question Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings? in Common Service Data Model forum

Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Johannes — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:30:01 GMT

Our users want to use the Dependency View to visualize what Service Offerings their Business Services consists of.

Following the CSDM model, these are only referenced to each other, and will thus not show.

Is there any reason not "remediate" this by e.g. create a business rule automatically creating/maintaining relations based on the Service Offerings "Parent" field?

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

CMDB Whisperer — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:38:20 GMT

You don't need to do that. In ServiceNow you can define custom references that will be included in the Dependency view. Just go to Dependency Views --> Map Related Items and create a new record as shown below.

Note that depending on what node is the home node in your Dependency Map, you might have to click on the "Load More" option from the popup menu to get them to display.

Please mark as Correct Answer once you have verified this works for you. Thanks!

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Johannes — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:51:18 GMT

Thank you, Paul!
I was so certain that it did not show the references, that I did not bother to check.
Next time I try before I ask 😅

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Adi Schmid — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:57:56 GMT

I don't understand why I see the complete structure when I search for a service, but not when I search for an offering. When I click 'Load More' on the Offering, it still doesn't show the service. If anyone what I can set better here?

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Barry Kant — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 10:27:42 GMT

Hi Adi,

The references from related item works only from the parent side (in this case the service) which is kind of weird as the reference itself is an attribute in the service offering record.

BR,

Barry

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Adi Schmid — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 12:05:10 GMT

This is indeed weird. But at least it's not a mistake on my part.

Thank you and have a nice day

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Johannes — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 13:21:00 GMT

So, guess a relationship still needs to be created then to show both directions..

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Barry Kant — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 13:24:24 GMT

hi Johannes,

the only answer to that is no.
As that impacts the Impact Analysis output (potential loop).

BR,

Barry

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Johannes — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 13:29:21 GMT

Ok, so since "upstream" references are not be shown, and upstream relations must not be created, Dependency View can not be utilized for this use case.

Really looking forward to a unified solution 😉

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

CMDB Whisperer — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 14:12:22 GMT

@Barry Kant Not sure I follow that logic. If you create a relationship from the Service to the Service Offering then this won't create a loop, if by "loop" you mean circular dependency. The Service depends on the Offering. I think by "both directions" Johannes meant "viewing the relationships between the Services and Offerings in the dependency map, regardless of which side of that relationships is selected as the primary node." There is no CI relationship going in the other direction, from the Offering to the Service, so there is no "loop" potential that I can see. And I agree with Johannes's comment about the problem in the dependency map that the references are not visible if you are coming from one side. There is probably a change that could be made to the actual diagramming logic to fix this so that, at the very least, the relations are shown when selecting "Load More", but in lieu of that I'm not seeing a danger in creating a relationship from the Service to the Offering. Can you elaborate on this further?

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Barry Kant — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:07:18 GMT

I got confused by the both direction part indeed.
If the intend is purely visualization then yes the relation willl facilitate that indeed.
and indeed while going in reverse direction it needs a load more action.
will come back to this soon.

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

PeterH2 — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 04:32:01 GMT

Yes, it only works one way which is provided by the Related Items [ngbsm_related_item] table definition linking Service [cmdb_service] CI's to Offering [service_offering] related items via the 'parent' field.
I do not see a way to get the reverse to work using Related Items definitions.

Re: Relating Business Services to Service Offerings?

Community Alums — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:02:57 GMT

Hi @Barry Kant was there any action planned? To me it's a gap in the dependency view, you should be able to see the services (and potentially the taxonomy node and portfolio as well)

Current situation (what is shown):
Application service>>Service offering

Expected (to be able to configure at least if not by default):
Application service>>Service offering>>Service>>Taxonomy node>>Service Portfolio