ServiceNow Otto for CMDB release notes
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Summary of ServiceNow Otto for CMDB Release Notes (Zurich)
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB enhances the management and quality of Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data through AI-powered capabilities integrated within ServiceNow workflows. The Zurich release introduces significant improvements, including advanced AI agents, improved natural language interactions, and enhanced automation for CMDB governance, data quality, and search functionality. Otto for CMDB enables faster issue resolution, better data governance, and streamlined manual processes such as creating configuration items (CIs) and resolving duplicates.
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Key Features
- AI Impact Analysis (Zurich Patch 11): Identifies upstream services and CIs likely affected by incidents or changes, providing impact levels and reasoning based on CMDB topology.
- Service Graph Connector Recommendations: AI suggests optimal data sources and connectors to populate CMDB data for specific CI classes, reducing manual effort.
- Business Application Discovery: AI clusters and proposes business applications to associate with application services, improving mapping and governance.
- Enhanced CI Search: Supports natural language queries spanning multiple tables and CI relationships, enabling precise searches like filtering servers by OS and dependencies.
- Now Assist Integration: Conversational AI interface allows users to ask questions about CI classes and attributes, create CIs manually with IRE rule validation, and receive CI summaries directly in workspace views.
- De-Duplication and Import Set Diagnosis: Guided workflows help resolve duplicate CIs and diagnose Service Graph Connector import issues efficiently.
- Improved Data Governance Support: Agentic workflows provide context and rationale for governance tasks, helping administrators maintain accurate and trusted CMDB data.
- Security and Role Updates: New role requirements and security configurations are introduced for agentic workflows and AI agents to ensure controlled access.
- Activation and Configuration: Otto for CMDB is available via the ServiceNow Store with updated plugin activation processes applicable from Zurich release onwards.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Accelerate incident and change impact assessments with AI-driven insights, reducing manual dependency mapping.
- Improve CMDB completeness and accuracy by leveraging AI recommendations for data sources and business application associations.
- Enhance user productivity with natural language search and conversational interactions to quickly find CIs and related data.
- Streamline CI creation and duplicate resolution processes, ensuring data quality and compliance with reconciliation rules.
- Gain better visibility into CI status and relationships directly within workspace pages and lists.
- Reduce troubleshooting time for import set errors with AI diagnostics tailored to Service Graph Connectors.
- Ensure secure and appropriate access to AI-powered workflows through updated role configurations.
- Benefit from automatic activation of key AI skills and workflows, enabling faster adoption and improved operational efficiency.
The ServiceNow Otto for CMDB application enables you to improve the quality of CMDB data, search the CMDB quickly, find and remedy issues with Service Graph Connector import sets, view comprehensive summaries for configuration items (CIs), accelerate the process of remediating duplicate CIs, and manually create CIs. ServiceNow Otto for CMDB was enhanced and updated in the Zurich release.
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB highlights for the Zurich release
Zurich Patch 11
- AI identifies the upstream services and CIs that are likely to be affected by an incident or by a proposed change.
- AI recommends the data sources or Service Graph Connectors and ingestion sources that can best populate CMDB data.
- AI discovers and suggests business applications to associate with existing application services in the CMDB, reducing manual mapping effort and improving data governance.
Zurich Patch 7
- Get AI-powered answers your questions on CI classes and attributes to help you work in CI forms, dashboards, home pages, and other views on the workspace.
- Search queries can now span multiple tables and relationships between CIs.
Zurich Patch 5
- Review changes to Now Assist usage measurement
Zurich Patch 4
- Some Now Assist skills and agentic workflows are now turned on by default.
- Agentic workflows and AI agents included with Now Assist applications now require additional security configuration.
- Reduce the debugging time and effort when you resolve issues with Service Graph Connector import sets.
- Find and resolve de-duplication tasks.
- Speed the process of manually creating CIs.
- Methodically work through the process of improving CMDB data governance.
- Search for CIs by specifying any of several attributes of the CI of interest.
- View a concise summary of the key CI data on a CI form in a workspace page or on any list view.
See Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for more information.
Important:
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
Important information for upgrading ServiceNow Otto for CMDB to Zurich
The installation (activation) process has changed for the ServiceNow Otto for CMDB v2.1 plugin. See Configuring Now Assist for CMDB for the new instructions.
Changed in this release
- Zurich Patch 12
- Now Assist > ServiceNow Otto announcement
- Now Assist introduced AI on the platform. As that experience has evolved, there's a new name for the experience. ServiceNow Otto® is the conversational AI platform integrated into ServiceNow workflows. It provides agentic capabilities, supports multimodal interactions across web, mobile, and messaging channels, and enables autonomous orchestration for cross-system workflows.
- Zurich Patch 11
- The Assess CMDB Impact agentic workflow identifies the upstream services and CIs that are likely to be affected by an incident or by a proposed change. The workflow reasons about propagation likelihood based on CMDB dependency topology and the nature of the change. The workflow returns a structured list with impact levels and the reasoning.
- Recommend service graph connector agentic workflow
- Sometimes you're not sure which integration to use to capture CI data. When you provide Now Assist with the name of a particular CI class, it can recommend the data sources or Service Graph Connectors and ingestion sources that can best populate CMDB data.
- The Business application candidate agent discovers and suggests business applications to associate with existing application services in the CMDB, reducing manual mapping effort and improving data governance. The agent uses AI clustering and feedback loops to propose business application candidates for your review.
- Zurich Patch 7
- View CI attribute descriptions on CI forms
- The skill answers your questions on CI classes and attributes to help you work in CI forms, dashboards, home pages, and other views on the workspace. You can submit similar queries on the Explore CI view.
- CMDB searches can include relationships
- Search queries can depend on relationships between CIs and can span multiple tables. For example, you might ask: "Search for servers that depend on databases - only Linux servers running Redhat".
- Zurich Patch 5
- Changes to Now Assist usage measurement
- Starting with Australia Early Access, AI usage measurement is transitioning from a 365-day look-back model to a 365-day burn-down model, with usage resetting at the contract anniversary date. For more information, refer to KB KB2704710: AI Usage - Overview & New Measurement Logic.
- Zurich Patch 4
- Some generative AI skills, AI agents, and agentic workflows are turned on by default
- The skills are automatically available to appropriate role users for the application, such as ITIL roles on incident forms or change forms. This change simply activates the skill and does not touch the roles that may be
needed to use the skill. The new default behavior works as follows:
- New customers: When you install an AI product, designated skills and agentic workflows are turned on automatically.
- Existing customers who are upgrading (starting with Australia Early Access): Any previously unconfigured skill, agent, or agentic workflow is turned on automatically (the AI asset was never configured and turned on, then turned off again). Previously configured skills and agentic workflows that were turned on, then off, remain inactive.
- New role required for the Create configuration item agentic workflow
- The sn_cmdb_admin role is now required to use the Create configuration item agentic workflow (was sn_cmdb_editor).
- Role configuration required for agentic workflows and AI agents
- Agentic workflows and AI agents included with your applications require additional security configuration. If you select Users with selected roles for your user access security controls for an agentic workflow or AI agent, you must add the installed roles, or they will not execute. See the documentation for the agentic workflow or AI agent for the specific roles you must add.
- Create a CI using Now Assist
- Verbal interaction with this feature has improved. Occasionally, you might need to create a CI manually. To help you, the CI creator agentic workflow accepts your natural language request and verifies that it understands which class the new CI should belong to. The workflow then checks Identification and Reconciliation engine (IRE) rules to determine the required attributes for the CI and requests that information. After you provide sufficient data, the workflow helps to ensure that the proposed CI includes the attributes that you requested, complies with IRE rules, and is not a duplicate. The workflow then creates the CI.
- Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance
- To help users understand the value of each step in the process, responses now include richer context. The CMDB Governance agentic workflow supports administrators and service owners by improving CMDB data governance. Before starting in on each governance task, the workflow presents the reasons for the task to help you better understand the importance and benefits of the activity. The objective is to ensure that CMDB data is accurate and complete so that users can trust the data.
- Use Now Assist to search the CMDB for CIs
- Verbal interaction with this feature has improved. Users can now select the CI inline when multiple CIs are returned as matches. A summary of the CI now appears in the conversation. The CMDB search agentic workflow enables you to search for CIs by specifying any of several attributes of the CI of interest. The workflow accepts your natural language request, verifies your search goal, and then generates a keyword search, a single-table search with dot walks, or a multi-table search, depending on the information that you provided. The workflow can infer CI relationship data to generate an appropriate query.
- View CI information with the Now Assist CI summarization skill
- Verbal interaction with this feature has improved. You can now view a concise summary of the key CI data by selecting the CI on a CI form, in a workspace page, or on any list view. The summary can include discovery data, ownership, and key related items such as open incidents, alerts, problems, upcoming change requests, and security vulnerabilities. Additionally, the summary lists the service instances that the CI is part of.
- Resolve de-duplication tasks with support from the Now Assist Manage duplicate CIs skill. CMDB administrators follow step-by-step guidance to perform remediation, and can preview remediation results before applying a template.
- Fix SGC import set issues with the Now Assist SGC diagnosis skill
- Verbal interaction with this feature has improved. You can now diagnose a failed import set that is associated with a Service Graph Connector to get a summary of the errors and recommendations for resolving the issues.
Activation information
ServiceNow Otto for CMDB is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that is available with activation of plugins that you get from the ServiceNow Store. For details, see Configuring Now Assist for CMDB.