CMDB Workspace store app

The CMDB Workspace is an efficient, central, and modernized way for you to work. Use CMDB Workspace to search and explore the CMDB, examine health and recent activity, and access various CMDB dashboards and tools to support tasks in your organization.

Introduction

Watch the following video to get started with CMDB Workspace. Depending on the version of your CMDB Workspace, some UI elements and features might differ.

General interaction and additional information

• CMDB Workspace leverages many Performance Analytics capabilities and features, such as indicator sources. Throughout the CMDB Workspace views, you can select the various cards to drill down to Performance Analytics KPI Details panes that show trends for the associated data. On a KPI Details pane, you can modify different settings to change the scope of the data. You can also select Show Records to list the records associated with the chart.
• Lists throughout the CMDB Workspace have a filter icon () that you can select to show the filter definition used for the list.
• You can open your Configurable Workspace experience in UI Builder to access and edit your CMDB Workspace experience.
• See List of workspaces for a list of all Workspaces that ServiceNow® provides.

CMDB Workspace doesn't support domain separation.

Request apps on the Store

Visit the ServiceNow Store website 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.

Note:

Starting with the San Diego release, the CMDB Workspace store app is automatically installed when installing or upgrading the product.

Enable demo data

Enable demo data to install demo data-specific scheduled jobs that if the needed requirement is met, generates and populates demo data in CMDB Workspace cards such as:

• Cloud vs Non-cloud resources chart in the CMDB Workspace landing page and the Insights view: If Cloud Service Accounts [cmdb_ci_cloud_service_account] table exists
• Cards in the CMDB 360 view: If CMDB 360 is enabled
• Cards in the Insights view, CMDB Feature Adoption tile:
  • CIs processed by IRE
  • CIs processed by IRE based on source
  • Data Manager
  • Data attestation
  • Query Builder
  • Intelligent Search
• Cards in the What's new tile in the CMDB Workspace landing page.

To populate CMDB Workspace dashboards with demo data:

1. When installing the CMDB Workspace store app, check Load demo data.
2. Access the [Demo] — CMDB Workspace demo data scheduled job and select Execute Now.

Note:

As a general practice, don't enable demo data in a production instance to prevent demo data mixing with real production data.

Prerequisites

• Plugins:

  • Recommended: CSDM Activation (com.snc.cmdb.csdm.activation)

    Allows for legacy Lifecycle Status field mappings and synchronization to legacy status fields. For details about use and customization of life-cycle rules when this plugin isn't activated, see Life-cycle rules and retirement definitions.

  • Required (activated by default): CMDB CSDM Support (com.snc.cmdb.csdm)
  • Required (activated by default): CMDB Page Templates (sn_cmdb_pg_templts)
  • Required (activated by default): CMDB NLQ Search Connected (sn-cmdb-nlq-search)
  For details about activating a plugin, see Activate a plugin.
• Roles: To access the CMDB Workspace, you must, at a minimum, have one of the following roles, which are essential for interacting with the CMDB Workspace. Depending on which of these roles is assigned to you, you might only have access to some of the features available in the CMDB Workspace:
  • sn_cmdb_admin
  • sn_cmdb_editor
  • sn_cmdb_user
  Note:

  As you drill down in the CMDB Workspace, there are some dashboards and list views that require specific roles in addition to the key CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, or CMDB User roles.
• Features: CMDB Workspace provides access to a wide range of applications and features. However, for CMDB Workspace to provide meaningful reports, overviews, and trends, you must set up and configure some of those features. Setup for such features is listed under Additional requirements.

Access the CMDB Workspace

Navigate to Workspaces > CMDB Workspace to access the CMDB Workspace landing page.

In addition to the Home view described below, you can access features in the following views of the CMDB Workspace:

• My Work view: Manage CMDB Data Manager tasks such as attestation tasks, that are assigned to you.
• CMDB 360 view: View aggregations and analysis of CMDB 360 data on a dashboard, and create CMDB 360 queries.
• Management view: View recent key activities and health indicators for the CMDB, and access management tools and dashboards (accessible only to CMDB admins) that support your management tasks.
• Insights view: View level of adoption of key CMDB tools, features, and application services. Explore benefits and install those tools and features to maximize the efficiency of your CMDB functionality.

Intelligent Search

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User.

Lets you use Natural Language Query (NLQ) search capabilities provided by Intelligent Search for CMDB. Use the input field to construct a search string using everyday language. As you type, a dynamic list of relevant suggestions appears, with items matching single words or part phrases in the typed-in text, such as table names.

You can:

• Select Search tips to see tips about constructing search strings. See details about the usage, examples for single and multi-table search, advanced filtering, and relationships in Intelligent Search.
• Select Search to either run the query if the search string is already fully converted into a valid CMDB query, or to open the Refine your query dialog box.

  • If the search string has no ambiguities with the table name or relationships, then the query runs and the results appear in a list view format.

    Only the first 100 results of the query appear in the results pane.

    • Select Load More Results to view the next set of 100 results.
    • Select Load All Results to view the rest of the query results, up to the number specified by the glide.cmdb.query.max_results_limit system property (10,000 by default).

    If the constructed CMDB query contains more than a single table, then the View in Query Builder button appears. Select the button to open the CMDB Query Builder with your query fully constructed on the Query Builder canvas. You can use the Query Builder to continue editing the query.

  • If there are any ambiguities with table names or relationship types in the search string, then the search string can't be converted into a valid CMDB query. In this case, the Refine your query dialog box appears letting you select from suggested CI classes and continue to parse your search string into a valid CMDB query. Those suggested CI classes are based on phrases in your search string. Use the drop-down lists to select the CI classes that match your intended search and then select View search results to run the query.
  • If Intelligent Search is unable to convert your search string into a valid CMDB query, then selecting Search doesn't generate any query results. Instead, a feedback form appears. Fill out the form and select Submit Feedback to record your feedback for your CMDB Admin to review.
• Use the Sample searches list to get you started in running a pre-defined search. This list consists of more common searches, or searches that are more difficult to construct such as searches that involve application services.
• Use the Your recent searches list to rerun a previous search.
• Select Results Feedback to submit feedback on the search results for your CMDB Admin to review.

For more details about using NLQ with Intelligent Search, see Intelligent Search for CMDB.

Alternatively, you can select Use conditional search instead to use a basic condition builder functionality where you can specify conditions to search for CIs of a specific class.

You can:

• Select New condition set to add a condition phrase.
• Select Related List Condition to add a condition phrase for related lists.
• Select Search to search through the CMDB.
• Add and then adjust the sn_cmdb_ws.list.record_count_limit system property to limit the record count summation and so to minimize the performance impact of that operation. The record count shows on the Conditional search page, for example, above the results list. For more information about adding and modifying that system property, see Components installed with CMDB Workspace.

In the results list, select a CI to see details including a timeline, health overview, and several types of attributes such as key and discovery attributes. For more information, see Cloud vs Non-cloud resources.

UI activity	Additional requirements
Mapped Application Service Application Service Application Service Group Dynamic CI Group Tag Based Service	app_service_user role
Business Service Technical Service Application Service Outage	service_viewer role

Important actions

Accessible to: CMDB Admin and CMDB Editor.

Important actions of various categories that require your attention or action. There are several task categories such as:

• Health tasks generated by CMDB Health: In health-related cards, such as Duplicate CIs, Orphan CIs, stale CIs, and De-Duplication tasks, select View CIs or View Tasks to drill down to the list of associated CIs or important tasks. In de-duplication-related cards generated by IRE, you can access the De-duplication dashboard and de-duplication libraries, to remediate de-duplication tasks in bulk.
• Data attestation and life cycle approval tasks generated by the CMDB Data Manager: In data attestation-related cards, such as Reassignment Requests and Unassigned Overdue cards, selet View Tasks to drill down to the associated important tasks.

Important actions are stored in the CMDB WS Imp Action Card Config [sn_cmdb_ws_imp_action_card_config] table that is accessible for editing only to users with the sn_cmdb_admin role. Authorized users can modify attributes of an important action such as Active and Filter conditions, but can't modify the Type, Persona, and Table attributes.

• Important action cards show per the logged in user role, as specified in the CMDB WS Imp Action Card Config [sn_cmdb_ws_imp_action_card_config] table.
• A card appears only if there is at least one record that meets the card's filter condition.
• If you drill down a Health-related card and modify an associated CI, any resulting impact to health KPIs might appear only after the next cycle of the CMDB Health dashboard jobs.

For information about managing the cards in the Important actions tile, see Modify important actions in CMDB Workspace.

What's new

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User.

Counts of newly created CIs within a recent time interval. The New CIs total counts all CI types including applications, hardware, and application services, which also appear in separate cards in the tile. By default, historical data is aggregated for the Last 24 hours, which you can set to a different time interval such as Last 7 days.

Select a card to drill down to a Performance Analytics KPI Details pane that shows the trend for the respective item.

Counts in the What's new cards are based on the following tables:

Count	Table
New CIs	Configuration Item [cmdb_ci]
New application	Application [cmdb_ci_appl]
New hardware	Hardware [cmdb_ci_hardware]
New application services	Application Service [cmdb_ci_service_auto]

CI overview

The following tabs provide summaries about CIs:

CI Summary

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User (without tabs).

A chart of all CIs in the CMDB, grouped by up to 20 CMDB groups. The CMDB groups in the chart are specified as groups of closely-related classes.

Select a bar to drill down to the classes in the group and their CIs. Then, drill down a CI to show the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources with a timeline, health overview, and several types of attributes such as key and discovery attributes.

You can add custom class groups by creating CMDB groups with the following settings:

• Group type is set to 'CMDB Workspace'.
• Populated by encoded queries.

Such custom class groups will appear after the next time that the CMDB Workspace – Group and Encoded Query Counts scheduled jobs run and update the CMDB Workspace.

Note:

In systems with a very large number of CIs, for example a billion or more CIs, the set of queries that populate the CI Overview widget might run for an unreasonable length of time. In that case, you can choose to switch the default queries with a set of simpler queries that can handle such load and properly load the CI Overview widget. However, the results yielded from the simpler queries aren't as complete or accurate as the results of the original queries. A fundamental difference between the original and the simpler queries is that the simpler queries use only Common Service Data Model (CSDM) attributes for CI status (such as life_cycle_stage), while the default queries also use the legacy operational_status and status attributes. In an environment that hasn't migrated to CSDM, the simple queries yield fewer results.

You can examine (read access only) the simple query in the Simple Condition column in the cmdb_group_contains_encoded_query table.

To use the simpler set of queries, set the sn_cmdb_ws.ci_overview.enable_simple_condition system property to true (false by default).

My CIs

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor.

A chart of Cls with Managed By Group being one of the groups you are a part of. CIs are grouped by up to 20 common class categories such as Applications, Devices, and Servers. If there are more than 20 classes to show, then all remaining classes are lumped into one additional bar on the chart.

Select a class bar to drill down into the CIs for the class. Then drill down to any Cloud vs Non-cloud resources with a timeline, health overview, and several types of attributes such as key and discovery attributes.

Use the sn_cmdb_ws.ci_overview.managed_by_me.enabled​ property to show or hide this chart.

Cloud vs Non-cloud resources

Note:

This procedure applies to Vancouver and later instances. If you are using an instance older than Vancouver, see the next item..

Charts showing counts and details for resources that are hosted on various cloud services versus those resources that aren't, with breakdown by key CI classes such as applications, databases, and datacenters. Resources can be deployed on cloud services such as the Microsoft Azure Cloud, or on the local instance or other non-cloud solutions. For some ongoing operations in the organization, it might be necessary to have those details that can be difficult to obtain.

The following conditions must be met for the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources charts to appear and to show meaningful data:

• The table Cloud Service Accounts [cmdb_ci_cloud_service_account] must exist.
• The Logical Datacenter [cmdb_ci_logical_datacenter] table must contain at least one record for a cloud datacenter.

• The Datacenter Types [sn_cmdb_ws_datacenter_type] table must contain at least one record for a datacenter that is classified as cloud storage in the organization. In the base system, this table is pre-populated with several records for common cloud services such as the Azure Datacenter [cmdb_ci_azure_datacenter) class. The chart calculates and shows data only for cloud services for which there's a record in the Datacenter Types [sn_cmdb_ws_datacenter_type] table.

  For details about adding datacenters in your organization, with the cloud or non-cloud classification, see Configure datacenters for the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources chart.

The following cloud vs Non-cloud charts are available:

• CI classes bar chart:

  Each bar in the CI classes chart represents a pair of a CI class and a storage type (cloud, non-cloud), such as the bar for Applications/Cloud. For each bar, there's a scheduled job that runs every 24 hours to collect and calculate the data for the bar. The running time depends on the amount and complexity of the data that a job collects, which can be different for each scheduled job. Also, the schedules of the jobs are staggered so that they don't all run at the same time and exhaust resources. For details about the class-specific criteria used for the chart calculations, see Class-specific criteria for the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources chart.

  If there’s a CI class/type pair that isn't important in the organization, you can exclude that pair from the CI classes chart. For more details, see Configure CI classes for the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources chart.

  On the CI classes chart, you can:

  • Select a bar to open the Cloud vs Non-cloud resources pane. Then, select either of the following tabs to drill down into further details for the bar:

    Cloud vs Non-cloud CIs

    Shows a bar chart for CIs stored on a cloud service and those CIs that aren't, per CI class. For each CI class, select the cloud or the non-cloud bar to show the CIs that are associated with the selected bar, in a list view. You can then select a CI from the list to further drill down to the CI details pane.

    CI Classes by Cloud Providers

    Pie charts per CI class with more granular details for those CIs that are hosted on cloud providers. Pie slices have randomly-selected colors, and they show a breakdown by cloud providers for various CI classes. For each pie, select a slice to show the CIs that are associated with the pie slice, in a list view. You can then select a CI from the list to further drill down to the CI details pane.

  • Select Latest updates to see updated status for the scheduled jobs that produce the data for the chart. Status is color-coded to indicate whether the job has completed successfully (green), or failed to complete (red).

• Application Services pie chart:

  The Application Services pie chart is available starting with CMDB Workspace v3.6.

  The Application Services pie chart uses the Service Configuration Item Associations [svc_ci_assoc] table and checks the cloud/non-cloud status of application service CIs in the CI classes chart. Application services in the Application Services pie chart are classified as follows:

  • Cloud: All of the CIs in the application service have been determined to be hosted on a cloud service.
  • Non-cloud: All of the CIs in the application service have been determined not to be hosted on a cloud service.
  • Hybrid: The application service contains a mixture of CIs where some are hosted and some aren't hosted on cloud services.
  • Unknown: The cloud/non-cloud classification couldn't be determined because some of the application service CIs aren't classified as cloud or non-cloud CIs.

  Note:

  Because classification of Application Services depends on the classification of CIs in the CI classes chart, there might be some discrepancy between the two charts. This can occur if an application service CI changed its cloud/non-cloud status, and the Application Services chart hasn't refreshed yet to reflect that change.

  Select the Application Services chart to access the list views of the associated application services, grouped by cloud/non-cloud classifications. From those list views, you can drill down to the Dependency Views map for application services.

The scheduled jobs associated with the charts are set up with several hard-coded limits that if exceeded, result in failure conditions that are reflected in the job status. Timing out is set to two hours and the maximum number of records to collect is set to 500,000. If a job exceeds any of those limits, it's automatically stopped.

A scheduled job that can't complete for 3 (default) consecutive days is automatically disabled for future runs. You can manage the disabling of scheduled jobs, in the following ways:

• Modify the default number of consecutive days that are counted by adding the sn_cmdb_ws.insight.category.disable_after_failure system property to the System Properties [sys_properties] table and then setting its value. For more details, see Add a system property.
• Resume a disabled scheduled job.

UI activity	Additional requirements
Mapped Application Service view Application Service Dynamic CI Group Tag Based Service	app_service_user role

My work

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User.

All open tasks from CMDB Data Manager that are assigned to you, or to an assigned group in the Managed by Group attribute which you are a member of. For CMDB Admins, also tasks that aren't assigned to anyone so that CMDB Admins can assign those unassigned tasks. Tasks can be, for example, attestation tasks and life cycle-related tasks.

Select Open tasks and Overdue tasks to review and process the tasks.

CMDB Health

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User.

Health metrics for CIs and relationships. Select the percentage numbers to navigate to the CMDB Health and CMDB Relationship Health dashboards:

• The Overall percentage number represents the health of all CIs as an aggregation of all three health Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Those KPIs are correctness, compliance, and completeness, each consisting of sub-metrics.
• The Relationship percentage number represents the overall health of relationships as an aggregation of the orphan, duplicate, and stale relationships KPIs.

• The color-coded status label follows the CMDB Health scorecard thresholds specified in the CI Class Manager. However, the labels 'Best', 'At Risk', and 'Critical' are replaced by 'Excellent', 'Fair', and 'Poor' respectively. For more information see, Configure CMDB Health scorecard thresholds.

• Select Factors impacting your score to see the breakdown of the score percentage by the three key KPIs (Completeness, Compliance, and Correctness).

For more information, see CMDB Health, CMDB Health KPIs and metrics, and View CI relationships health.

UI activity	Additional requirements
CMDB Health	asset or itil role Set up and configure CMDB Health

Total CIs

Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User.

Count and trend of the total number of CIs in the CMDB for the past 7 days.

Use the sn_cmdb_ws.total_cis.enabled​ property to show or hide this chart.

Quick links

A list of links to key CMDB dashboards and tools. You can add a link to the list of quick links that are available to you.

• Dependency View: Provides a graphic infrastructure view for a CI and any application or business services that it’s part of and that it supports.
• Query Builder: Easily build complex infrastructure and service queries, that span multiple CMDB classes, non-CMDB tables, and that can involve many CIs that are connected by different relationships.
• CMDB Data Manager: Centrally create, edit, review, publish, and track Data Manager policies and the tasks generated by the policies.
• CI Class List: List view of CMDB CIs grouped by common classes.
• Unified Map: Graphical map showing the hierarchy of CIs and the relationships between them, and application services. Directly from the map, you can access attributes of CIs and relationships, and related items such as changes, incidents, and problems for a CI.

UI activity	Accessibility	Additional requirements
Dependency View	CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	dependency_views role
Query Builder	CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	cmdb_query_builder_read role
Data Manager	CMDB Admin
Add or edit a custom quick link	CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User

Shared pages

For information about the shared pages, see the Dev site as follows:

• CI Service Relationships
• CI Infrastructure Relationships

CI details pane

When you drill down to a CI record, the following details for the CI appear:

• CI Timeline - Last 14 days: A timeline of CI activities such as change requests.

• CI Health: A summary of the health of the CI, showing related items such as critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships for the CI.

  Role requirement: itil (for accessing incidents).

• Details: CI attributes, grouped into categories such as Key attributes, Asset attributes, Discovery attributes, Operational attributes, and More attributes.
  Note:

  Use the CMDB - Workspace form view for a CI class to configure which attributes appear.
• Activity: An activity stream to track what's changed in the CI record.
• Infrastructure Relationships: List of the infrastructure CIs related to the CI.
• Service Relationships: List of business applications, service offerings, and application services that the CI may be related to.

On the CI details pane, you can:

• Select Open Dependency View to open the Dependency Views map and display a graphic infrastructure view of the specific CI record.
• Select View CMDB 360 Data to show CMDB 360 details at the CI attribute level for the specific CI record.

• Select Save to save any changes made to attributes for the CI record.

• Select the More Actions icon (...) for additional functions:
  • Select Create Change to create a new change request for the CI record.
  • Select Create Incident to create a new incident for the CI record.
  • Select Delete to delete the CI record.

UI activity	Additional requirements
CI Details Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User
CI Health	itil
Related Open Changes Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_change_read role
Related Incidents Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_incident_read role
Related Alerts Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Event Management (com.glideapp.itom.snac) plugin evt_mgmt_user role Set up Event Management
Related Application Services Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	app_service_user role
View CMDB 360 Data Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Enable and configure CMDB 360
Save Accessible to: CMDB Admin
More Actions/Delete Accessible to: CMDB Admin