Desired State

Release version: Zurich

Updated July 31, 2025

2 minutes to read

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Summary of Desired State

Desired State is a feature in ServiceNow that conducts scheduled or on-demand audits of Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data. It verifies that records align with expected attributes and relationships, such as ensuring a computer has the appropriate software license. This process helps maintain compliance with organizational standards by identifying discrepancies in configuration items (CIs) and automatically assigning remediation tasks to qualified users.

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Key Features

Certification Role: Users must have the certificationadmin role to access or configure certification elements. This role allows the creation, updating, and deletion of filters, but may require additional roles for access to necessary tables.
Certification Process: Administrators create definitions of desired states and schedule audits to assess CIs for compliance. The system generates tasks for any discrepancies found during audits.
Filter Creation: Users can define subsets of CIs through filters that can be activated for certification.
Template Creation: Templates define the desired state for CIs regarding physical attributes and relationships, guiding the audit process.
Audit Execution: Users can run audits based on selected templates, either on a schedule or on demand, generating results that highlight discrepancies.
Follow-on Tasks: The system creates tasks for discrepancies found during audits. The property glide.allow.new.certfollowontask allows for new tasks to be generated for repeated failures across audits.
Audit Results: Users can view results to identify discrepancies and take corrective actions through follow-on tasks.

Key Outcomes

By utilizing Desired State, ServiceNow customers can ensure their CMDB data remains compliant with organizational standards, quickly identify and rectify discrepancies, and streamline the audit process through automated task assignments. This leads to improved data integrity and operational efficiency within the organization.

Desired State performs scheduled or on-demand audits of CMDB data to determine which records match the expected attributes, CI relationships, and relationships to other records in the system.

For example, desired state can determine if a computer has a license for a particular software program. The compliance process checks configuration items (CI) to ensure that their attributes and relationships comply with standards set by your organization. Audit results show any discrepancies in the desired state of a record, and ServiceNow automatically assigns follow-on tasks to qualified users who can remediate those discrepancies.

Desired State roles

To access or configure certification elements, a user must have the certification_admin role. These users can create, update, and delete filters if they have the proper access to necessary tables.

In the base system, certification_admin users have limited system rights and do not have access to all the necessary tables. When assigning compliance resources, make sure to grant additional roles to the certification_admin user as needed. For example, the certification administrator requires roles that grant access to these tables:

Company [core_company]
Cost Center [cmn_cost_center]
Schedule [cmn_schedule]

Desired State process

The desired state certification process can mean checking servers to ensure that their physical resources, such as CPU speed or memory, comply with certain standards. This process also ensures that all critical business services have a manager, support group, and approval group assigned.

The administrator responsible for certification creates definitions of desired states and then schedules an audit to check CIs for compliance. The audit results identify CIs that pass certification and itemize the discrepancies in those CIs that fail. The ServiceNow system automatically generates follow-on tasks to track the process of adjusting the CIs to the desired state.

Desired state differs substantially from data certification. Data certification is a manual process to ensure that your data matches reality. Desired state examines the same data and determines when the configuration of each item is in the desired and approved state.

Create a certification filter: Create a filter that defines a subset of configuration items to certify. You can create multiple versions of a filter, and then activate the version you want to use for certification. You can create filters on the Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] table and all tables that extend it.
Create a template: Create a template with conditions that define the desired state of the physical attributes, related records, and relationships for a CI. The certification filter you select for the template determines which configuration items the system examines.
Create and run an audit: Create an audit using the template. Set the audit to run on a schedule or on demand. The audit generates a set of results based on the conditions from the template you specify. Determine usage of follow-on tasks:
- Determine if the audit creates follow-on tasks and assignment.
- Determine if the same follow-on task is used for the same audit failure across multiple runs. The system property glide.allow.new.cert_follow_on_task is set to true by default, allowing for new follow on tasks to be created for the same failure, at each audit run (this system property applies only to audits that aren't scripted).
View audit results: View the audit results which display any discrepancies between the desired state, as specified by the template, and the actual state of the target configuration items.
Correct discrepancies: Correct the discrepancies the audit found by completing the follow-on tasks created by the system.