Deploying Normalization Data Services

[Patrick DeCarl1]

Solution Overview 

Need to reduce duplication company records and model records because of discovery data? Well deploy Normalization Data Services with these steps. 

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Detailed Description

Deploy the Normalization Data Services following the Guided setup as documented via the doc site. Step through each 6 tasks. When you get to "Update Reference Qualifiers" just let it update the few records. My update set and steps below will help update the 700+ company reference fields. 

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Solution

Attached update set creates a new script include "canonicalServiceFilterCustom" to handle the missing filters needed for OOTB company fields that reference the company table. The automated steps via the Guided setup does not update any reference fields that has a condition. Ex: vender field on the asset table is filter down to vendor = true. Update set also creates three new dynamic filter options to handle these use cases with filter options on the company table. The new filters are "getCoreCompanyFilterCustomer", "getCoreCompanyFilterVendor" and "getCoreCompanyFilterManufacturer". Once update set is committed we need to do some manual updates as needed. So please open a new update set and track these changes. 

Nav to sys_dictionary table. I update my list view to match below screenshot. 

 

Based on screenshot above you will noticed some records do not have the new "CanonicalFilter" selected for the Dynamic ref qual. Reason why, the system in the steps during setup does not update any reference record with a reference qual. So to fix this, we will use the custom script include and dynamic filters I created via update set. 
Example sets to update records:

1. Filter n reference qual "vendor=true^EQ" (Should have at least 2 records)
2. Do a bulk update 
   1. select the "Use dynamic default" rows and change to true
   2. Select the "Dynamic ref qual" rows and change to "getCoreCompanyFilterVendor"
      Should have something like below:
      
3. Repeat sets 1 - 2 for others like customer = true

[Wildbeach]

Really helpful. I have implemented this in our non-prod environments so far and evaluating for a couple of days. We have a pretty clean company structure already, but the normalization plugin did some quality improvements at least. Anyway good for the future to have this in place.

//Per

[panduit-ronw]

Is this still valid 5 years later?  Has ServiceNow made any product improvements that addresses the need for this extra work in the OOTB version of NDS?

[Patrik Karlsson]

I just configured the Normalization Data Services and it still needs this for references that have a condition.

The Dynamic Filter Options included in the "CMDB-Normalization Data Services Custom Updates-v1.xml" are not working unless you add "new" in the scripts:
new canonicalServiceFilterCustom().getCoreCompanyFilterCustomer();

new canonicalServiceFilterCustom().getCoreCompanyFilterVendor();

new canonicalServiceFilterCustom().getCoreCompanyFilterManufacturer();