Discovery Pattern - Logs show "setAttribute" but it does not actually set attribute

[Robin J_]

Hello ServiceNow community! I have something which seems like a "bug" to me and could not wrap my head around it. Wanted to share it.

On the table: "cmdb_ci_win_server" I have two custom "String" fields:
Install Date:

Last BootUp Time:

As you can see only one of them is populated. I have created two extra extensions and steps for the default Windows OS - Servers pattern to pull two extra values from "cimv2/win32_operatingsystem". This works as expected for InstallDate but not for LastBootUpTime even if the values are shown in the "Horizontal Discovery Log".

See two screenshots:

The extensions and steps in Pattern Designer is equaly for both of these just that they are catching different values. Why is it that only one of these updates and the other is left blank? I have ensured that pattern is synced to mid server via "Sync Pattern". Also screenshots from my mid server files under: "agent\work\ndl"

For me this seems as a "bug". Can also share more screenshots from Pattern Designer, but here I can not see what is wrong since everything in the logs and checks looks good to me.

Any ideas ServiceNow Community?
PS: This is from my PDI which is on Tokyo, so maybe something there?

Kind regards,
Robin Jacobsen

[SiD2]

Hi @Robin J_ 

So you mean that in the CMDB CI post discovery you don't see these fields updated? Also check in the "Created CI" section in the pattern log to see which all attributes are populated for the CI.

[Robin J_]

Yep! Aha when checking creating CI I only see "install date" and not "last bootup time" actually. Any idea why since it on earlier steps see "set attribute" and since these two fields should be fairly equally created and configured. 

[SiD2]

Hi @Robin J_ 

I looked at the NDL and understood it can be done in much better way and suspect that could be the cause but not sure.

To confirm that, can you try re arranging the order of extension sections such that install date extension executes prior and see if that time install date is populated in the CI or not?

By the way do you see other CI attributes on the server CI which were populated during identification? Only these custom attributes are not reflecting?

[Robin J_]

Hello again,
Thanks a lot for all the answers.

Also when testing it showcases the value just fine:

The issue is that on "Creating CI" step it is not updating "Last BootUp Time" for some reason only "Install Date:

"Get Last BootUp Time" is already prior to "Get Install Date". "Install Date" populates but not "Last BootUp Time". These other steps (1-3) where just there out-of-the-box:

Other CI data also populates (from the same run as yesterday, also same picture posted above):

Tested to just delete the step "Get Install Date", sync new patterns to mid server and run it again. Then it did actually populate "Last BootUp Time", so looks like it is something "funky" when doing two WMI queries in a pattern and setting the values or something like that. Or if there is any policy/rule out-of-the-box which only updates one of these fields somehow? I have my instance (Tokyo - PDI) pretty out-of-the-box. Actually did the same exercise on lab 8.1 in Discovery course, but there we were only adding 1 extra value and field, here I am testing with 2 but will probably need to do it for 5-6 fields for a customer in the future 🙂

Here from a new Discovery run after deleting "Get Install Date" step:

Any advice on this? Or is it that there is some limitations with Pattern Designer or similar?
This is not a rush to figure out, since this is just from my own testing, else I would have created a HI case, so don't stress about this one 🙂

Kind regards and have a nice day!
- Robin