Overview

Although ServiceNow has individual modules that provide ways to configure tables, identification rules, relationships, and CMDB health definitions. The CI Class Manager brings all of this together and provides a centralized place to view the CMDB class hierarchy in a tree-view format as well as view or edit class definitions and class settings for identification rules, reconciliation rules, and CMDB Health.

Various sections and tabs of the CI Class Manager and their functionalities.

• Basic Info:The Basic Info tab provides a place to view or configure basic details such as a Display Name, Table Name, setting the Extensible flag, and associating an Icon to the class. 

• Attributes: It allows you to view or to create new class attributes. 

• Identification Rule: It used in the identification and reconciliation process to uniquely identify CIs. This tab by default displays the derived identification rule from the parent class as well as any defined identification entries.  

• Dependent Relationship: Create hosting and dependent relationship rules for CI classes to help with correctly identifying dependent CIs during the discovery and service mapping process.

• Reconciliation Rule: It is a process of reconciling CIs and CI attributes by allowing only designated authoritative data sources the ability to update the CMDB at the CI table and attribute level

Provides the components for specifying the data sources that are authorized to update CI attributes. If there is more than one authorized data source, users will also create a data precedence rule.

Note: reconciliation rules do not apply to the creation of records as any data source can create a CMDB record.

Setting reconciliation rules prevents the flip flopping of various data sources updating each other’s values.

Data Precedence Rules: Defines the priority across multiple data sources if more than one is authorized to edit the same CI attributes.

Data Refresh Rules: Defines the frequency that authorized data sources should update CI attributes.

• Suggested Relationship: Suggested relationships are built to help the user decide which relationships are reasonable when building relationships for the class being defined.

For Example:

Allocated from :: Allocated to

Exports to :: Imports from

• Health: Health metrics such as duplicate CIs, required CI fields, and audits contribute to the calculation of the overall health scorecards at the specific CI class or base CMDB level.

The health of the CMDB data is monitored and reported for the following KPIs,

1. Completeness: CIs are tested for required and recommended fields that are not populated.
2. Compliance: The CMDB data is audited for adherence to pre-defined certificates.
3. Correctness: CIs are tested against pre-defined data integrity rules such as identification rules (to detect duplicate CIs), orphan CI rules, and stale CI rules.

• CI List: The CI list displays all defined CIs for the selected class.

• Pinned Class: Pinning classes provide an easy way to navigate to the classes you use the most.  Clicking on the “Pin” displays the pinned classes.  Clicking on any of the displayed classes takes you to the settings for that class.