Configuration Management Database (CMDB) release notes

Release version: Yokohama

Updated March 5, 2025

13 minutes to read

The ServiceNow® Configuration Management Database (CMDB) application stores data about the infrastructure of your organization. CMDB was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.

CMDB highlights for the Yokohama release

Access changes to the CMDB Editor and CMDB Admin user roles:
- Starting with Yokohama Patch 4, the sn_cmdb_editor and sn_cmdb_admin user roles no longer have create, update, or delete access to records in the Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] class.
- Starting with Yokohama Patch 6, you can configure the sn_cmdb_admin and the sn_cmdb_editor user roles with the necessary permissions to perform some CMDB Workspace tasks by manually running a scheduled job.
Manually create a configuration item (CI) in CMDB Workspace that is verified by the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) and is unique within CMDB. Creating a CI using the IRE identification rules helps to maintain the integrity of CMDB.
Use the Now Assist for CMDB CI summarization skill to see a comprehensive summary for a CI, with details such as discovery and related incidents, directly on the configuration item (CI) form. Use the manage duplicate CIs skill for step-by-step guidance on how to use de-duplication templates to de-duplicate CIs.
The Configuration item summarizer AI agent accepts the sys_id of a CI and returns a full summary of Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data for the CI. The agent isn’t typically used as a standalone agent and any use case can access it.
View the various counts, such as the number of CIs and the number of CI types, for the CIs that are connected to the home node in Unified Map.
Apply filters that were previously available only to the coverage charts in the CMDB 360 dashboard in CMDB Workspace to all charts in the Discovery sources tile.
Use a condition builder or a custom script to restrict the list of de-duplication tasks that are assigned to a de-duplication template when de-duplicating CIs.

See Configuration Management for more information.

Important information for upgrading CMDB to Yokohama

Three new indexes (parent, type), (child, type), and (child, parent, type, port) are added to the CI Relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] table to improve the performance of Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) querying this table. This change is likely to increase upgrade time. For more information about the impact of this change during upgrade and to learn how to minimize that impact, see Increased Yokohama Upgrade Time due to cmdb_rel_ci index additions [KB1703367].

New in the Yokohama release

CMDB Workspace v8.0:

You can now use the Create CI experience in CMDB Workspace to create a CI with a lookup identifier entry that contains mandatory attributes. When you select a lookup identifier entry on the Required attributes page, those mandatory attributes now appear and you can set their values for proper IRE processing. For more information, see Create a CI manually in CMDB Workspace.

CMDB Workspace v7.6:

Access a centralized location with a comprehensive view of CI details by using the new CI form in CMDB Workspace. The form shows the attributes (key attributes are highlighted on a Summary page), tags, resources, activities, relationships, related services, health state, performance indicators, and CMDB 360 data that is associated with the CI. While viewing, you can also modify many of those CI details. For information about all the details on a CI form, see Manage CI details in CI Form.
Access the Data Certification dashboard in CMDB Workspace. The Data Certification dashboard provides the insights about the data certification activities and progress, policies and tasks, reports about certification instances, charts that show the aging certification tasks, and group and individual workloads. For more information, see Data Certification Dashboard.
Create or manage a shared preset. Save Unified Map filter settings as shared presets that any user on the team can access. This task requires the sn_cmdb_admin, sm_admin, or admin role.
Access Unified Map from the main navigation panel. Access Unified Map from the main navigation panel by navigating to All > CMDB Workspace > Unified Map.
Archival and destroy processes of certification policy related records, are now separated from those processes for records of all other policy types. This separation facilitates the extension of the retention period of certification policy records, as follows:
- The table cleanup rule for table CMDB Data Management Policy Executions [cmdb_data_management_policy_execution], which is stored in the Auto Flushes [sys_auto_flush] table, now excludes certification policy execution records from recurring cleanups.
  
  Retaining certification policy execution records instead of deleting them after 7 days is useful in situations where those records are needed for audits and are also useful for the Data Certification Dashboard, which is populated by these records.
- The Archive CMDB Data Management Tasks archive rule, that applied to all CMDB Data Manager policy execution records, now excludes certification policy records. At each archive run, this archive rule is configured to also automatically archive its related records in table CMDB Data Management Certification Task To Document [sn_cmdb_ws_dm_certification_task_to_document] (Archive Related Records).
- The archive rule, Archive Certification Instances, is added to specifically archive certification policy execution records from the CMDB Data Management Policy Execution [cmdb_data_management_policy_execution] table. This new archive rule is configured to archive certification policy execution records 2 years after creation, and to destroy those records 7 years after they are archived.
- The archive rule, Archive Certification tasks, is added to specifically archive certification task records from the CMDB Data Management Task [cmdb_data_management_task table].
- The archival of related records in table CMDB Data Management Certification Task To Document [sn_cmdb_ws_dm_certification_task_to_document] is now moved as an Archive Related Records entry from the Archive CMDB Data Management Tasks archive rule to the new Archive Certification tasks archive rule.

SGC Central

Use the Service Graph Connector Central view, also known as the SGC Central view, in the CMDB Workspace to discover and install connectors, and then effectively manage the full life cycle of creating, editing, monitoring, and debugging connections.

Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Use the new Now Assist for CMDB agentic workflows, AI agents, and skills. The Now Assist CI summarizer AI agent summarizes the key details for CIs, such as the discovery and incident details, directly on the CI forms. The Manage duplicate CIs skill guides you step by step on how to use the deduplication templates to help maintain the health and integrity of CMDB.

Use Now Assist to search the CMDB for CIs

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

Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance

Data governance can be an overwhelming task. The CMDB Governance agentic workflow supports admins and owners by methodically working through the process of improving CMDB data governance. The objective is to ensure that users trust their data for the evolving outcomes they want to achieve.

Create a CI using Now Assist

Occasionally, you might need to create a CI manually. To help you, the workflow accepts your natural language request and verifies that it understands which class the new CI should belong to. The workflow then checks IRE policies to determine the required attributes for the CI and request that information. After you provide sufficient data, the workflow uses IRE to ensure that the proposed CI is not a duplicate, and then creates the Cl.

Configuring Unified Map — Admin settings

Configure general Unified Map settings for the workspace on your instance. Only a user with the sn_cmdb_admin role can configure these settings.

Viewing a summary of Unified Map contents in the Overview panel

Use the new Overview panel to show the summary data for a map that is associated with the home node, including the counts and types of CIs, connections, and discovery sources.

Editing maps in Unified Map

While you work in the map editor, you can add CIs to the map and remove CIs from the map. You can also add, modify, and delete CI relationships in the CMDB.

Quick start tests for CMDB

After upgrades and deployments of new applications or integrations, run quick start tests to verify that CMDB works as expected. If you customized CMDB, copy the quick start tests and configure them for your customizations.

Changed in this release

Access changes for the sn_cmdb_editor and sn_cmdb_admin user roles

Starting with Yokohama Patch 4 (zbooted or upgraded), access has been reduced for the sn_cmdb_editor (CMDB Editor) and the sn_cmdb_admin (CMDB Admin) user roles which are used in CMDB Workspace. The sn_cmdb_editor and sn_cmdb_admin user roles no longer have create, update, or delete access to records in the Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] class.
Starting with Yokohama Patch 6 (zbooted or upgraded), you must manually run the scheduled job 'Remove CMDB Roles from ITIL roles and Add CUD access to sn_cmdb_admin/sn_cmdb_editor roles to configure the sn_cmdb_admin and the sn_cmdb_editor user roles with the permissions that are necessary for performing some CMDB Workspace tasks.
This scheduled job modifies user roles as follows:
- Updates the itil user role to no longer contain the sn_cmdb_editor user role, and updates the itil_admin user role to no longer contain the sn_cmdb_admin user role.
- If those permissions don't exist, updates the sn_cmdb_admin and the sn_cmdb_editor user roles with create, update, and delete access to the Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] class. For more information about the 'Remove CMDB Roles from ITIL roles and Add CUD access to sn_cmdb_admin/sn_cmdb_editor roles' scheduled job, see Remove sn_cmdb_admin from itil_admin and sn_cmdb_editor from itil, and then add create/update/delete access to cmdb_ci table for sn_cmdb_admin / sn_cmdb_editor [KB2290506].

CMDB Workspace v6.3

Apply the filters that were previously available only to the coverage charts to all charts in the Discovery sources tile in the CMDB 360 dashboard. For example, you can filter out non-CMDB tables or include records only from principal classes. For more information, see CMDB 360 experience in CMDB Workspace.
Use a condition builder or a custom script to narrow down the list of de-duplication tasks that are assigned to a template. For more information, see Create a de-duplication template.
Use the new Allow empty field values option to allow or disallow certification of empty value fields when creating a certification policy type in CMDB Data Manager. For more information, see Create a CMDB Data Manager policy in CMDB Workspace.

CMDB Workspace v6.4

You can now use dot-walking when setting assignments for the User Field or User Group Field options for CMDB Data Manager policies (such as Certification). Also, when converting legacy certification schedules into Data Manager Certification policies, existing dot-walking settings are preserved. For more information, see Create a CMDB Data Manager policy in CMDB Workspace.

CMDB Workspace v7.4

In the CMDB Workspace version 7.4, you can now do the following tasks:

Manually create a CI in CMDB Workspace that complies with its class identification rule and other class requirements, and is tested for uniqueness in CMDB, to help ensure that the CI is valid and maintains the integrity of CMDB. For more information, see Create a CI manually in CMDB Workspace.
Set the CMDB Health dashboard to use the legacy methods to calculate the completeness, correctness, and compliance KPIs. That legacy calculation method relies on settings of proportional weights of metrics within the aggregated score of KPIs and was used up until the Washington DC release. By default, those weights aren’t used in the calculations of KPI scores.

Also, the CMDB Health dashboard now shows the overall score, which by default, is a simple average of the aggregated scores of the completeness, correctness, and compliance KPIs.

CMDB Workspace v7.5

In the CMDB Workspace version 7.5, you can now do the following tasks:

Delete CMDB Data Manager retirement definitions in CMDB Workspace (other than the cmdb_ci retirement definition). For more information, see Delete a CMDB Data Manager retirement definition.
Configure a CMDB Data Manager certification policy to disallow reviewers, to update fields' value while reviewing CIs in a certification task. Administrators can clear the Allow updates to field values option to prevent reviewers from updating non-compliant field values into compliance, resulting in rejecting those CIs. For more information, see Create a CMDB Data Manager policy in CMDB Workspace.
Schedule a de-duplication template for daily, weekly, monthly, or periodic runs for continuous remediation of duplicate CIs. For more information, see Schedule a de-duplication template.
Receive notifications from CMDB Data Manager about certification and attestation tasks, that are incomplete or overdue. For more information, see Components related to CMDB Data Manager.
Review and process tasks of your direct reports and of members of any user group that you manage. For more information about accessing these tasks in CMDB Data Manager, see My Work view in CMDB Workspace.
Reject a CMDB Data Manager life-cycle task in CMDB Workspace. For more information, see Review CMDB Data Manager tasks in CMDB Workspace.
Use the Create CI experience with a preset class when drilling down a class in the CI Summary chart on the Home view of CMDB Workspace. For more information about creating CIs manually while applying IRE processes, see Create a CI manually in CMDB Workspace.

Update to the Walk stage reports on the CSDM Data Foundations dashboard

The Technical Service Offerings with Support Group or Change Group report now includes data that meets the sys_class _name = offering parameter.

Table label changes

The following table labels have changed:

The label for the cmdb_ci_service_auto table is now Service Instance instead of Application Service.
The label for the cmdb_ci_service_technical table is now Technology management service instead of Technical service.

Class descriptions showing in the user interface

The descriptions for the base system classes are now integrated into CI Class Manager and appear in the Description field, on the Basic Info page for a class.

Reflow for configurable workspace

The CMDB configurable workspace supports reflow, which enables pages and content to be zoomed up to 400% through your browser settings without loss of content or functionality.

Deprecations

CMDB Data manager on Core UI is now deprecated and no longer supported or available for new activation. CMDB Workspace provides the latest experience for this functionality. For more information, see CMDB Data Manager experience in CMDB Workspace.

Activation information

CMDB is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is active by default.

Accessibility information

Accessibility improvements

Accessibility improvements were completed to create a configurable workspace that supports Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA conformance.

Reflow

The Configurable Workspace supports reflow, which enables pages and content to be zoomed up to 400% through your browser settings without loss of content or functionality. Additionally, content can be enlarged without scrolling in two dimensions at a width equivalent to 320 CSS pixels or a height equivalent to 256 CSS pixels. Page layouts are transformed into a vertical, stacked view automatically when users increase browser zoom to 400%.

This enhancement helps users with low vision or who have trouble seeing web content in a browser due to the monitor size, device type, poor lighting, or other situations. Reflow can be turned off with a system property for instances, experiences, and pages. See Reflow for Configurable Workspace for the details.