Business capability form
Summarize
Summary of Business capability form
The Business Capability form is a key component within the Enterprise Architecture application in ServiceNow, designed to help you define and organize business capabilities in a hierarchical structure. This structure supports up to six levels, enabling clear visualization and management of business capabilities from root to child nodes.
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Key Features
- Name: The title of the business capability you are creating or managing.
- Parent: Assigns a parent to the capability, establishing it as a child capability. If left null, the capability is considered a root (level 0) node.
- Level: Automatically set by the system to indicate the capability’s position in the hierarchy, ranging from 0 (root) to 6. This is updated through a scheduled job and cannot be manually changed.
- Business Unit and Department: Associate the capability with relevant organizational units for clarity and alignment.
- Order: Applicable only for root-level capabilities, this integer determines the display position among sibling root capabilities. The system validates and adjusts this field to prevent duplicates or errors.
- Leaf Node: Indicates if the capability has no child capabilities, which helps identify end nodes in the hierarchy. This is system managed and not user-editable.
- Owned by: Identifies the user responsible for the business capability.
- Hierarchy ID: A system-generated identifier reflecting the capability’s position in the hierarchy. For root nodes, it is based on the order field; for others, it inherits from the parent’s Hierarchy ID. You can override this with a custom value by changing a system property, enabling tailored hierarchy IDs.
- Description: Provides a brief summary of the business capability for context.
Practical Use and Management
When creating or updating business capabilities, it’s important to run the Update Business Capability Levels scheduled job to ensure all hierarchical levels and fields like Level and Hierarchy ID are correctly updated. The system manages hierarchy consistency, leaf node status, and ordering to maintain a clean and accurate capability structure.
This form enables you to organize business capabilities effectively, establish clear ownership, and maintain a hierarchical view that supports enterprise architecture planning and application portfolio management.
Business Capability is a common table used within the Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) application.
Business Capability form fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Name of the business capability. |
| Parent | The parent capability for the capability that you’re creating. Assigning a parent capability renders the business capability as a child capability. If no parent is assigned or if the parent is null, then the level of the capability is at 0 level or root, which means it’s a root node capability. If the parent field is made null, then a message prompts you to run a scheduled job to update the business capability levels. |
| Level | The level at which the capability is in the hierarchy. If there’s no parent capability, then the level is 0, which indicates that the capability is at the root level. Level at which the capability is in the hierarchy. Up to six levels are supported. If you add a capability or update it by changing its parent, then run the Update Business Capability Levels job, on demand. The job determines the capability level and updates all the capabilities with the level information. Note: The system updates the field and the user can’t. |
| Business Unit | Business unit that is associated with the selected business capability. |
| Order | Assign any integer value. Applicable only for level-0 capability. The number you assign determines the position of the capability in the sequential order of all other business capabilities in that capability hierarchy. The Order field is available only for root node or level-0 capabilities. The scheduled job checks for conditions such as order values entered for non-root capabilities, duplicate order values, and null value and eliminates such values. It calculates and sets the level and hierarchy ID for each capability. |
| Department | Department that is associated with the selected business application. |
| Leaf Node | This field denotes whether the business capability is a parent of any other capability. If the option is enabled, then it means that it doesn’t have child capability. Capabilities follow a parent-child hierarchy. The Leaf node attribute in the capability denotes that it isn’t a parent of any other capability. Note: The system updates the field and the user can’t. |
| Owned by | User who owns the business capability. |
| Hierarchy ID | Hierarchy ID of the business capability. For level 0 capability, a hierarchy ID is generated based on the order. For all non-root capabilities, the hierarchy ID is generated based on the hierarchy ID of its parent.
The number is prefixed to the business capability and you can view it in the capability hierarchy map. The capabilities are structured vertically according to their hierarchy IDs. Whenever a capability is updated such as if a parent is added or deleted, then the hierarchy ID is automatically updated. Note: By default, the system updates the field. So, you can’t edit the field. However, if you prefer a different number or value for the hierarchy ID from what the system generates, you can reset the system property flag to True. Setting the property to true makes the Hierarchy ID field editable in the Business Capability form and you can enter the value. By this action, the system default logic of generating the hierarchy ID is overridden by your custom hierarchy ID. |
| Description | A short description of the business capability. |