Understand Service Maps

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

2 minutes to read

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Summary of Understand Service Maps

Service maps provide visual representations of active alerts for Configuration Items (CIs) and illustrate the relationships between them. This feature helps users identify the sources of alerts and take necessary remediation actions. Available for all application services, service maps dynamically update as CI interdependencies and alert definitions change.

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Key Features

Active Alerts Display: Service maps show alerts linked to impacted CIs, enhancing visibility into issues that may affect service performance.
Entry Point Identification: From the Quebec release, service maps can pinpoint problems at entry points, although alerts are not displayed for these points.
Icons for Clarity: Various icons represent different types of CIs, such as applications, servers, and network points, making it easier to assess the service landscape at a glance.
Severity Color Coding: Alerts are color-coded by severity, ranging from critical (red) to OK (green), allowing users to prioritize responses based on urgency.
Access Points: Users can access service maps through the Application services list or the Monitored services list, facilitating quick navigation to relevant services.

Key Outcomes

By utilizing service maps, ServiceNow customers can quickly visualize and investigate the status of their services, understand the implications of CIs on service performance, and take informed action to address alerts. This tool ultimately aids in maintaining service reliability and operational efficiency.

Service maps show active alerts for CIs and the relationships between CIs. By viewing this information, you can better understand the source of alerts and take remediation steps. The service map is available for all application services.

About Service Maps

A service map shows alerts with impacted CIs and CI interdependencies. For example, changes to a connection between a host and hypervisor appear on the service map. As service map definitions change, the service map, alert, and impact information updates accordingly. From the Quebec release, there is enhanced visibility. When the alert is bound to the entry point, the service map identifies an entry point problem.

Note:

Alerts will not be displayed for the entry points on the service map.

You can open a service map from these places:

From the Application services list, you can view service maps for application services.
From the Monitored services list, you can view service maps for monitored services.

The following icons are used in service maps. The icon shapes are slightly different for application services.

Table 1. Service map icons
Icon	Description
()	Represents applications such as Microsoft IIS or SQL servers.
()	Represents physical and VM computers and servers.
()	Represents the network starting point. For example, Layer 3 devices appear toward the top of the map, and connected software and services appear near the end of the map.
()	Shows the number of redundant CIs.
()	Shows the workload between machines.
()	The gray connector shows a relationship between CIs.
()	Each CI with no active alerts box represents a network CI. A gray box represents a CI with no active alerts. Information about the CI is hidden.
()	Hides multiple CIs that are designated as redundant.
()	An impacted CI displays the color that represents the severity of the alert associated with the CI. Critical (red): Immediate action is required. The resource is either not functional or critical problems are imminent. Major (orange): Major functionality is severely impaired or performance has degraded. Minor (yellow): Partial, non-critical loss of functionality or performance degradation occurred. Warning (blue): Attention is required, even though the resource is still functional. OK (green): An alert is created. The resource is still functional. No color: No active alerts.
()	Represents a fiber channel, hard drives, or other data storage devices.
()	Represents related web services for the network such as NGINX or JBoss web server.

Note:

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