CSDM5 in ServiceNow Zurich Release.
When you provision a new Personal Developer ServiceNow Instance, you will notice that the behavior of CSDM5 in Zurich is significantly different from that of CSDM5 in previous releases. What's new/changed?
Making Sense of Software, Infrastructure, and Instances
One of the biggest challenges in managing a modern CMDB is figuring out where to put what. Is Microsoft Teams a Business Application? Is Kafka part of Infrastructure? Where do I track Intune, and how do I model a DNS service? The Common Service Data Model (CSDM5) gives us a structured way to think about this. But it only works if we clearly separate baselines, instances, and service instances. Here’s a breakdown that can help you classify things consistently. Software in CSDM5 Software [...]
You want a better CSDM, for less money, and you want it now?
That is possible by making the contents of the CSDM almost Zero-touch. You can import a product-agnostic Service Portfolio which does not have to be updated whenever you change a product. If you link IT service delivery process to asset management, you can update your asset repository (almost) automatically, You can update the CMDB automatically using Automated Discovery/Federation. And lastly you can map those items to the Service Instances that you defined. The only thing that your architects and data stewards need to do [...]
Meet our Digital Portfolio Manager: ChatGPT 5 Pro!!
Recently, I asked ChatGPT 5 Pro to define the artefacts and their relations that need to be registered in ServiceNow. In this article, you will find what went surprisingly well and what failed miserably. The detailed results (which considered compliance with the CSDM 5 and TBM 5 Standards) that the ChatGPT Chatbot generated are shown as well. Spoiler Alert: ChatGPT proves to be a great assistant that probably has read all CSDM5 and TBM5 documentation from beginning to end, but the Bot will [...]
CSDM5 explained in 10 minutes…
There are hundreds of interpretations of the ServiceNow Common Service Data Model (CSDM). In this article, you will find the how CSDM5 is construed and implemented in ServiceNow. Different lenses, different focus. Program/Project Managers manage the Project/Demand Portfolio. Enterprise Architects manage the Application Portfolio Product Owners manage the backlog for their components in the Product Portfolio Service Owners manage their artifacts in the Service Portfolio Configuration Managers track their IT Inventory in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Asset Managers track the book value, operational [...]
Fix Script to remove obsolete/invalid CI Relations, with preview option
Relations in the ServiceNow CMDB can easily get out of control, leading to performance problems and reduced data quality. To help address this, the script below provides a safe way to clean up the cmdb_rel_ci table—for example, after mass-updating the Operational State of CIs or after mass-deleting CIs. Because a ServiceNow CMDB can contain millions of relations—and because these relations drive impact analysis—it is critical to keep the table contents clean. When a CI is removed, its relations should also be removed. While I [...]