Tag-based discovery in Service Mapping

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 5, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Tag-based discovery in Service Mapping

    Tag-based discovery in Service Mapping allows organizations to utilize tags—key-value pairs used for categorizing assets—to map application services effectively. This is particularly useful in environments utilizing cloud services, virtualization, and hyper-converged infrastructures, where tags enhance asset management and reporting capabilities.

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    Key Features

    • Tag Discovery: ServiceNow’s Discovery and Cloud Provisioning can identify tags from major cloud providers and container ecosystems.
    • No Elevated Rights Required: Unlike other mapping methods, tag-based mapping does not necessitate special user permissions for credential configuration.
    • CI Tag Management: Administrators can create tag categories and define keys, allowing for organized tagging of configuration items (CIs).
    • Service Mapping Process: Service Mapping queries the CMDB for CIs with matching tag values to create application services, allowing CIs to belong to multiple services based on assigned tags.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing tag-based discovery, organizations can efficiently map application services using tags, with the ability to create service candidates and populate the Tag-Based Application Service table. However, it is crucial to ensure that CIs have the correct tags assigned; otherwise, relevant CIs may be excluded from the mapped services. This process facilitates better service management and enhances visibility across the organization’s infrastructure.

    If your organization uses tags, or establishes them in a local ServiceNow instance, you can use these tags to map application services.

    A tag is a label that consists of a key-value pair. Your organization might use tags to categorize its assets and to enhance query and reporting capabilities. Discovery and Cloud Provisioning and Governance can discover tags used by all major cloud providers and container ecosystems. Once the tags are discovered, Service Mapping can create application services based on these tags. Typically organizations use tagging in virtualized, hyper-converged, or multi-cloud infrastructures.

    Table 1. Example of using tagging in organization infrastructure
    Segment Technology providers What is tagged
    Cloud Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud Platform IaaS, PaaS, FaaS, CaaS resources
    Hyper-converged Nutanix Virtual machines
    Containers Kubernetes, OpenShift Container Platform, AWS ECS Containers
    Virtualization VMware vCenter Virtual machines

    Unlike other mapping methods, tag-based mapping does not require configuring credentials or providing users with elevated rights. You can effectively use tags to map multiple application services.

    Tag-based discovery stages

    The tag-based discovery and mapping process consists of the following stages:
    1. Discovery and Cloud Provisioning and Governance discover tags for cloud and resource configuration items (CIs) and then populate data for discovered tags into the Key Value [cmdb_key_value] table.
    2. The administrator creates CI tag categories and defines tag keys that the categories contain. Tag categories contain tags with similar use. For example, if your organization has production and staging environments, you could create "production" and "staging" tag values.
    3. The administrator creates a tag-based service family and selects tag categories to use for its mapping. CIs that have more than one tags assigned to them, can be part of multiple services.
      • Only CIs with discovered tag keys for the selected tag categories become part of application services.
      • The administrator can narrow the criteria by defining specific tag values in addition to tag categories.
      • Service Mapping uses only CIs that have the matching values to create application services.
      • CIs that have more than one tag assigned to them can be a part of multiple services.
      Note:
      When creating a service family for mapping services based on tags in domain-separated environment, you must pick the relevant leaf domain.
    4. Service Mapping queries the CMDB for CIs with tag values that match the tag definitions for this tag-based service family.
    5. Service Mapping creates service candidates based on the defined tags.

      Service Mapping populates tag-based services based on this service family only with CIs belonging to the leaf domain to which the service family belongs.

    6. The administrator selects the service candidates to map and starts the mapping process.
    7. Service Mapping adds new application services to the Tag-Based Application Service [cmdb_ci_service_by_tags] table.
      Important:
      Application services mapped using tags might not include relevant CIs if those CIs do not have the correct tags.

    8. Service Mapping maps application services by creating connections between tagged CIs based on CI relationships. The Traversal Rules for Application Services [svc_traversal_rules] table contains information used for creating tag-based application services.

      Note:
      Service Mapping includes CIs that are part of these relationships even if these CIs do not have tags assigned to them.

    Creating tag-based services

    You can create single tag-based application services using the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) flow as described in populate application services using tags.

    For information about how to create multiple tag-based services, see Map application services using tags with classic Service Mapping.