Exploring ServiceNow Otto for CMDB

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring ServiceNow Otto for CMDB

    ServiceNow Otto for CMDB enhances your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) management by leveraging Agentic AI to streamline searching, summarizing, and remediating Configuration Items (CIs). It helps improve CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health by guiding you through workflows such as CI creation, duplicate remediation, and governance advice. Otto automates complex tasks while providing clear, step-by-step guidance to empower CMDB administrators and data owners.

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    Key Features

    • Create Configuration Item Agentic Workflow: Allows you to create CIs using natural language. It verifies class selection, enforces Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) rules, checks for duplicates, and ensures required attributes are provided before CI creation.
    • Provide Advice on CMDB Governance Workflow: Supports data admins and owners in methodically improving CMDB data trustworthiness by enhancing accuracy, completeness, and health.
    • Search CMDB Agentic Workflow: Enables natural language searches for CIs using multiple attributes. It intelligently generates appropriate queries, including keyword, single-table, and multi-table searches with relationship navigation.
    • Duplicate CI Remediator Workflow: Automates deduplication tasks by recommending actions, allowing review and modification before applying fixes to maintain CMDB integrity.
    • Manage Duplicate CIs Skill: Provides step-by-step guidance to identify, review, and remediate duplicate CIs. It facilitates creation and application of deduplication templates, previews remediation results, and helps identify root causes to prevent future duplications.
    • CI Summarization Skill: Presents concise summaries of key CI data such as discovery details, ownership, related incidents, alerts, problems, change requests, vulnerabilities, and associated service instances. This is useful across Incident Management, Change Management, and Event Management workflows.
    • Summarize CMDB Readiness Skill: Generates AI-driven summaries of CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health based on CMDB Success Advisor dashboards. It recommends remediation actions and updates dynamically with dashboard filter changes.
    • Service Graph Connector Diagnosis Skill: Automates diagnosis and resolution recommendations for errors in Service Graph Connectors, which import third-party data into the CMDB, reducing manual troubleshooting effort.

    Practical Benefits

    • Accelerates manual CMDB tasks such as CI creation and duplicate remediation using AI-driven workflows and skills.
    • Improves confidence in CMDB data by systematically enhancing data governance and health.
    • Enables efficient searching and summarization of CI information to support operational decision-making.
    • Reduces errors and data inconsistencies by automating diagnostics of Service Graph Connector import issues.
    • Supports proactive management by identifying root causes of duplication and guiding remediation planning.

    Next Steps for Customers

    Leverage ServiceNow Otto for CMDB to streamline CMDB management workflows and improve data quality. Use the provided AI-powered skills and workflows to automate routine tasks, enforce governance, and maintain a reliable CMDB that supports your IT operations and service management processes effectively.

    With the ServiceNow Otto for CMDB application, you can use Agentic AI to search the CMDB, summarize discovery, ownership and related information for a CI, and fix failed SGC import sets. You can also follow step-by-step guidance to help you remediate duplicate CIs, improve CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health .

    ServiceNow Otto for CMDB agentic workflows

    ServiceNow Otto for CMDB provides the following abilities:

    Create configuration item agentic workflow

    Occasionally, you might create a CI manually. To help you, the Create configuration item agentic workflow accepts your natural language request and verifies that it understands which class the new CI should belong to. The workflow then checks Identification and Reconciliation engine (IRE) rules to determine the required attributes for the CI and requests that information. After you provide sufficient data, the workflow promotes that the proposed CI includes the attributes that you requested, complies with IRE rules, and is not a duplicate. The workflow then creates the CI.

    The Create configuration item agentic workflow is particularly useful for adding CIs to tables accessed by Operational Technology because users might add physical CIs while unaware of the importance of managing CI data in the CMDB.

    To learn more, see Create a CI using ServiceNow Otto.

    Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow

    Data governance can be an overwhelming task. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow supports data admins and owners by methodically working through the many-faceted process of improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health. The objective is to help users to trust the data that they use for their work.

    To learn more, see Getting advice from ServiceNow Otto on CMDB governance.

    Search CMDB agentic workflow

    The Search CMDB agentic workflow enables you to search for CIs by specifying any of several attributes of the CIs of interest. The workflow accepts your natural language request, verifies your search goal, and then, depending on the information you provided, generates a keyword search, a single-table search with dot walks, or a multi-table search that involves relationship navigation. The workflow can infer CI relationship data to generate an appropriate query.

    To learn more, see Use ServiceNow Otto to search the CMDB.

    Duplicate CI remediator agentic workflow
    The Duplicate CI remediator agentic workflow completes the full range of deduplication tasks. The workflow presents its reasoning for each step so CMDB administrators can review the AI recommendations, modify the remediation actions if needed, and then perform the deduplication tasks.

    ServiceNow Otto for CMDB skills

    Manage duplicate CIs skill

    Duplicate CIs interfere with the integrity, reliability, and general health of CMDB. Resolve deduplication tasks with support from the ServiceNow Otto Manage duplicate CIs skill. CMDB administrators follow step-by-step guidance to perform remediation, and can preview remediation results before applying a template. The manage duplicate CIs skill accelerates the work that you normally perform manually.

    In this example, the manage duplicate CIs skill presents a list of classes with duplicate CIs and suggests possible actions. You can select an option or enter the action text in your own words:
    • Review de-duplication tasks, create de-duplication templates, assign tasks to templates, and run the templates.
    • Preview the results of applying a de-duplication template before you decide to apply it.
    • Identify the root cause of duplications so that you can review the groups of de-duplication tasks that share a common cause and possibly avoid the issue in the future.

    Selecting duplicate CIs to remediate.

    To learn more, see Let ServiceNow Otto help you to manage duplicate CIs.

    CI summarization skill

    View a concise summary of key CI data. You can select the CI on a CI form, in a workspace page, or on any list view. The summary can include discovery data, ownership, and key related items such as open incidents, alerts, problems, upcoming change requests, and security vulnerabilities. Additionally, the summary lists the service instances that the CI is part of. Summary information is useful while working in applications such as Incident Management, Change Management, and Event Management.

    Summary information.

    To learn more, see View CI information with the ServiceNow Otto CI summarization skill.

    Summarize CMDB readiness skill

    View an AI-generated summary of the CMDB success advisor for HAM or CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations dashboard data. The summary highlights the key findings on CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health, and recommends remediation actions to address the findings.

    The skill works alongside the HAM or Data Foundations tab of the CMDB success advisor dashboard. Each time you change the dashboard filters, you can regenerate the summary against the updated selection.

    To learn more, see Summarize CMDB readiness with the ServiceNow Otto skill.

    Service Graph Connector diagnosis

    Service Graph Connectors are integrations that facilitate data ingestion from third-party sources into the CMDB. Errors in Service Graph Connectors can disrupt the flow of configuration item (CI) data resulting in inconsistencies between the actual state of CIs and their CMDB records.

    The Service Graph Connector diagnosis skill automates error diagnosis and recommendation generation, enabling CMDB installation administrators to identify and resolve the issues. This automation reduces manual effort and saves time in debugging Service Graph Connectors issues.

    To learn more, see the following topics: