Discovery based on Predictive Intelligence

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Discovery based on Predictive Intelligence

    Discovery based on Predictive Intelligence enhances Service Mapping by using machine learning to analyze traffic data, application fingerprints, configuration items (CIs), and processes to generate connection suggestions. These suggestions help Service Mapping automatically identify and add relevant connections between components within application services, improving the accuracy and completeness of service maps.

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    Key Features

    • Connection Suggestions with Confidence Levels: Predictive Intelligence evaluates connections and ranks them by confidence—High, Medium, Low, or Very Low—indicating the likelihood a connection belongs to a service instance. For example, a High confidence connection is typically an internal component connection unique to an application.
    • Connection Rules: Rules based on connection suggestions allow you to control which connections are automatically added to services. Each rule specifies conditions derived from connection suggestion data, such as confidence level or specific CIs, enabling precise inclusion or exclusion of connections.
    • Automated Connection Management: When rules match connection suggestions, Service Mapping associates those connections with the rule and marks them as "Added By Rule." During rediscovery, it adds one level of CI connections at a time, ensuring incremental and manageable service mapping updates.
    • Rule Evaluation Process: Service Mapping evaluates local rules first, then global rules, applying them in order based on a configurable priority ("Order" attribute). Only undecided connection suggestions are considered, and rules can exclude connections from specific services.
    • Continuous Validation: Service Mapping validates existing traffic-based connections during each rediscovery against active connection rules, removing irrelevant connections and updating statuses to maintain accurate service maps.
    • Configurable Limits: By default, up to 20 local and 20 global rules are evaluated, but these limits can be adjusted to meet your environment’s needs.
    • Enablement Control: This feature is controlled by the saml.connectionsuggestions.active property at the product level. If traffic-based discovery was enabled before the Quebec release, discovery based on Predictive Intelligence is disabled by default and must be enabled explicitly.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Automates the discovery of application service connections using intelligent traffic analysis, reducing manual effort.
    • Improves the accuracy of service maps by prioritizing connections based on confidence and applying customizable rules.
    • Ensures service maps stay current through continuous validation and rule-based adjustments during rediscovery.
    • Allows tailored control through connection rules, enabling customers to specify exactly which connections to include or exclude.
    • Supports scalable and incremental updates to application services, avoiding overwhelming changes in each discovery cycle.

    Next Steps

    Customers should review and configure connection rules to align with their service mapping requirements, adjust rediscovery schedules to complete service mapping effectively, and enable the feature if it is not already active. Additionally, leveraging connection suggestions and rules will help refine service maps and maintain relevant connections within application services.

    Service Mapping uses data processed by Predictive Intelligence to generate suggestions for traffic-based connections.

    Connection suggestions generated using Predictive Intelligence

    Predictive Intelligence evaluates connections between application fingerprints, CIs, and processes, and ranks their relevancy. Service Mapping uses this information to create connections based on connection rules. It also generates connection suggestions for servers and load balancers for you to decide which connections to add or remove from the service instances. The confidence level indicates the likelihood of this connection being part of the service instances.
    • High - Commonly a connection to an internal component that is only used by this specific component or application.
    • Medium - Commonly a connection to a middleware component used by multiple services, such as IBM MQ or Oracle WebLogic Server.
    • Low - Commonly a connection to an application deployed on numerous servers in the organization, typically for monitoring purposes, such as Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agents or MID Server.
    • Very low - Commonly a connection to a central application used by the entire organization, for example, Microsoft Active Directory or Okta.
    If Predictive Intelligence is enabled, Service Mapping automatically adds connections to service instances based on connection rules. These suggestions are generated using traffic-related data from the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and the analysis of application fingerprints, CIs, and processes by Predictive Intelligence.

    Connection rules based on connection suggestions

    Connection rules enhance the connection suggestions generated using Predictive Intelligence. Each rule contains a condition that describes an aspect of a traffic-based connection. The fields available in conditions come from the Connection Suggestion [sa_ml_connection_suggestion] table, which is only populated when you run top-down discovery. You can base your rules directly on the connection suggestions. For example, create a rule for any connection with confidence level High. Alternatively, if you know which CIs must be part of the service instances, you can choose fields that point at these CIs.

    When Service Mapping adds a connection based on connection rules, it performs the following actions:
    1. Associating the connection rule with the connection suggestion.
    2. Changing the connection suggestion Decision attribute to Added By Rule.
    3. During service rediscovery, adding one level of the actual CI connections to relevant application services.

    Every time application services are rediscovered, Service Mapping adds only one level of CI connections. You may want to change the frequency in your discovery schedules to complete mapping of the application services using connection rules.

    Service Mapping evaluates only active connection rules and only for connection suggestions that have the Undecided decision attribute. The system applies the rules using the following algorithm:
    1. Service Mapping checks local rules for a CI connection. If multiple rules are relevant for the same CI connection, Service Mapping uses the Order attribute for the sequence: It evaluates the rules from least to greatest Order value. By default, Service Mapping checks only 20 local rules.
    2. If a connection suggestion matches the connection rule condition, Service Mapping adds this connection to the relevant application service.
    3. If Service Mapping finds no match for local rules, the system starts evaluating and applying global rules in ascending order using the Order attribute. By default, the system checks only 20 global rules.
    4. If a connection suggestion matches the rule condition, the system adds it to all application services. If a rule is configured to exclude suggested connections from certain services, the system does not apply this rule to these services.
    5. Every time Service Mapping rediscovers application services of the manual or discovered type, it validates automatically added traffic-based connections against the active connection rules. That way the system ensures that application services contain only relevant connections based on the current and active connection rules.
    6. If a rule is no longer valid, Service Mapping changes the decision attribute for its corresponding connection suggestion to Undecided. Service Mapping also removes the association between the connection rule and the connection suggestion. Unless Service Mapping can apply a different connection rule to CI connections that became irrelevant, Service Mapping removes them from the application services.

    If necessary, you can modify the number of the local or global connection rules that the system uses in the algorithm, as described in Properties installed with Service Mapping.

    Enabling discovery based on Predictive Intelligence

    Discovery based on Predictive Intelligence works at the product level. The sa_ml.connection_suggestions.active property controls this feature. If traffic-based discovery was enabled in your deployment prior to the Quebec release and you used it to discover at least one application service, discovery based on Predictive Intelligence is disabled by default.