How to add applications and related information? CI, Asset or?

[sbay]

Hi

We have an Excel sheet with an overview of some of our main applications/business services, database instances and integrations. What would be the best practice to move these into ServiceNow? I'm a bit lost on how to use Software Models vs. Business Services vs. Application models vs. Catalog items (when what and how). Unfortunately neither the wiki nor the demo instances have shed any light on this - at least not so I understand it

Scenario 1: We have a BizTalk integration running on a Biztalk server - getting data from App1 and passing it to App2. Biztalk is currently just created as a Business service, but I would like to get an overview of what the different integrations are connecting to! Both App1 and App2 are created as Business services. At the end I would like to build a pretty little BSM and be able to view a list of affected services, if something is down - or just needs downtime for maintenance!

1. What type of record should the integration be created as?
2. What "categories" should be set to make it an integration?

Scenario 2: We have Lotus Notes as a Business service, and have several applications running on that platform.

1. What form should each Notes application be created in - and what CI category?
2. How do I then link the to the business service?

Scenario 3: We have quite a few applications that users can request, both stand-alone "utilities" and client/server applications.

1. What form should these be created in?
   1. Applications
   2. Software
   3. Catalog item

Generally, would it be best to stick to available fields predefined in ServiceNow, and then add addtional information in a linked knowledge article, or should i just go ahead and create 10-20 user fields which i need for additional information?

I have attached an Excel sheet with 2 tabs, with an extract of the document i would like to squeeze into ServiceNow!

Database instances seems fairly straight forward to me, so those I think I can manage to get in

[raking08]

I am new to SN and have a very similar situation. We are migrating a knowledge management data base into SN. I have about 200 tables of structured information. Most of this can be exported from its current database to Excel or access.

What I cannot imagine having to do is to recreate these tables column by column (most are text) as some tables have 20 columns and a few have >50 columns. all different based on the knowledge type. There must be some way to import this and create the list on the fly.

So far it seems there is no way to get an initial list creation from an upload of these tables.

Please let me know what I am missing

thx

r

[danielbilling]

Hej Sören,

This is a pretty hard question to answer as i don't know your desired outcome..eg. what issue are you trying to solve and what value(s) are you aiming for.

i'll give you my best guess answer

1. Most IT focused customers set business application = business service. it works, but only for IT.

in your case i would create a Business Service like "Integration Services", where Biztalk would be an application running a infrastructure. Second step would be to define Relationship types (fetch data from + push data to)   and create relations between Biztalk and APP1 and APP2. If you have multiple integration points to APP1 and APP2 you might consider create a new CI class for the "transfers"

2. In the lotus notes case i would use the same kind of structure you have for databases. So the business services would be your customer facing services which would be supported by the applications (CI class:cmdb_ci_app) that have a relationship with your Lotus notes instances. always work with relationships to build the structure.

3. this one is very hard to give a final answer to, because it depends on your future roadmap with ServiceNow.

If you want to start utilizing software distribution, Software and license tracking, Asset management...etc etc, you would most likely start with Applications = Business systems, Software = client/server installed sw. these should be then related to the product catalog as the product catalog controls mapping to Asset, Config and catalog items.

as for your fields question. Always try to stick to OOB fields, if you need additional field - make sure you have defined the value of having that info. who would use it, how often, what problem does it solve

It's easy to start making quick and dirty solutions but you'll end up in cleaning mode within 12-24 months.