Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance

    The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow in Now Assist supports ServiceNow customers in managing and improving the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data quality. This workflow guides data administrators and owners through enhancing CMDB accuracy, completeness, and overall health. Reliable CMDB data enables faster incident resolution, better compliance, and reduced service disruption risks, ultimately helping users trust the data they depend on.

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    Key Features

    • Agentic Workflow: Evaluates configuration items (CIs) updated within the last 90 days to provide ongoing governance guidance as your data models and integrations evolve.
    • AI Agents: The workflow leverages specialized AI agents to assess various CMDB governance areas:
      • CMDB Principal Class Manager AI Agent: Suggests and manages principal CI classes to streamline views and focus on the most relevant configuration classes.
      • CMDB Life Cycle Manager AI Agent: Verifies that CMDB lifecycle policies are implemented for principal or specified CI classes.
      • CMDB Data Certification and Attestation Manager AI Agent: Retrieves or creates data certification and attestation policies to ensure data validity.
      • CMDB Health Metrics Manager AI Agent: Provides visibility into CMDB Health Dashboard jobs, metrics status, and scores, including setup guidance if needed.
      • CMDB Data Ownership Manager AI Agent: Evaluates and validates CI ownership quality, including the status of assigned users and groups, ensuring active and correctly configured ownership records.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    Utilizing this workflow helps you systematically improve your CMDB data governance by:

    • Increasing trust in CMDB data used for daily operations and decision-making.
    • Reducing time spent managing and verifying data quality manually.
    • Supporting compliance through data certification and lifecycle policy enforcement.
    • Enhancing operational efficiency with better CMDB health and ownership clarity.

    Accessing and using the Provide advice on CMDB governance workflow enables your teams to maintain a healthy, reliable CMDB that maximizes the value of your ServiceNow AI Platform products.

    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 help users to trust the data that they use for their work.

    Access the workflow

    See Get advice on CMDB governance from Now Assist for information on accessing the workflow.

    Descriptions of AI agents

    This topic includes overviews of the actions of AI agents.

    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 to you, see Find AI agents.

    Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow

    The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is the central repository of your organization's IT assets, services, and their relationships. The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow helps to promote CMDB accuracy, completeness, and integrity to maximize the value and performance of your ServiceNow AI Platform products. The results are faster incident resolution, enhanced conformance, and a reduced risk of service disruption. The agentic workflow evaluates CIs updated in the last 90 days.

    The Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow supports admins and owners with information on data health and ongoing guidance for governance as data models and integrations grow. The workflow calls on the following AI agents:

    AI agents used by the CMDB principal class manager AI agent

    AI agents

    This section presents overviews of the actions of the AI agents that the CMDB governance agentic workflow uses.

    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 to you, see Find AI agents.

    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're 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 life cycle manager AI agent

    The CMDB life cycle manager AI agent helps admins to confirm 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 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 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 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 indicate 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 indicate 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 indicate an active record? This evaluation identifies CIs that have inactive groups, empty groups (no users), and CIs with no Group value.