Exploring Now Assist for CMDB

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Now Assist for CMDB

    Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) leverages Agentic AI to enhance CMDB management by enabling natural language interactions for searching, summarizing, and remediating configuration items (CIs). It supports improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health, streamlining tasks such as CI creation, duplicate resolution, and diagnosis of Service Graph Connector (SGC) import issues.

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    Key Features

    • Create Configuration Item Agentic Workflow: Allows users to create CIs through natural language requests, verifies necessary attributes based on Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) rules, and prevents duplicates. Especially useful for adding physical CIs that may otherwise be overlooked.
    • Provide Advice on CMDB Governance Workflow: Guides data administrators and owners through structured processes to enhance CMDB governance, fostering trust in CMDB data quality.
    • Search CMDB Agentic Workflow: Enables flexible search of CIs using natural language inputs, supporting keyword, single-table, and multi-table searches including relationship navigation to retrieve relevant CI information.
    • Duplicate CI Remediator Workflow: Automates the de-duplication process with AI-driven recommendations, allowing administrators to review, adjust, and execute remediation actions to maintain CMDB integrity.
    • Manage Duplicate CIs Skill: Provides step-by-step guidance for resolving duplicates, including reviewing duplicate classes, creating and applying remediation templates, previewing results, and identifying root causes to prevent future duplications.
    • CI Summarization Skill: Offers concise summaries of key CI data such as discovery details, ownership, related incidents, alerts, problems, changes, security vulnerabilities, and associated service instances, enhancing situational awareness during incident, change, or event management.
    • Service Graph Connector Diagnosis Skill: Automates diagnosis and resolution recommendations for errors in Service Graph Connectors that affect CI data ingestion, reducing manual troubleshooting effort for administrators.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Streamlines and simplifies complex CMDB management tasks through AI-assisted workflows and natural language interactions.
    • Improves CMDB data quality by addressing duplicates and governance systematically, promoting reliable and trustworthy data usage.
    • Enhances operational efficiency by providing quick access to summarized CI information and automating error diagnosis for integrations.
    • Supports proactive maintenance and governance of CMDB, helping prevent data issues before they impact services.

    With the Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) application, you can use Agentic AI to search the CMDB, summarize discovery, ownership and related information for a CI, and fix failed SGC import sets. You can also follow step-by-step guidance to help you remediate duplicate CIs, improve CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health .

    Now Assist for CMDB agentic workflows

    Now Assist for CMDB provides the following abilities:

    Create configuration item agentic workflow

    Occasionally, you might 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.

    The Create configuration item agentic workflow is particularly useful for adding CIs to tables accessed by Operational Technology because users might add physical CIs while unaware of the importance of managing CI data in the CMDB.

    To learn more, see Create a CI using Now Assist.

    Provide advice on CMDB governance agentic workflow

    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.

    To learn more, see Getting advice from Now Assist on CMDB governance.

    Search CMDB agentic workflow

    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, depending on the information you provided, generates a keyword search, a single-table search with dot walks, or a multi-table search that involves relationship navigation. The workflow can infer CI relationship data to generate an appropriate query.

    To learn more, see Use Now Assist to search the CMDB.

    Duplicate CI remediator agentic workflow
    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 the AI recommendations, modify the remediation actions if needed, and then perform the de-duplication tasks.

    Now Assist for CMDB skills

    Manage duplicate CIs skill

    Duplicate CIs interfere with the integrity, reliability, and general health of CMDB. Resolve de-duplication tasks with support from the Now Assist Manage duplicate CIs skill. CMDB administrators follow step-by-step guidance to perform remediation, and can preview remediation results before applying a template. The manage duplicate CIs skill accelerates the work that you normally perform manually.

    In this example, the manage duplicate CIs skill presents a list of classes with duplicate CIs and suggests possible actions. You can select an option or enter the action text in your own words:
    • Review de-duplication tasks, create de-duplication templates, assign tasks to templates, and run the templates.
    • Preview the results of applying a de-duplication template before you decide to apply it.
    • Identify the root cause of duplications so that you can review the groups of de-duplication tasks that share a common cause and possibly avoid the issue in the future.

    Selecting duplicate CIs to remediate.

    To learn more, see Let Now Assist help you to manage duplicate CIs.

    CI summarization skill

    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. Summary information is useful while working in applications such as Incident Management, Change Management, and Event Management.

    Summary information.

    To learn more, see View CI information with the Now Assist CI summarization skill.

    Service Graph Connector diagnosis

    Service Graph Connectors are integrations that facilitate data ingestion from third-party sources into the CMDB. Errors in Service Graph Connectors can disrupt the flow of configuration item (CI) data resulting in inconsistencies between the actual state of CIs and their CMDB records.

    The Service Graph Connector diagnosis skill automates error diagnosis and recommendation generation, enabling CMDB installation administrators to identify and resolve the issues. This automation reduces manual effort and saves time in debugging Service Graph Connectors issues.

    To learn more, see the following topics: