Exploring Service Graph Workspace

Release version: Zurich

Updated February 9, 2026

5 minutes to read

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Summary of Exploring Service Graph Workspace

Service Graph Workspace is a centralized, modern interface designed to help ServiceNow customers efficiently explore and manage their CMDB (Configuration Management Database) data. It integrates with key CMDB features like CMDB Health, CMDB Data Manager, and CMDB 360, enabling users to search, analyze, and monitor configuration items (CIs), services, and related organizational data such as company and location information. The workspace leverages Performance Analytics to provide insightful dashboards and KPI trend details for comprehensive CMDB oversight.

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Key Features

Guided Tours: Administrators with the guidedtouradmin role can create step-by-step walkthroughs to assist users in navigating the workspace.
Performance Analytics Integration: Interactive cards and KPI Detail panes allow users to drill down into trends and data scope, with options to view associated records.
Flexible CI Details Viewing: Depending on system settings, CI details appear either in a comprehensive CI Form or a CI details pane. CI Form provides a full editing and relationship management experience with safeguards like IRE rules to prevent duplicates.
CI Details Pane Includes:
- CI Timeline showing recent activities (change requests, incidents) with thresholds to ensure performance.
- CI Health summary highlighting critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships.
- Grouped CI attributes configurable per class.
- Activity stream tracking record changes.
- Lists of infrastructure and service relationships with graphical Dependency Views.
- Access to CMDB 360 detailed attribute-level data.
- Actions such as creating change requests, incidents, or deleting CI records.
Role-Based Access: Different personas including CMDB administrators, data owners, and analysts have tailored access levels to perform their respective tasks securely.
Domain Separation: Service Graph Workspace does not support domain separation.
UI Customization: Users can open and edit the workspace experience using UI Builder to tailor it to organizational needs.

Personas Supported

CMDB Administrator: Manages CMDB configuration, governance, data ingestion, and reporting.
Data Owner: Focuses on managing owned CMDB data, sometimes on behalf of groups.
Analyst: Investigates and analyzes CMDB data to support organizational decisions.

Key Outcomes

Empowers users to efficiently explore and manage comprehensive CMDB data through a unified and interactive interface.
Provides actionable insights into CI health, relationships, and activity history to improve configuration governance and operational awareness.
Supports role-based workflows ensuring the right information and actions are available to the appropriate users.
Enhances data integrity through features like IRE rules and structured CI forms.
Facilitates better decision-making via integrated dashboards, filters, and detailed analytics.

Next Steps for ServiceNow Customers

To maximize value from Service Graph Workspace, customers should explore the various views such as Data Owner Home, Governance, Explore and Search, Insights, Tasks, and Lists views. Additionally, configuring related components like CMDB 360, Cloud vs Non-cloud resource jobs, and scheduled data imports will further enhance CMDB management capabilities. Administrators can also create guided tours and customize the workspace using UI Builder to fit their organizational processes.

Learn more about Service Graph Workspace, its different views and insight dashboards, when using key CMDB features such as CMDB Health, CMDB Data Manager, and CMDB 360.

Service Graph Workspace overview

The Service Graph Workspace is an efficient, central, and modernized way for you to work with the underlying graph database that includes CIs, services, and related data such as company and location data. Use Service Graph Workspace to search and explore the CMDB, examine health and recent activity, and access various insight dashboards and tools to support tasks in your organization.

Guided Tour

Administrators assigned to the guided tour admin role (guided_tour_admin) can use the Guided Tour Designer to create step-by-step walkthroughs that can guide users through the Service Graph Workspace. For more information, see Guided Tours.

General interaction and additional information

Service Graph Workspace leverages many Performance Analytics capabilities and features, such as indicator sources. Throughout the Service Graph Workspace views, you can select the various cards to drill down to Performance Analytics KPI Details panes that show trends for the associated data. On a KPI Details pane, you can modify different settings to change the scope of the data. You can also select Show Records to list the records associated with the chart.
Lists throughout the Service Graph Workspace have a filter icon that you can select to show the filter definition used for the list.
You can open your Configurable Workspace experience in UI Builder to access and edit your Service Graph Workspace experience.
See List of workspaces for a list of all Workspaces that ServiceNow® provides.
Service Graph Workspace doesn't support domain separation.

Personas

The Service Graph Workspace is intended to support the following personas in performing their tasks:


Persona	Description	Role
CMDB administrator	Manages the configuration of CMDB, data ingestion, governance, and reporting, to ensure that the CMDB supports the needs of their organization.	sn_cmdb_admin
Data owner	Owns and manages data in CMDB. This persona is primarily focused on managing data that they own. However, this persona may also be associated with data owned by a group that the data owner user belongs to such as a Change and Managed by groups.	sn_cmdb_editor
Analyst	Investigates and analyzes data in support of their organization. Visits the workspace to search and browse CMDB data and to access insight reports.	sn_cmdb_user

CI details

When you drill down to CI details, how those details appear depends on system settings:

CI Form

By default, the system property sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled is set to true, enabling the experience of the CI Form feature for viewing CI details. Using CI Form, you're navigated to a centralized location with a comprehensive set of CI details organized by sections. Use the forms provided by CI Form to examine and edit CI attributes, relationships, tags, services and offerings, CMDB Health and CMDB 360 data associated with the CI, related lists, and activities. When updating CIs in CI Form, IRE rules are applied to avoid potential issues such as duplicate CIs.

For more information, see:

Components installed with Service Graph Workspace: sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled system property.
Manage CI details using CI Form in Service Graph Workspace.

CI details pane

If sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled is set to false, then the CI details pane is used for viewing CI details. When you drill down to a CI record in Service Graph Workspace views and pages, the following details for the CI appear:

CI Timeline - Last 14 days: A timeline of CI activities such as change requests.
Note:
A CI timeline in Service Graph Workspace fails to load when the number of any of the following activities exceeds its threshold:
- History: 200
- Incidents: 100
- Requests: 50
- Total Events: 200
Select the Open CI Timeline link in the error message to open the CI timeline in the base system, which shows activities for the CI, up to the specified threshold numbers.
CI Health: A summary of the health of the CI, showing related items such as critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships for the CI.

Role required: itil (for accessing incidents)
Details: CI attributes, grouped into categories such as Key attributes, Asset attributes, Discovery attributes, Operational attributes, and More attributes.
Note:
Use the CMDB - Workspace form view for a CI class to configure which attributes appear.
Activity: An activity stream to track what's changed in the CI record.
Infrastructure Relationships: List of the infrastructure CIs related to the CI.
Service Relationships: List of business applications, service offerings, and application services that the CI may be related to.

On the CI details pane, you can:

Select Open Dependency View to open the Dependency Views map and display a graphic infrastructure view of the specific CI record.
Select View CMDB 360 Data to show CMDB 360 details at the CI attribute level for the specific CI record.
Select Save to save any changes made to attributes for the CI record.
Select the More Actions icon (...) for additional functions:
- Select Create Change to create a new change request for the CI record.
- Select Create Incident to create a new incident for the CI record.
- Select Delete to delete the CI record.


UI activity	Additional requirements
CI Details Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User
CI Health Accessible to: Incidents card: sn_incident_read to view Change requests card: sn_change_read to view For remaining cards: At least sn_cmdb_user	itil
Related Open Changes Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_change_read role
Related Incidents Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_incident_read role
Related Alerts Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Event Management (com.glideapp.itom.snac) plugin evt_mgmt_user role Set up Event Management
Related Application Services Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	app_service_user role
View CMDB 360 Data Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Enable and configure CMDB 360
Save Accessible to: CMDB Admin
More Actions/Delete Accessible to: CMDB Admin

Shared pages

For information about the shared pages, see the Dev site as follows:

What to explore next

To learn more about configuring and using Service Graph Workspace, see: