increasingly rely on technology for their day-to-day operations, IT teams must find ways to streamline their processes to keep up with the pace of business.
A couple of products that help with this are IT Operations Management's Service Mapping and Discovery.
While the potential impact of Service Mapping and Discovery on businesses can be huge, it is important to make sure that the experience of working with these products is as smooth and frictionless as possible.
One way of doing that is to provide users with the tools to independently overcome any obstacles they encounter during setup or maintenance. Such tools should reduce the need to contact Now Support, and make sure the process is kept within the ServiceNow platform, reducing the need for external tools as much as possible.
For that purpose, we introduced the Command Validation Tool (CVT).
Specifically designed for Service Mapping and Discovery users who are familiar with Discovery Patterns and their usage by both product, CVT is a multi-purpose tool:
- It assists users with the setup process, helping them familiarize with the commands which require special permissions and help them remove any blockers at early stages.
- It assists users who already work with Service Mapping and Discovery, and now looking to discover new infrastructure or applications into ServiceNow.
- It gives users the ability to monitor continuously and be able to foresee and reduce any possible discovery errors in advance.
- It gives users the ability to troubleshoot any discovery failures they encounter on their own, either end-to-end or as a preliminary step before contacting Now Support, all within the ServiceNow platform.
How does CVT work?
Simply put, CVT allows users to execute commands used by Discovery Patterns on a set of IP addressess.
It helps ensure the validity of these commands, and troubleshoot any issues that may arise as a result of their execution, without having to execute a full fledge discovery.
One of the key benefits of CVT is that it provides a detailed analysis of each command execution, on each target IP address, and also helps pinpoint the root cause of any failures.
These results are being recorded into a table, so users can easily monitor and build reports on top of them.
CVT supports the execution of shell commands on Unix and Windows based servers, WMI queries on Windows based servers and SNMP queries on network devices.
Other types of commands, such as HTTP calls to serverless or cloud environments and SNMP Walk, are considered as well for future releases.
In addition to its many benefits, CVT is also easy to use. It doesn't need a fancy UI, since all the interaction is done via a standard table form, and the installation process is simple, so users can quickly and easily integrate it into their existing day-to-day processes.
CVT also comes with a variety of helpful features, such as the ability to decide the method for choosing a MID Servers, the ability to choose a specific credential to troubleshoot, and the ability to validate a full set of a chosen pattern commands.
In conclusion, CVT is an essential tool for any Service Mapping and Discovery user looking to reduce friction and increase the fluidity of their existing processes.
On how CVT works and more information about CVT, please refer to the following Knowledge Article: https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1123625
The official documentation (as of Tokyo release): https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/utah-it-operations-management/page/product/it-operations-ma...
You can find CVT in the following store app: https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/f73627bf89228510f877b828becf35...
2 Comments
