General administration setup for BCM

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of General administration setup for BCM

    The Business Continuity Management (BCM) administrator, assigned thesnbcm.adminrole, is responsible for configuring and managing the BCM application within ServiceNow. This setup involves various administrative tasks accessible through the General Administration module, enabling effective business impact analysis (BIA) and continuity planning.

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    Key Features

    • General Administration Module: Central hub for BCM administrative tasks including configuration of impact categories, documentation sections, element definitions, variables, loss scenarios, impact ratings, recovery tiers, recovery timeframes, task views, approval workflows, and application properties.
    • Custom Queue for Dependency Updates: From the Australia release onward, BCM uses a dedicated bcmdependencies custom queue for processing Update dependencies events. This improves performance by isolating BCM dependency processing from other platform activities. Existing custom queues for this purpose should be removed.
    • BIA Configuration Module: Used to configure BIA templates, which are prerequisites for conducting business impact analyses.
    • Plan Templates Module: Allows configuration of business continuity plan templates, helping standardize planning across the organization.
    • Dependency Configuration Records: Enables configuration of dependencies within BCM to map and manage relationships critical to continuity planning.
    • Impact Categories and Documentation Sections: Define impact categories with criteria, applicable timeframes, and recovery objectives; configure documentation sections to detail the plan’s purpose, scope, goals, and success criteria.
    • Element Definitions and Variables: Identify and define configuration items and their dependencies to be assessed and recovered during a disruption.
    • Loss Scenarios and Impact Ratings: Establish scenarios for potential losses and rate impact severity to prioritize response efforts.
    • Recovery Tiers and Timeframes: Group applications by recovery objectives and set timelines from disruption to business resumption.
    • Grid Configuration: Customize grids for BIA dependency assessments and categories to tailor data presentation and analysis.
    • My Tasks Page and Approval Configuration: Manage assigned BCM tasks and define multi-level approval processes to streamline governance.
    • BCM Properties: Configure global settings and properties installed with the BCM application for tailored behavior and compliance.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By following these administrative setups, BCM administrators can ensure that the BCM application is properly tailored to their organization’s needs. This enables accurate business impact analyses, structured continuity planning, and efficient dependency management. The dedicated processing queue enhances reliability and performance, while configurable templates and approval workflows support governance and standardization. Ultimately, these configurations help organizations prepare effectively for disruptions and minimize downtime.

    If you are the BCM administrator, you can set up the Business Continuity Management application by performing certain administrative tasks.

    General Administration module

    The administrative tasks that are associated with the BCM application are listed in the General Administration module in the application UI as shown in the example.General Administration module.

    The Business Continuity Management administrator with the sn_bcm.admin role is responsible to perform the administrative tasks that are associated with the Business Continuity Management application.

    Business Continuity Management administrators perform these administrative tasks:

    Custom queue for the Update dependencies process

    Previously, Update dependencies events were added to the platform default queue, which is shared across all ServiceNow applications. During periods of high activity, this could result in delays in processing BCM dependency updates — either because other applications saturated the queue, or because a long-running BCM process affected other items in it.

    With the Australia release and later, the Update dependencies process uses a dedicated custom queue (bcm_dependencies) instead of the platform default queue. This is a backend change with no visible indicator in the UI.

    The dedicated queue ensures that Update dependencies events have their own processor and do not compete with or block other platform activity.

    If you previously configured a custom queue for BCM dependency processing on your instance, remove it — BCM now provides this configuration natively.

    For more information about custom queues and the event registry, see System Events and Event registry.

    This change applies to the Australia release and later.

    BIA Configuration module

    The BCM administrator configures the BIA templates in the BIA Configuration module. Configuring the BIA templates is a pre-requisite for performing the business impact analysis.

    The BIA templates menu option in the BIA Configuration module is shown in the example.BIA Configuration module.

    For more information on configuring a BIA template, see Configure BIA templates with legacy assessment.

    Plan Templates module

    The Business Continuity Management administrator uses the Plan Templates module to configure a business continuity plan template. The Plan Templates module is shown in the example.Plan Templates module.

    For more information on configuring a business continuity plan template, see Configuring plan template.