Exploring CMDB success advisor

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated May 25, 2026
  • 5 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    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 Exploring CMDB success advisor

    The CMDB success advisor application helps ServiceNow customers enhance the quality and accuracy of their Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data. It allows users to review CMDB Data Manager policies and settings to identify improvement areas within Data Foundations and Hardware Asset Management (HAM). By focusing on critical configuration item (CI) classes and hardware model categories, the advisor enables targeted data quality improvements essential for organizational processes.

    Show full answer Show less

    CMDB success advisor users

    • CMDB administrators (with sncmdbadmin role) can configure and improve CMDB data accuracy, manage principal classes, monitor CI data quality, and analyze integration coverage for Data Foundations and HAM. Additional roles like cmdbinstadmin, pduser, and pdadmin enable managing Service Graph Connector connections and Discovery/Service Mapping patterns.
    • CMDB users (with sncmdbuser role) have read-only access to dashboards in Service Graph Workspace, allowing them to monitor data quality metrics and remediation progress but without access to settings or integrations.
    • CMDB editors (with sncmdbeditor role) can view dashboards and have write access to CMDB records outside the advisor. They can monitor metrics and remediation progress but cannot modify settings or integrations within the advisor.

    Benefits

    • Focused CMDB setup: Dashboards are scoped to principal CI classes based on incident, problem, and change activity or hardware model categories for HAM, enabling use-case-driven CMDB configuration.
    • Improved visibility: Users can view detailed CI data quality metrics, including missing attributes, stale records, duplicates, and discovery source breakdowns for Data Foundations, and hardware model metrics for HAM.
    • Continuous data quality improvement: Key performance indicators (KPIs) across principal classes and hardware categories track completeness, duplication, stale data, and integration coverage, supported by remediation tracking and guided resolution steps.
    • Data quality improvement suggestions: Playbooks provide guided remediation for common issues such as stale CIs, duplicate records, missing serial numbers, and asset/CI mismatches.
    • Better alignment of CMDB rules and policies: Enables alignment of Data Manager ownership policies, reconciliation rules, synchronization rules, asset creation rules, and status mappings with summary views for gap analysis.
    • Improved data coverage and accuracy: Integration sources and discovery patterns are analyzed to ensure comprehensive and accurate data population for both Data Foundations and HAM.

    Use cases

    • Data Foundations: Enhance data quality for principal CI classes critical to incidents, changes, and problems by monitoring attribute completeness, stale or duplicate records, and integration coverage.
    • Hardware Asset Management (HAM): Improve hardware data quality by addressing missing model IDs, serial numbers, locations, duplicates, and aligning asset and CI states to support lifecycle tracking and financial reporting.

    Next steps

    Customers can proceed by configuring and utilizing CMDB success advisor tailored to their specific business outcomes in Data Foundations and HAM. The application provides dashboards, metrics, playbooks, and configuration guidance to support ongoing CMDB data quality improvements and operational effectiveness.

    Learn about CMDB success advisor and review the benefits it can provide for different users in your organization.

    CMDB success advisor overview

    With the CMDB success advisor application, you can review CMDB Data Manager policies and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) settings to identify areas where improvements can be made in Data Foundations and the Hardware Asset Management (HAM) application. The advisor uses customized CMDB metrics to improve data quality for targeted configuration item (CI) classes, identifying and monitoring the CI classes most critical to your organizational processes to enable complete and accurate data in Data Foundations, and tracking hardware model categories for HAM.

    CMDB success advisor users

    Table 1. Users
    User Description Additional roles required
    CMDB administrator Users with the sn_cmdb_admin role can configure and improve CMDB data accuracy based on specific business use cases.

    With targeted CI tracking, practical data integration suggestions, and application-specific dashboards, the CMDB success advisor enables CMDB administrators to improve CMDB data accuracy and achieve key business outcomes.

    For Data Foundations, administrators can select and manage principal classes, monitor data quality across the CI classes most critical to incidents, changes, and problems, and use integration coverage analysis to make sure the right data sources are keeping the CMDB accurate and complete.

    For Hardware Asset Management, administrators can focus on critical hardware model categories to improve normalization rates, asset life cycle tracking, and data accuracy for business outcomes like HAM.
    cmdb_inst_admin
    Required to manage Service Graph Connector connections in SGC Central through CMDB success advisor.
    pd_user
    Required to view Discovery and Service Mapping Patterns through CMDB success advisor with read-only access.
    pd_admin
    Required to modify Discovery patterns through CMDB success advisor with write access.
    CMDB user Users with the sn_cmdb_user role can view CMDB success advisor dashboards in read-only mode from the Insights view in Service Graph Workspace.

    With Dashboard tab access only, CMDB users can monitor data quality metrics and remediation progress across principal classes and hardware model categories. The Settings and Integrations tabs aren't available to these users.

    For Data Foundations, CMDB users can view CI data quality metrics by principal CI class, including missing attributes, stale records, duplicate CIs, and discovery source breakdown.

    For Hardware Asset Management, CMDB users can view hardware asset metrics by model category and integration source, including missing model ID, serial number, location, duplicates, and asset state.

    		 None
    CMDB editor Users with the sn_cmdb_editor role can view CMDB success advisor dashboards from the Insights view in Service Graph Workspace, with write access on CMDB records outside the application.

    With Dashboard tab access only in CMDB success advisor, CMDB editors can monitor data quality metrics and remediation progress across principal classes and hardware model categories. The Settings and Integrations tabs aren't available to these users.

    For Data Foundations, CMDB editors can view CI data quality metrics by principal CI class, including missing attributes, stale records, duplicate CIs, and discovery source breakdown.

    For Hardware Asset Management, CMDB editors can view hardware asset metrics by model category and integration source, including missing model ID, serial number, location, duplicates, and asset state.

    		 None

    CMDB success advisor benefits

    The following benefits are available to CMDB administrators across both Data Foundations and HAM.

    Benefit Feature Users
    Focused CMDB setup for specific business outcomes

    For Data Foundations, advisor dashboard scope is built from principal classes recommended based on incident, problem, and change (IPC) activity. If IPC data is unavailable, classes are ranked by how widely they are used across your CMDB. For new instances with no historical data, a set of default classes is suggested.

    For HAM, advisor dashboard scope is defined by hardware model categories.

    		 Use-case-driven CMDB configuration.

    To learn more, see: CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations setup and Set up CMDB success advisor for HAM

    		 CMDB administrator
    Improved visibility

    For Data Foundations, view CI data quality metrics by principal CI class, including missing attributes, stale records, duplicate CIs, and discovery source breakdown.

    For HAM, view hardware asset metrics by model category and integration source.

    		 Dashboard with consolidated insights and metrics

    To learn more, see: Monitoring CMDB data quality using dashboard metrics in CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations and Monitoring CMDB data quality using dashboard metrics in CMDB success advisor for HAM
    • CMDB administrator
    • CMDB user
    • CMDB editor
    Continuous data quality improvement

    For Data Foundations, track KPIs for CI completeness, stale records, duplicates, and integration coverage across principal classes.

    For HAM, track KPIs for missing model ID, serial number, location, duplicates, and asset state.

    		 KPI details access from the dashboard for metric monitoring, remediation tracking, and guided resolution steps

    To learn more, see: Monitoring CMDB data quality using dashboard metrics in CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations and Monitoring CMDB data quality using dashboard metrics in CMDB success advisor for HAM
    • CMDB administrator
    • CMDB user
    • CMDB editor
    Data quality improvement suggestions

    For Data Foundations, playbooks target principal class issues such as stale CIs and duplicate records.

    For HAM, guided playbooks address hardware issues such as missing serial numbers and asset/CI mismatches.

    		 Remediation actions panel available for a chart in the dashboard

    To learn more, see: Improving CMDB data quality for Data Foundations and Improving CMDB data quality for HAM
    • CMDB administrator
    • CMDB user
    • CMDB editor
    Better alignment of CMDB rules and policies

    For Data Foundations, align CMDB Data Manager ownership policies and reconciliation rules for principal classes.

    For HAM, configure synchronization rules, asset creation rules, and status mappings.

    		 Settings summary for gap analysis and configuration guidance

    To learn more, see: Analyze CMDB settings for Data Foundations and Analyze CMDB settings for HAM

    		 CMDB administrator
    Improved CMDB data coverage and accuracy

    For Data Foundations, evaluate integration sources with attribute-level coverage analysis across principal classes.

    For HAM, review SGC and Discovery pattern rankings for hardware model categories.

    		 Data integrations summary for reviewing and evaluating integration sources

    To learn more, see: Analyzing data integrations for improving Data Foundations and Analyzing data integrations for improving HAM data coverage

    		 CMDB administrator

    Use cases

    You can use CMDB success advisor for the following business outcomes:
    • Data Foundations: Improve data quality across the principal classes your organization relies on for incidents, changes, and problems. Monitor attribute completeness, detect stale and duplicate records, and evaluate integration coverage to verify the right data sources are populating your CMDB. For more information, see Using CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations.
    • HAM: Improve hardware data quality across model categories such as computers, servers, and printers. Identify and fix missing model IDs, serial numbers, and locations, eliminate duplicate CIs and align asset and CI states to support accurate life cycle tracking and financial reporting. For more information, see Using CMDB success advisor for HAM.

    What to explore next

    To learn more about configuring and using CMDB success advisor for supported business outcomes, see: