Common Service Data Model for Operational Resilience

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Common Service Data Model for Operational Resilience

    The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) is a standardized data framework used in ServiceNow to define and manage configuration items (CIs) and their relationships within the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Starting with Release 20.1.x, the Operational Resilience application supports the latest CSDM version, which enhances reporting, service management, and operational resilience capabilities.

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    CSDM enables organizations to accurately represent services, business services, and interfaces, while also managing associated risks, controls, incidents, and business continuity plans. This alignment ensures that services delivered are high quality and consistent with business goals.

    Key Features

    • Service and Business Service Management: Defines and manages services, business services, and interfaces within the CMDB to support operational resilience reporting.
    • Risk and Control Identification: Facilitates identification and management of risks, controls, and incidents to enhance organizational resilience and recovery.
    • Business Continuity Planning: Supports development and maintenance of plans for business continuity in the face of disruptions.
    • Unified Data Model: Ensures all ServiceNow AI Platform products and applications are CSDM compliant, sharing a consistent data model for improved integration and capabilities.
    • Enhanced Data Model Support: Latest CSDM release adds support for service offerings and application services, expanding the scope of service modeling.
    • Entity Hierarchy and Staging Tables: Uses the Entity Hierarchy table ([sngrcm2mprofileprofile]) to represent hierarchical relationships between business services, service offerings, and application services. The Service Process pillar acts as the parent for staging tables used in Operational Resilience.
    • Profile Table References: References for business services, service offerings, business processes, and application services are maintained in the [snoperresprofile] table to support operational resilience management.

    Key Benefits

    • Improved Service Management: Enables efficient and effective delivery of services and business services through precise data modeling.
    • Enhanced Operational Resilience: Improves the organization's ability to quickly respond to and recover from disruptions by managing risks and controls systematically.
    • Informed Decision-Making: Provides a comprehensive, integrated view of business services, risks, and controls, facilitating better strategic and operational decisions.
    • Consistency Across Products: Ensures that all ServiceNow applications accessing the CMDB operate with a consistent and standardized data model, enhancing interoperability and data accuracy.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers can leverage CSDM within Operational Resilience to structure their CMDB data accurately, capturing the full scope of services and their interdependencies. This enables better risk management, operational continuity, and service optimization. Understanding and implementing the CSDM framework will help organizations align their IT services with business objectives, improve incident response, and maintain regulatory compliance.

    Customers should familiarize themselves with the key tables such as the Entity Hierarchy and profile tables, and leverage the Service Process pillar as the foundation for staging data related to operational resilience. This structured approach supports scalable and maintainable resilience strategies.

    Starting with Release 20.1.x, the Operational Resilience application supports the latest Common Service Data Model (CSDM). CSDM is the data framework that administrators use when configuring ServiceNow® products and applications. It ensures that configuration items (CIs) and their relationships are properly defined and stored in the relevant Configuration Management Database (CMDB) tables.

    About Common Service Data Model (CSDM)

    The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) offers a robust framework for defining and managing services and business services related data in Operational Resilience reporting. Implementing this model helps organizations achieve the following objectives.

    • Define and manage services, business services, and interfaces.
    • Identify and manage risks, controls, and incidents.
    • Develop and maintain business continuity plans.
    • Support operational resilience and control environment management.
    • Enable informed decision-making and service optimization.

    This data model ensures that services are of high quality and align with the overall business goals.

    Benefits of CSDM

    The CSDM offers several key benefits for organizations.

    1. Improved service management: By defining and managing services, business services, and interfaces, organizations can ensure efficient and effective service/business service delivery.
    2. Enhanced Operational Resilience: The CSDM model enhances organizational resilience by identifying and managing risks, controls, and incidents, which enables a quick response and recovery from disruptions.
    3. Informed decision-making: By providing a comprehensive view of business services, risks, and controls, the CSDM model facilitates informed decision-making and service optimization.

    These benefits help organizations achieve their strategic objectives, enhance customer satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge in a dynamic business environment.

    About the Common Service Data Model

    The Common Service Data Model is the standard data model for all products that use the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

    ServiceNow AI Platform® products, applications, and features are CSDM compliant, meaning they all have identical access to the underlying CSDM data model. This shared access greatly enhances the capabilities of your applications.

    Additional information about the CSDM can be found in the CSDM in a nutshell and Community Forum.

    For the playlist of all the videos, see Playlist of all CSDM videos.

    Highlights of CSDM for Operational Resilience

    The previously integrated data model did not support service offerings and application services. The latest CSDM model now includes support for both service offerings and application services.

    Staging tables and pillars

    The Operational Resilience application uses the Entity Hierarchy table, [sn_grc_m2m_profile_profile], to save hierarchical relationships. For example, if a record has upstream_profile as a business service (BS) and downstream_profile as a service offering (SO), it indicates that the business service (BS) directly connects to the service offering (SO) in the CSDM data model.

    The Service Process pillar is the parent table for all staging tables in Operational Resilience. Other staging tables inherit the profile field from it.

    References for business services (BS), service offerings (SO), business processes (BP), and application services (AS) are added to the [sn_oper_res_profile] table.

    For more information on the tables that are relevant to the CSDM data model, see Tables relevant to CSDM. For information on the pillars, see Pillars overview tab.