Using agentic workflows in Now Assist for CMDB

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 6 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using agentic workflows in Now Assist for CMDB

    Now Assist for CMDB offers agentic workflows powered by AI to streamline and automate Configuration Management Database (CMDB) tasks. These workflows help users manage configuration items (CIs), improve data governance, perform searches, remediate duplicates, and handle CMDB lifecycle and health management. Access to these workflows requires thesncmdbuserrole.

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    Available Agentic Workflows and Their Practical Uses

    • Create configuration item: Enables users to create a CI by submitting natural language requests. It verifies class selection, ensures compliance with Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) rules, checks for duplicates, and collects required attributes before creating the CI.
    • Provide advice on CMDB governance: Assists data admins and owners in improving CMDB data accuracy, completeness, and health, fostering trust in the data.
    • Search CMDB: Facilitates searching for CIs using natural language input. Depending on provided details, it intelligently constructs keyword, single-table, or multi-table relationship queries.
    • Remediate duplicate CIs: Guides CMDB administrators through the full de-duplication process by presenting AI-driven recommendations with options to review and modify remediation actions.
    • Recommend service graph connector: Suggests appropriate Service Graph Connectors or data sources to populate CMDB data based on specified CI classes.

    AI Agents Supporting Workflows

    Several AI agents underpin the agentic workflows, each specialized in CMDB-related tasks:

    • CI creator AI agent: Creates new CI records.
    • Configuration item summarizer AI agent: Provides concise summaries of CI data including discovery, ownership, and related incidents or vulnerabilities.
    • CMDB data certification and attestation manager AI agent: Manages data certification and attestation policies for CI classes.
    • CMDB data ownership manager AI agent: Evaluates quality and validity of CI ownership data, including user and group references.
    • CMDB health metrics manager AI agent: Displays CMDB health metrics and dashboard statuses, offering setup guidance if needed.
    • CMDB life cycle manager AI agent: Handles lifecycle policy retrieval and creation for CI classes.
    • CMDB principal class manager AI agent: Helps identify and set principal CI classes to optimize workflows and UI displays.
    • CMDB search AI agent: Performs advanced CMDB searches based on keywords or queries.

    Security and Configuration

    Execution of AI agents and agentic workflows is governed by Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities, supporting secure action execution with Run As capabilities. To run agents autonomously, workflows and AI agents must be duplicated and activated, along with triggers if automatic invocation is desired.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Efficiency: Automate complex CMDB management tasks using natural language, reducing manual effort.
    • Data Quality: Maintain CMDB accuracy and health through guided governance advice and duplicate remediation.
    • Improved Searches: Quickly find CIs using intelligent query generation based on your input.
    • Lifecycle and Ownership Management: Ensure CI data complies with lifecycle policies and ownership validation.
    • Integration Guidance: Identify optimal data sources and connectors for populating the CMDB.

    By leveraging these agentic workflows and AI agents within Now Assist for CMDB, ServiceNow customers can enhance CMDB reliability and operational effectiveness with AI-driven automation and recommendations.

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

    Agentic workflows

    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.

    Table 1. Available agentic workflows for Now Assist for CMDB
    Agentic workflow name Description Available AI agents
    Create configuration item 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. For more information, see Create a CI using Now Assist 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 help users to 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, 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. For more information, see Use Now Assist to search the CMDB. CI search

    Remediate duplicate CIs

    		 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.

    AI agents used by Now Assist for CMDB

    CI creator AI agent
    The 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 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 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 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.
    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'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 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.