Using agentic workflows in Now Assist for CMDB

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated November 10, 2025
  • 6 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Using agentic workflows in Now Assist for CMDB

    Now Assist for CMDB enables users with thesncmdbuserrole to leverage AI-powered agentic workflows that facilitate Configuration Management Database (CMDB) tasks through natural language requests. These workflows streamline CI creation, data governance, and search operations by integrating AI agents that interpret input, enforce rules, and automate processes.

    Show full answer Show less

    Available Agentic Workflows and Their Functions

    • Create configuration item: Allows manual CI creation via natural language input. It validates the CI class, ensures compliance with Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) rules, checks for duplicates, and gathers required attributes before creating the CI.
    • Provide advice on CMDB governance: Supports data administrators and owners in improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health to foster data trustworthiness.
    • Search CMDB: Enables CI searches using various attributes through natural language requests. The workflow generates appropriate queries, including keyword, single-table, or multi-table searches with relationship navigation.
    • Remediate duplicate CIs [FUTURE]: Planned workflow for comprehensive de-duplication with AI decision transparency for administrator review.

    Key AI Agents and Their Roles

    • CMDB CI creator AI agent: Automates creation of new CI records.
    • CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent: Manages policies related to data certification and attestation for CI classes.
    • CMDB data ownership manager AI agent: Assesses and validates ownership data quality for CI classes, including user and group references.
    • CMDB health metrics manager AI agent: Provides health dashboard information and metrics to monitor CMDB data integrity.
    • CMDB life cycle manager AI agent: Manages life-cycle policies and retirement definitions for CI classes.
    • CMDB principal class manager AI agent: Assists with setting and managing principal CI classes for optimized workflows.
    • CMDB search AI agent: Facilitates CI search queries and returns relevant results.
    • CI summarizer AI agent: Summarizes key CI data including discovery, ownership, related incidents, and associated service instances.

    Practical Use and Configuration

    ServiceNow customers can configure AI models for these workflows using providers such as Now LLM Service, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Anthropic Claude on AWS. Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities secure execution, allowing workflows to run actions with appropriate permissions.

    To enable autonomous AI agent execution, customers need to duplicate and activate the agentic workflows and their triggers if automatic invocation is desired.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Automates routine CMDB operations, reducing manual effort and errors.
    • Improves data quality, compliance with governance policies, and trust in CMDB data.
    • Enhances search capabilities with AI-driven natural language understanding and relationship inference.
    • Provides transparency and control over AI decisions, especially for critical tasks like duplicate remediation.

    Users with the sn_cmdb_user role can access several Now Assist for CMDB agentic workflows.

    Agentic workflows

    Looking for an AI agent?
    • There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available on your instance, see Find AI agents.
    • To find agents that might not be installed on your instance, visit the AI Agent Marketplace on the ServiceNow Store.
    Table 1. Available agentic workflows for Now Assist for CMDB
    Agentic workflow name Description Available AI agents
    Create configuration item Occasionally, you might need to create a CI manually. To help you, the Create configuration item agentic workflow accepts your natural language request and verifies that it understands which class the new CI should belong to. The workflow then checks Identification and Reconciliation engine (IRE) rules to determine the required attributes for the CI and requests that information. After you provide sufficient data, the workflow ensures that the proposed CI includes the attributes that you requested, complies with IRE rules, and is not a duplicate. The workflow then creates the CI. For more information, see Create a CI using Now Assist CMDB CI creator
    Provide advice on CMDB governance Data governance can be an overwhelming task. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow supports data admins and owners by methodically working through the many-faceted process of improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health. The objective is to ensure that users can trust the data that they use for their work. For more information, see Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance.
    • CMDB data manager
    • CMDB data certification and attestation manager
    • CMDB data ownership manager
    • CMDB health metrics manager
    • CMDB life cycle manager
    • CMDB principal class manager
    Search CMDB The Search CMDB agentic workflow enables you to search for CIs by specifying any of several attributes of the CI of interest. The workflow accepts your natural language request, verifies your search goal, and then generates a keyword search, a single-table search with dot walks, or a multi-table searches that involve relationship navigation, depending on the information you provided. The workflow can infer CI relationship data to generate an appropriate query. For more information, see Use Now Assist to search the CMDB for CIs. CMDB CI search

    Remediate duplicate CIs

    [FUTURE]    		 The Duplicate CI remediator agentic workflow completes the full range of de-duplication tasks. The workflow presents its reasoning for each step so CMDB administrators can review and update the AI decisions. [FUTURE]

    AI agents used by Now Assist for CMDB

    CMDB CI creator AI agent
    The CMDB CI creator AI agent creates a new configuration item (CI) record in the CMDB.
    Configuration item summarizer Al agent
    Given a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) record GUID or' sys_id" summarize the Cl using an existing skill.
    CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent
    The CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent retrieves the data certification and attestation policies for a CI class and for similar classes. It can also create a data certification and an attestation policy. For more information, see Data Certification.
    CMDB data manager AI agent
    The CMDB life cycle manager AI agent helps admins to ensure that CMDB life-cycle policies are in place for principal classes or for specified classes. For more information, see Working with CMDB Data Manager.
    CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent

    The CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent retrieves and applies data certification and attestation policies to manage the data certification and attestation of CI classes. It can the data certification policies and the data attestation policies of a Cl class.

    CMDB data ownership manager AI agent
    The CMDB data ownership manager AI agent helps you to assess the quality of CI ownership data for a CI class to determine ownership, validate ownership, and evaluate ownership quality. You can validate fields that reference sys_user or sys_user_group like Assigned To, Managed by Group (default), Support Group, and so on. The agent answers the following questions:
    • Is CI ownership specified? Is the Managed by group attribute value set for the CI? Does it point to an active and correctly configured record? The value of the system property for ownership is a default field for the evaluation. For the Managed by group CI attribute, you can specify the percentage values that classify the result as Poor, Average, or Healthy. For more information, see Property settings for Now Assist for CMDB.
    • If you provide a user referencing value: Does the User Referencing value point to an active record? This evaluation identifies CIs that have inactive users and CIs with no User value.
    • If you provide a user referencing value: Does the Group Referencing value point to an active record? This evaluation identifies CIs that have inactive groups, empty groups (no users), and CIs with no Group value.
    CMDB health metrics manager AI agent
    The CMDB health metrics manager AI agent displays information on CMDB Health Dashboard jobs, health metrics status, and health scores. If the jobs are not configured, the workflow provides a link to the setup instructions. For more information, see CMDB Health.
    CMDB life cycle manager AI agent
    The CMDB life cycle manager AI agent performs actions related to life-cycle management of CI classes: retrieve the life-cycle management policy and retirement definition for a CI class and create a life-cycle policy.
    CMDB principal class manager AI agent
    The CMDB principal class manager AI agent determines whether you can set Cl classes as principal, suggests principal classes, and can set or unset a class as principal. Setting a class as a principal class is a practical way to save time because you can configure ServiceNow AI Platform products to display only principal classes in list views. The workflow helps you to decide which CIs you are most likely to work with day-to-day and then provides a link to enable you to set the associated classes as principal classes. For more information, see Update the list of classes in the Principal Class filter.
    CMDB search AI agent
    The CMDB search AI agent searches the CMDB for a particular CI using single table query search or keyword query search and then displays a link to search results.
    CI summarizer AI agent
    View a concise summary of key CI data. You can select the CI on a CI form, in a workspace page, or on any list view. The summary can include discovery data, ownership, and key related items such as open incidents, alerts, problems, upcoming change requests, and security vulnerabilities. Additionally, the summary lists the service instances that the CI is part of.
    Note:

    You can use Now LLM Service, Now LLM Long Term Stable models (LTS), Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini or Anthropic Claude on AWS as the AI model provider for all Now Assist skills and AI agents. Use the Configuration Controls in AI Control Tower to define which options are available, then set the skill-level preferences in the Now Assist Admin console. For more information, see Large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform®.

    Enable security implementation to execute AI agents and agentic workflows through Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities. ACLs provide the Run As capability to let agents and agentic workflows execute actions either as a dynamic user or as an AI user. For more information, see Implement access control in Now Assist AI agents

    Running AI agents autonomously

    Important:
    By default, all agentic workflow and AI agent records are read only.

    To run the AI agents autonomously, you must first duplicate the agentic workflow and then proceed with the following steps:

    • Activate the agentic workflow.
    • Activate all agents within the agentic workflow.
    • Activate the trigger to invoke the agentic workflow automatically. If you prefer to invoke it manually, activating the trigger isn’t necessary.