'Foundation' stage reports on the CSDM Data Foundations dashboard

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Foundation Stage Reports on the CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard

    The Foundation tab on the CSDM Data Foundations dashboard highlights missing critical data within the CMDB. This stage helps identify gaps such as unnamed product owners for product models, missing parent locations, and disconnected business units, which can affect IT and business processes like product lifecycle management and organizational hierarchy reporting.

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    Key Features

    • CSDM Foundation Indicators Report: Displays priority based on metric weight and severity, with a color-coded compliance bar (red, yellow, green) indicating the percentage of Configuration Items (CIs) complying with foundational metrics.
    • Priority Levels: Range from 1 (Critical) to 5 (Low) to help you focus remediation efforts.
    • Data Collection Management: Automatically stops collecting data for metrics that exceed a threshold of non-compliant CIs to maintain dashboard performance, with options to manage this behavior.
    • Remediation Playbook URLs: Provide direct access to knowledge articles in Now Support, guiding you on how to bring CIs into compliance using your credentials.
    • Named Product Models Without Product Owners: Identifies gaps where product models lack associated owners, impacting capabilities such as identifying end-of-life products.
    • Locations Without Parents: Detects missing parent references in location hierarchies, which can disrupt reporting and organizational structure representation.
    • Business Units Without Companies: Highlights business units missing references to parent companies, affecting organizational hierarchy accuracy, especially in large multinational environments.
    • Auto-Generate Product Models for Logical CIs: The CSDM Product Model Assignment job can automatically create product model records for logical CIs not yet associated with a product model, facilitating a product-centric management approach.

    Key Outcomes

    • Improved data completeness and accuracy in the CMDB foundational data, enabling better IT and business decision-making.
    • Enhanced ability to manage product lifecycles and organizational hierarchies through more accurate associations and relationships.
    • Streamlined remediation process via actionable guidance from integrated support articles.
    • Optimized dashboard performance by managing the scope of data collection for non-compliant metrics.
    • Facilitated migration to a product-centric management model by associating logical CIs with product models automatically.

    The Foundation tab on the CSDM Data Foundations dashboard identifies data that might be missing from the CMDB.

    Reports on the Foundation tab

    In this example, a report on the Foundation tab indicates that most named product models don't have associate product owners. Without this data, you might not be able, for example, to identify products that are reaching end-of-life. For more information, see Products and product models.

    Foundation tab on the Data Foundations dashboard.

    CSDM Foundation Indicators report
    • The Priority value is the product of the weight of the metric and the severity of the actual score. Priority ranges from 1 — Critical (the highest priority), to 5 — Low (the lowest priority).

    • The Result column displays a color-coded bar showing the percentage of CIs or the measured item that are in compliance for the key foundational metric.

      • Red: 0–50% are in compliance.
      • Yellow: 50–90% are in compliance.
      • Green: More than 90% are in compliance.

      To promote optimum performance, the system stops collecting data for some metrics when they reach a specified number of non-compliant CIs. For information on managing data collection for a metric that isn't needed or that affects performance of the dashboard, see Manage performance.

    • The Remediation playbook URL column displays links to knowledge articles in Now Support with instructions for bringing the CIs into compliance. Use your Now Support credentials to access the knowledge article.

    To view detailed information on the impact of a metric and for details on working on issues, select the appropriate Remediation playbook URL.

    Named product models without product

    Application, service, and software class instance CIs aren't created through Discovery, so their Model ID [model_id] values might not refer to product model records. To help you to migrate to a product-centric management paradigm, each instance of a logical CI should be associated with a product model. For recommendations, see Auto-generate product models for logical CIs.

    For more information, see Products and product models.
    Locations without parents
    You can create a hierarchy of location data using the Parent attribute to match your reporting requirements. Missing parent locations break the structure. See Location [cmn_location] table.
    Business units without companies
    The hierarchy of your business is populated in the Business Unit table with a reference to the parent company. A business unit is a part of your organization that is responsible for specific operations, such as finance, human resources (HR), or IT. A hierarchy within a business unit is common. For large multinational organizations, you may have business units that identify independent regional operations and the specific operations within the region.