Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance

    Managing data governance for your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) can be complex. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow in Now Assist is designed to support data administrators and owners by systematically improving the accuracy, completeness, and health of CMDB data. This workflow helps ensure that users can trust the CMDB data they rely on daily, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing service disruptions.

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    The workflow focuses on Configuration Items (CIs) updated within the last 90 days and offers ongoing guidance on governance as your data models and integrations evolve.

    Key Features

    • CMDB principal class manager AI agent: Suggests and manages principal classes for CIs, enabling you to streamline views by displaying only the most relevant classes in list views, saving time and improving focus.
    • CMDB life cycle manager AI agent: Assists in confirming that CMDB lifecycle policies are properly applied to principal or specified classes, supporting compliance and data management best practices.
    • CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent: Retrieves and creates certification and attestation policies for CI classes, helping maintain data integrity and compliance.
    • CMDB health metrics manager AI agent: Provides insights into CMDB Health Dashboard jobs, metrics, and health scores, including guidance to configure health jobs if not already set up.
    • CMDB data ownership manager AI agent: Evaluates the quality and validity of ownership data for CIs by validating fields referencing users and groups, ensuring ownership is current and correctly configured. It classifies ownership quality and identifies inactive or missing ownership records to maintain accountability.

    Practical Benefits

    • Improved trustworthiness of CMDB data, supporting better decision-making and faster incident resolution.
    • Enhanced compliance with lifecycle and certification policies, reducing risks associated with inaccurate or outdated data.
    • Visibility into CMDB health metrics helps identify and address data quality issues proactively.
    • Streamlined management of principal classes and ownership data improves operational efficiency and governance control.

    Next Steps for ServiceNow Customers

    To leverage this workflow, access the Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow via Now Assist and use the AI agents to methodically assess and enhance your CMDB data. This structured approach supports ongoing governance efforts, helping you maintain a reliable and performant CMDB that drives value across your ServiceNow AI Platform products.

    Data governance can be an overwhelming task. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow supports data admins and owners by methodically working through the many-faceted process of improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health. The objective is to help users to trust the data that they use for their work.

    Access the workflow

    See Get advice on CMDB governance from Now Assist for information on accessing the workflow.

    Descriptions of AI agents

    This topic includes overviews of the actions of AI agents.

    There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available to you, see Find AI agents.

    Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow

    The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is the central repository of your organization's IT assets, services, and their relationships. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow helps to promote CMDB accuracy, completeness, and integrity to maximize the value and performance of your ServiceNow AI Platform products. The results are faster incident resolution, enhanced conformance, and a reduced risk of service disruption. The agentic workflow evaluates CIs updated in the last 90 days.

    The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow supports admins and owners with information on data health and ongoing guidance for governance as data models and integrations grow. The workflow calls on the following AI agents:

    AI agents used by the CMDB principal class manager AI agent

    AI agents

    This section presents overviews of the actions of the AI agents that the CMDB governance agentic workflow uses.

    There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available to you, see Find AI agents.

    CMDB principal class manager AI agent

    The CMDB principal class manager AI agent determines whether you can set Cl classes as principal, suggests principal classes, and can set or unset a class as principal. Setting a class as a principal class is a practical way to save time because you can configure ServiceNow AI Platform products to display only principal classes in list views. The workflow helps you to decide which CIs you're most likely to work with day-to-day and then provides a link to enable you to set the associated classes as principal classes. For more information, see Update the list of classes in the Principal Class filter.

    CMDB life cycle manager AI agent

    The CMDB life cycle manager AI agent helps admins to confirm that CMDB life-cycle policies are in place for principal classes or for specified classes. For more information, see Working with CMDB Data Manager.

    CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent

    The CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent retrieves the data certification and attestation policies for a CI class and for similar classes. It can also create a data certification and an attestation policy. For more information, see Data Certification.

    CMDB health metrics manager AI agent

    The CMDB health metrics manager AI agent displays information on CMDB Health Dashboard jobs, health metrics status, and health scores. If the jobs aren't configured, the workflow provides a link to the setup instructions. For more information, see CMDB Health.

    CMDB data ownership manager AI agent
    The CMDB data ownership manager AI agent helps you to assess the quality of CI ownership data for a CI class to determine ownership, validate ownership, and evaluate ownership quality. You can validate fields that reference sys_user or sys_user_group like Assigned To, Managed by Group (default), Support Group, and so on. The agent answers the following questions:
    • Is CI ownership specified? Is the Managed by group attribute value set for the CI? Does it indicate an active and correctly configured record? The value of the system property for ownership is a default field for the evaluation. For the Managed by group CI attribute, you can specify the percentage values that classify the result as Poor, Average, or Healthy. For more information, see Property settings for Now Assist for CMDB.
    • If you provide a user referencing value: Does the User Referencing value indicate an active record? This evaluation identifies CIs that have inactive users and CIs with no User value.
    • If you provide a user referencing value: Does the Group Referencing value indicate an active record? This evaluation identifies CIs that have inactive groups, empty groups (no users), and CIs with no Group value.