ServiceNow Otto for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) release notes
Summarize
Summary of ServiceNow Otto for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Release Notes
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB enhances the management and quality of your Configuration Management Database by improving data accuracy, enabling natural language searches, and automating common CMDB tasks. Integrated with the ServiceNow platform, Otto provides conversational AI capabilities that support multimodal interactions and autonomous orchestration across workflows, helping you maintain a healthier, more reliable CMDB.
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Key Features
- AI Licensing Tiers: The ServiceNow AI Platform offers three licensing tiers—Foundation, Advanced, and Prime—each enabling progressively advanced AI features, from basic insights to autonomous AI-driven actions.
- CMDB Data Summaries: AI-generated summaries provide insights into CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health, along with suggested remediation steps, particularly for Hardware Asset Management (HAM) dashboards.
- Dynamic Intelligent Record Enrichment (IRE): Compare manual static IRE processes with AI-powered dynamic IRE for improved data enrichment efficiency.
- De-duplication Automation: Use the de-duplication task resolution assistant skill to automate typical user actions for identifying and resolving duplicate configuration items (CIs).
- Natural Language Search: Search the Service Graph database and CMDB using natural language queries, supporting complex relationship-based searches across multiple CI tables.
- Enhanced CI Contextual Help: Get detailed descriptions and attribute information for CIs and classes directly in forms, dashboards, and workspace views by activating the External Content Connectors plugin and crawling product documentation.
- Agentic Workflows: Leverage workflows like “Assess CMDB Impact” to analyze the potential impact of changes or incidents on upstream services and CIs, and “Recommend Service Graph Connector” to identify optimal integration sources for CI data ingestion.
- Business Application Candidate Agent: Automatically discover and propose business applications to associate with application services, reducing manual mapping and improving governance using AI clustering and feedback loops.
- Role and Access Updates: New role requirements include sncmdbadmin for creating configuration items and nowassistpaneluser for running AI skills within the Now Assist panel, alongside the cmdbdedupadmin role for de-duplication tasks.
Activation and Upgrade Notes
- ServiceNow Otto for CMDB is available for installation via the ServiceNow Store.
- To enable detailed CI and class descriptions in Now Assist, activate the 'External Content Connectors' plugin, install the 'ServiceNow Product Documentation' connector, and perform a documentation crawl as per configuration instructions.
- The default large language model (LLM) provider has changed from the Now LLM Service to a third-party LLM for new or inactive AI assets, though the Now LLM Service remains available for manual selection.
- Ensure proper roles are assigned to users to access new agentic workflows and AI skills effectively.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
By implementing ServiceNow Otto for CMDB, you can expect improved CMDB data quality through AI-driven insights and automation, faster and more intuitive search capabilities using natural language, and enhanced governance with recommendations on data sources and application mappings. The integration of conversational AI within workflows streamlines your CMDB management tasks, reduces manual errors, and supports proactive impact analysis for changes and incidents, ultimately contributing to a more reliable and efficient IT environment.
The ServiceNow® ServiceNow Otto for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) application helps to improve the quality of CMDB data, search the CMDB quickly, find and remedy issues with Service Graph Connector import sets, and more. ServiceNow Otto for CMDB was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.
Now Assist > ServiceNow Otto announcement
Now Assist introduced AI on the platform. As that experience has evolved, there's a new name for the experience. ServiceNow Otto® is the conversational AI platform integrated into ServiceNow workflows. It provides agentic capabilities, supports multimodal interactions across web, mobile, and messaging channels, and enables autonomous orchestration for cross-system workflows.
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB highlights for the Australia release
Australia Patch 1 The ServiceNow AI Platform now brings you an AI native experience with three licensing tiers available.
- Get an AI-generated summary of the CMDB success advisor for HAM dashboard, with key findings on CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health and the suggested remediation actions.
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Compare your current manual (static) IRE processes with AI-powered Dynamic IRE.
- Automate the actions that a user would typically make for de-duplication tasks using the de-duplication task resolution assistant skill.
- Search the Service Graph database using natural language.
- Dive deeply into CI and class information while working in CI forms, dashboards, home pages, and other views on the workspace.
See ServiceNow Otto for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for more information.
Important information for upgrading ServiceNow Otto for CMDB to Australia
To enable Now Assist to provide detailed descriptions of CIs and classes, you must activate the 'External Content Connectors' plugin, install the ‘ServiceNow Product Documentation’ connector, and then crawl the product documentation. For configuration instructions, see Configure the CI form contextual help skill.
New in the Australia release
- Australia Patch 4
- Analyzing the impact of a change or incident
- The Assess CMDB Impact agentic workflow identifies the upstream services and CIs that are likely to be affected by an incident or by a proposed change. The workflow reasons about propagation likelihood based on CMDB dependency topology and the nature of the change. The workflow returns a structured list with impact levels and the reasoning.
- Recommend service graph connector agentic workflow
- Sometimes you're not sure which integration to use to capture CI data. When you provide Now Assist with the name of a particular CI class, it can recommend the data sources or Service Graph Connectors and ingestion sources that can best populate CMDB data.
- Business application candidate agent
- The Business application candidate agent discovers and suggests business applications to associate with existing application services in the CMDB, reducing manual mapping effort and improving data governance. The agent uses AI clustering and feedback loops to propose business application candidates for your review.
- Australia Patch 1
- ServiceNow product tiers
- The ServiceNow AI Platform now brings you a new AI experience with three licensing tiers available:
- Foundation: AI basics to deliver insights
- Advanced: AI to boost productivity across relevant use cases
- Prime: Act autonomously with all AI assets, and create your own
Depending on your license, you will have access to certain application features, generative AI skills, agentic workflows, and AI agents.
- Summarize CMDB readiness with the ServiceNow Otto skill
- View an AI-generated summary of the CMDB success advisor for Hardware Asset Management (HAM) dashboard data. The summary highlights the key findings on CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health, and suggests remediation actions to address the findings.
- View CI attribute descriptions on CI forms
- The skill answers your questions on CI classes and attributes to help you work in CI forms, dashboards, home pages, and other views on the workspace. You can submit similar queries on the Explore CI view.
- CMDB searches can include relationships
- Search queries can depend on relationships between CIs and can span multiple tables. For example, you might ask: "Search for servers that depend on databases - only Linux servers running Redhat".
- Search the Service Graph database using natural language
- ServiceNow Otto for CMDB analyzes your search criteria, identifies implicit filters, determines the optimum search method (keyword search or query generation), queries Service Graph data, and then displays the results. You then have the option to refine the search using natural language in the Now Assist panel.
Changed in this release
- Australia Patch 5
- Now Assist > ServiceNow Otto announcement
- Now Assist introduced AI on the platform. As that experience has evolved, there's a new name for the experience. ServiceNow Otto® is the conversational AI platform integrated into ServiceNow workflows. It provides agentic capabilities, supports multimodal interactions across web, mobile, and messaging channels, and enables autonomous orchestration for cross-system workflows.The Now LLM Service is no longer the default model provider for new or inactive AI assets. A third-party LLM is now selected by default, while existing configurations using the Now LLM Service continue unchanged. The Now LLM Service is still available for manual selection.
- Australia Patch 4
- Get advice on CMDB governance from ServiceNow Otto
- Correction to the required role for the Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow. The admin or system_scheduler_admin role is required.
- New role required for the Create configuration item agentic workflow
- The sn_cmdb_admin role is now required to use the 'Create configuration item' agentic workflow (was sn_cmdb_editor).
- Skills now also require the now_assist_panel_user role
- AI skills that execute in the Now Assist panel now require both the cmdb_dedup_admin and now_assist_panel_user roles.
Activation information
Install ServiceNow Otto for CMDB by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.