The concept of a self-healing ServiceNow CMDB explained

In my last blog post, I talked about the common pitfalls organizations run into with their ServiceNow CMDB, the foundational elements of establishing a high-quality database, and why it’s so beneficial to get your CMDB right. Our approach not only establishes a high-quality CMDB, but also sets it up in a way that makes it “self -healing”, or self-sustaining if you will. But what does a self-sustaining CMDB look like, and what steps and tasks does that approach entail?

We have made it a core focus of our business to get foundational elements of the ServiceNow platform right so that everything built on it is high quality, forward-thinking and efficient.

How the self-healing part works

Aside of the key foundational aspects I described before (Governance, Ownership, Definitions and Lifecycle Workflows), these are the steps and tasks an organization needs execute to establish a self-sustaining CMDB:

1. Create workflows
   • Start by creating workflows and catalog items that aid data maintenance. The workflows and catalog items support your data stewards and data owners in maintaining the data in a user-friendly way. Example catalog items are: Create, Update and Retire Technical Services or Register a Business Application incl. related Application Services.
   • Create assessments that are aimed at verifying and completing the data from existing records in the CMDB.

2. Automate

• • Auto-create and -assign tasks related to data quality
  • Auto-close tasks when data quality issues are solved
  • Automate data discovery and mapping (Discovery/Service Mapping)
  • Configure the Dynamic IRE engine
  • (Semi-)Automate data imports
  • Build smart workflows to create application services (based on the Business Application Registration form)

3. Set up dashboard & reports

• Track data improvement initiatives via ServiceNow like Create Integration with Vendor CMDB, Create Data Model for New Class, Currently Not Stored in CMDB, etc.
• Build dashboards to steer on data quality (i.e. see where improvements to data quality can be made, assign tasks to people and escalate if nothing happens) and show progress of improvement efforts/tasks

4. Create a multi-source CMDB
   Connect as many data sources as possible (i.e. Crowdstrike, Solarwinds, Tenable, SCCM, Intune, Dynatrace, Jamf, Tanium, VMWare – and any other ServiceGraph Connector), so there’s no need for double administration/source systems and the way of working can stay as-is. We advise to always use the ServiceNow Service Graph Connector as integration method. If there is no SGC connector available, select a vendor-supported store app or as a last resort, you can also opt to build the integration yourself.

Executing the steps and tasks I’ve outlined above will cause a shift within an organization (we’ve seen it ourselves), moving from manual, reactive, or no maintenance of data to an environment that is driving continuous improvement of data quality, as well as having a good understanding of the value and importance of it.

We give the right stakeholders within organizations the right tools, capabilities and support required to keep the CMDB up-to-date and improve the data quality within it.

This is what we call a self-healing or self-sustainable CMDB 😊