---
sourceDocument: Brazil IT Operations Management
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-operations-management

 Release :

    - brazil

ft:locale :

    - en-US

ft:publication_title :

    - Brazil IT Operations Management

ft:clusterId :

    - itom

bundleId :

    - itom

workflow :

    - Technology


---

# Top-down discovery schedules

# Top-down discovery schedules {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Brazil  
Updated September 10, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 3 minutes to read
Summarize  
![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI  
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.  

## Summary of Top-down discovery schedules

Top-down discovery schedules in Service Mapping automate the regular rediscovery of application services by discovering all configuration items (CIs) involved in these services and updating their maps.
This process ensures that your CMDB reflects the current state of application services consistently.
Show full answer Show less  
By default, Service Mapping includes generic schedules that discover all application-type CIs and load balancer services once daily, which typically suffices for regular updates.

## Custom Discovery Schedules

If your organization requires more frequent or targeted rediscovery, you can create custom schedules tailored to specific needs. The main types of custom top-down discovery schedules include:

* **Services:** Discover all CIs for services matching defined filters, such as business criticality or operational state. Useful for rediscovering high-priority or frequently changing application services more often than daily.
* **Services belonging to a group:** Discover CIs for services assigned to specific groups (e.g., geographic locations like EMEA or US). This enables localized rediscovery aligned with organizational structure.
* **For CI types:** Discover all application CIs of a specific type, allowing you to prioritize discovery for CI types that change more frequently. More specific schedules take precedence over general ones to avoid duplicate discoveries.
* **Specific CIs:** Discover individual CIs explicitly, which is helpful for troubleshooting or rediscovering problematic CIs that frequently cause errors. This schedule takes precedence over CI type schedules.

## Horizontal Discovery Integration

Part of top-down discovery involves verifying that hosts or devices related to application CIs exist in the CMDB. If a host or load balancing device is missing, Service Mapping triggers horizontal discovery to detect and update host information accordingly.

You can also manage schedules to trigger horizontal discovery separately, including:

* Standard horizontal discovery scheduling
* Serverless discovery scheduling using protocols like REST without IP addresses
* Host-based serverless discovery using an existing host as a proxy

## Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

* Maintain up-to-date application service maps automatically, improving accuracy and reliability of your CMDB.
* Customize discovery frequency and scope based on service criticality, organizational structure, or CI type to optimize performance and reduce unnecessary discovery load.
* Address discovery errors and special cases by scheduling rediscovery of specific CIs.
* Ensure host information consistency through integrated horizontal discovery triggered as needed.  
Learn about schedules that trigger top-down discovery of application
services.

When you define a new application service, Service Mapping performs discovery of
all CIs that participate in this application service and creates its map. After the initial
mapping is complete, Service Mapping regenerates application service maps
regularly by rediscovering the CIs making up an application service.  
By default, Service Mapping is preconfigured with these generic schedules:

All Applications
:   This schedule triggers the top-down discovery of all CIs of the application type
    \[cmdb_ci_appl\].

Load Balancer Service
:   This schedule starts the top-down discovery of all CIs of the load balancer service type
    \[cmdb_ci_lb_service\].
The generic schedules trigger discovery of all applications and load balancer services in your organization once a day. Typically, these preconfigured schedules are enough to update information for application services. However, if it is necessary to discover specific CIs or services more frequently, you can create the following custom discovery schedules: {#top-down-discovery-schedules__table_knt_3pl_bhb__entry__3}

| Schedule type | Description | Example |
|-|-|-|
| Services | Service Mapping discovers all CIs belonging to certain services that answer filtering criteria. | In your organization, some application services are more critical than others and it is important for you to rediscover such services with high criticality more frequently. Create a custom discovery schedule to discover all services with the business criticality value set to most critical. Alternatively, certain services in your organization are undergoing changes more often than once a day. You may want to create custom schedules to rediscover such services more frequently. You can also create a schedule of this type to discover application services in a sub-production instance, where services are not in the operational state yet. |
| Services belonging to a group | Service Mapping discovers all CIs belonging to services assigned to groups that answer filtering criteria. Service Mapping discovers only services located directly inside the group that answers defined filtering criteria. Service Mapping does not discover services inside embedded groups. Notice that you can define schedules based on service groups, even if your role does not have access to these service groups. | In a distributed organization with offices in several geographic locations, you may want to create a custom discovery schedule to rediscover services in one of these locations. For example, one schedule can trigger rediscovery of all services relevant for the EMEA site at 7am GMT. Another schedule can start rediscovery of services for the US headquarters at 7am PT. |
| For CI types | Service Mapping discovers all application CIs belonging to this application type. Some application CI types are prone to more frequent changes and updates than others, so you can manage the load by adjusting the discovery schedule to match the nature of each CI type. When you define discovery schedules based on application CI types, several schedules may apply to the same CI. To avoid discovering the same CIs more than once, the most specific schedule takes precedence. If you create separate schedules for a parent CI type and its child CI type, CIs belonging to the child type use the child schedule. If no child schedule exists, the parent schedule applies. This schedule discovers only CIs belonging to application services in the operational state. | If you modify a certain application more often than the rest of your applications, you may want to discover it more frequently than other CIs. In that case, create a custom discovery schedule for such an application CI type. |
| Specific CIs | Service Mapping discovers only one CI that you specified for this schedule. If you define a discovery schedule for a specific CI and a schedule for its CI type, Service Mapping uses the CI-specific schedule. The generic CI type schedule does not apply. This schedule discovers only CIs belonging to application services in the operational state. | For rare cases of rediscovering a specific CI that causes discovery errors frequently. |
[Table 1. Schedule types for top-down discovery]

{#top-down-discovery-schedules__table_knt_3pl_bhb}  
Part of discovering an application CI is identifying its host. Service Mapping checks if the device hosting this application CI exists in the CMDB. For a load balancer service, Service Mapping checks if the load balancing device hosting this load balancer service exists in the CMDB. If not, Service Mapping triggers Discovery to perform the horizontal discovery. As a result, Discovery performs host detection and updates the information on hosts in the CMDB. If necessary, you can manage the schedules that trigger horizontal discovery as described in:

* [Schedule a horizontal discovery](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/A3BVdNwrtvD7FvMzmPuJVA#t_CreateADiscoverySchedule "A discovery schedule determines what horizontal discovery searches for, when it runs, and which MID Servers are used. Create a discovery schedule for your local environment or a schedule for discovering the resources in your cloud service account.") --- for standard horizontal discovery.
* [Create a schedule for standard serverless Discovery](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/Wq8nUYjpZ3FWuqJEQ5zfYw#create-serverless-disco-schedule "After you create a pattern for standard serverless discovery, create a Discovery schedule and specify the pattern. Discovery triggers the pattern from the schedule rather than from a classifier.") --- for discovering CIs using a protocol such as REST, without using the IP address of any devices or hosts.
* [Create a schedule for host-based serverless Discovery](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/VdnnoMbxsy3Z6_tHU5zUIw#create-proxy-serverless-disco-schedule "Discovery triggers the pattern for host-based, serverless Discovery from the schedule rather than from a classifier.") --- for discovering CIs that reside on an already discovered host using this host as a Proxy server.
{#top-down-discovery-schedules__ul_int_pcb_wz}
**Related tasks**   

* [Schedule a top-down discovery by Service Mapping](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/UBOjz8AMUA_TfAK8aQSEEg "After Service Mapping discovers configuration items (CIs) belonging to your service instance for the first time, it then rediscovers CIs to find changes and updates. Create or modify discovery schedules to control how often Service Mapping rediscovers services or CIs. For example, you may create custom discovery schedules to avoid redundant stress on the infrastructure.")