Now assist for CMDB helps the CMDB administrator to reduce the manual efforts, eliminate duplicate CI and improve data quality. ServiceNow is focusing on 4 major areas where this technology can be beneficial
- Recommend - Now assist can provide the recommendations/suggestions to improve your CMDB health and help in defining the CMDB Governance Proces
- Converse - Now assist can act as virtual assistant hence you can ask any queries related to CI in their natural language and receives useful responses
- Search - Now assist can enhance the search capability hence you can easily retrieve any information related to CI from CMDB
- Summarize - Now assist can summarize the CI hence you can get the key pointers about CI
Plugin required:
- Plugin Name - Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
- Plugin ID - sn_cmdb_gen_ai
- Latest Version - 2.0.0 Compatibility - Yokohama Patch 1, Yokohama, Xanadu Patch 7, Xanadu Patch 3
Key highlights:
Two key capabilities introduced in Yokohama release to assist CMDB administrator
- Manage Duplicate CIs
- CI Summarization
Manage Duplicate CIs: This skill helps us to understand the state of duplicate CIs in ServiceNow instance. Now Assist Panel provides guidance on how to address the duplicate CIs by either prompting to use the existing de-duplication template or reviewing the existing ones to resolve the duplicates. Additionally, it also help us to identify the root cause of the duplication
CI Summarization: This capability allows us to get the key information about CI either on CMDB workspace or UI16. This information includes CI owner, discovery, related records like incidents and changes, associated business/app services and any vulnerabilities etc.,
Step-by-Step procedure to enable the Now assist for CMDB:
Step 1: Activate the Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) by navigating to System Definition-->Plugins
Step 2: Navigate to Now Assist Admin-->Overview to enable the skills
Step 3: Select 'Now Assist Feature' from top and choose 'CMDB' from Technology
Step 4: Enable the skills by clicking on 'Turn on' & 'Activate Skill' for Manage Duplicate CIs and CI Summarization respectively
Manage Duplicate CI
Step 5: Click on ‘Now Assist Icon’ on the Instance banner to open the now assist panel
Step 6: Click the Manage Duplicate CIs to understand the state of duplicate CIs in your instance. This will show the results based on the CI class and then you can remediate either by using the existing de-duplication template or reviewing the existing ones. Additionally, you can also get the prompt for identify the root cause of duplication
Note: Ensure that the CMDB health scheduled job for correctness is enabled in your instance
CI Summarizations
Step 7: Navigate to Now Assist Admin-->Now Assist Feature-->CMDB-->View Details and then open 'CI summarization' skills
Step 8: Toggle the Display bar under Select Display option and then click on Done
Step 9: Open any CI either in workspace or UI16 where you can see 'Summarize' button
UI16:
Workspace:
Step 10: Click on 'Summarize' button to see the key information about the configuration items
Benefits:
- Improve the productivity
- Streamlining the processes
