Business application candidate agent reference

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 1, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Business application candidate agent reference

    The Business Application Candidate Agent in ServiceNow Zurich release helps automate the identification and recommendation of business applications and their relationships to application services. It operates through configurable system properties that control filtering, job scheduling, performance tuning, confidence thresholds, and user group context to optimize AI-driven matching processes.

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    Key Configuration Properties

    • Scope and Filtering: Define which app service subclasses and business applications are included or excluded, typically filtering out inactive records.
    • Job Cadence: Control how often data synchronization and processing jobs run, with defaults ranging from 30 minutes to 7 days to balance currency and performance.
    • Processing Tuning: Adjust batch size (number of services processed per run), maximum similar entries returned by AI, and limits on negative feedback to optimize performance and AI learning.
    • Confidence Thresholds: Set minimum AI confidence ratings to generate recommendations and create relationship candidates, including an optional auto-accept feature for high-confidence matches to reduce manual reviews.
    • User Group Context: Optionally include comprehensive user and group ownership data in AI prompts for enhanced recommendation accuracy.

    Operational Constraints and Limits

    • The system supports up to 250,000 application services; exceeding this limit disables synchronization and requires ServiceNow support for scaling strategies.
    • Recommendations are retained for up to two years to manage storage and maintain system performance.

    Tables and Roles

    • The agent uses specialized CMDB and internal tables for processing queues, state tracking, and storing recommendation records.
    • Access to agent functionality, including activating jobs, configuring properties, viewing, and managing recommendations, requires the itil role.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This agent enables customers to automate the discovery and linking of business applications with their underlying app services, improving CMDB accuracy and operational visibility. By tuning properties, customers can tailor processing speed, recommendation quality, and confidence thresholds to meet their environment’s scale and needs. The role-based access ensures controlled management of AI-driven recommendations, supporting efficient, data-driven decision-making.

    Reference information for the Business application candidate agent, including system properties, configuration limits, table names, role requirements, and operational constraints.

    System properties

    All agent configuration properties use the prefix sn_sm_gen_ai.business_app_matching.*. You can configure the properties to control job behavior, filtering, performance, and AI confidence thresholds.

    Scope and filtering

    The following properties control which app services and business applications are included in processing.

    Table 1. Scope and filtering properties
    Property Default Description
    supported_app_service_classes (empty) Comma-separated list of app service subclasses to include. Empty (with empty unsupported list) means all classes are included.
    unsupported_app_service_classes (empty) Comma-separated list of app service subclasses to exclude.
    app_service_skip_criteria operational_status=2 Encoded query — app services that match this criterion are skipped during processing. Default skips inactive services.
    business_app_skip_criteria operational_status=2 Encoded query — business applications that match this criterion are excluded from matching. Default excludes inactive applications.
    Job cadence

    The following properties control how frequently the Data Synchronization and Processing jobs run.

    Table 2. Job cadence properties
    Property Default Description
    sync_interval_in_seconds 604800 (7 days) How often the Data Sync job re-runs after completing a full synchronization cycle.
    batch_interval_in_seconds 3600 (1 hour) How often the Processing job re-fires after completing a batch of recommendations.
    retry_interval_in_seconds 1800 (30 min) How often the Processing job polls while waiting for synchronization to finish or AI Search indexing to complete.
    Processing tuning

    The following properties tune AI inference and recommendation generation.

    Table 3. Processing tuning properties
    Property Default Description
    batch_size 1000 Number of app services processed per job execution. Hard cap: 10,000. Adjust this setting for performance on instances with very large numbers of app services.
    similar_max_entries 100 Maximum number of similar app service results returned by AI search per inference. Limits AI context and processing time.
    negative_feedback_max_entries 50 Maximum number of rejected recommendations used as negative feedback per inference. Limits the number of past rejections the AI considers when learning.
    Confidence thresholds

    The following properties control the minimum confidence levels required to generate and auto-accept recommendations.

    Table 4. Confidence threshold properties
    Property Default Description
    business_app_confidence_minimum_rating 3 (Medium) Minimum AI confidence rating (1=Very Low, 5=Very High) required to create a recommendation. Recommendations with confidence lower than this threshold are silently skipped. Increase this value to see only high-confidence recommendations; decrease to see more candidates.
    relationship_confidence_minimum_rating 3 (Medium) Minimum confidence rating required to create a CI relationship candidate when a business application match is found. Affects which related application service links are proposed.
    auto_accept_confidence_minimum_rating (empty) If set, recommendations where all confidence scores meet or exceed this value are automatically accepted without human review. Leave empty to require manual review for all recommendations.
    Tip:
    Use this setting only when you feel confident after many manual reviews.
    User group context

    The following property controls whether the AI includes additional user and group context when analyzing app services.

    Table 5. User group context property
    Property Default Description
    use_all_user_groups_info false When true, the agent gathers all user group and user values from the app service record (expanding user fields into their assignment groups) and includes them in the AI prompt. When false, only the managed_by_group value is used. Enable this property for richer context when your services have varied ownership fields populated.

    Operational constraints

    Table 6. Operational constraints
    Limit Value
    Maximum supported app services 250,000
    Recommendation retention 2 years

    If your app service count exceeds 250,000, the synchronization job deactivates itself and sets its state to unsupported. This indicates that your data volume exceeds the maximum supported scale. If this occurs, contact support for guidance on data partitioning or alternative approaches.

    Recommendations older than two years are automatically removed from the system to manage storage and improve performance.

    Table references

    The agent uses the following tables in the CMDB and internal processing system:

    Table 7. Business application candidate agent tables
    Table Name Purpose
    sn_sm_gen_ai_app_service_processing Work queue for app service processing jobs. Rows advance through states: ready → in_progress → processed.
    sn_sm_gen_ai_processing_entry Key/value run state table. Stores data_synchronization_state and per-batch processing statistics.
    sn_sm_gen_ai_business_app_recommendation Recommendation records for human review. Records are numbered with a BIZ prefix. Stores proposed business applications, confidence ratings, and related app service candidates.

    Role requirements

    Access to all Business application candidate agent tables, forms, and configuration requires the itil role. This role is required to:

    • Activate and deactivate scheduled jobs
    • Configure system properties
    • View recommendations and work queue entries
    • Accept or reject recommendations
    • Create or modify business application records and relationships