Business capability form
Summarize
Summary of Business capability form
The Business Capability form is a key component within the Enterprise Architecture application (formerly Application Portfolio Management) in ServiceNow. It enables users to define and manage business capabilities in a hierarchical structure, helping organizations map and understand their capabilities effectively.
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Key Features
- Name: Specifies the name of the business capability.
- Parent: Assigns a parent capability to establish a parent-child hierarchy. If no parent is assigned, the capability is a root node at level 0. Changing the parent requires running a scheduled job to update hierarchy levels.
- Level: Indicates the capability’s depth in the hierarchy, ranging from 0 (root) up to 6 levels. This field is system-managed and updated by running the "Update Business Capability Levels" job.
- Business Unit: Associates the capability with a specific business unit.
- Order: Applies only to root-level (level 0) capabilities to define their sequence order. The system validates and corrects this field via scheduled jobs to prevent duplicates or invalid values.
- Department: Links the capability to a relevant department.
- Leaf Node: Automatically indicates whether a capability has child capabilities. Leaf nodes have no children. This field is system-managed and read-only.
- Owned by: Identifies the user responsible for the business capability.
- Hierarchy ID: A system-generated identifier reflecting the capability’s position in the hierarchy, based on its parent’s ID and order. It is normally read-only but can be made editable by changing a system property, allowing custom hierarchy IDs.
- Description: Provides a brief description of the business capability.
Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers
ServiceNow customers can use the Business Capability form to structure and maintain an organized hierarchy of business capabilities, essential for enterprise architecture and application portfolio management. The form supports up to six hierarchy levels and includes system-enforced consistency through scheduled jobs that update levels, order, and hierarchy IDs. Customers can customize hierarchy IDs if needed, enabling alignment with internal standards.
By accurately capturing relationships and ownership, this form facilitates better visibility into capability dependencies and supports strategic planning and governance activities. Additionally, integrating capabilities with applications enhances traceability and impact analysis within the ServiceNow platform.
Business Capability is a common table used within the Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) application.
Business Capability form fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Name of the business capability. |
| Parent | The parent capability for the capability that you’re creating. Assigning a parent capability renders the business capability as a child capability. If no parent is assigned or if the parent is null, then the level of the capability is at 0 level or root, which means it’s a root node capability. If the parent field is made null, then a message prompts you to run a scheduled job to update the business capability levels. |
| Level | The level at which the capability is in the hierarchy. If there’s no parent capability, then the level is 0, which indicates that the capability is at the root level. Level at which the capability is in the hierarchy. Up to six levels are supported. If you add a capability or update it by changing its parent, then run the Update Business Capability Levels job, on demand. The job determines the capability level and updates all the capabilities with the level information. Note: The system updates the field and the user can’t. |
| Business Unit | Business unit that is associated with the selected business capability. |
| Order | Assign any integer value. Applicable only for level-0 capability. The number you assign determines the position of the capability in the sequential order of all other business capabilities in that capability hierarchy. The Order field is available only for root node or level-0 capabilities. The scheduled job checks for conditions such as order values entered for non-root capabilities, duplicate order values, and null value and eliminates such values. It calculates and sets the level and hierarchy ID for each capability. |
| Department | Department that is associated with the selected business application. |
| Leaf Node | This field denotes whether the business capability is a parent of any other capability. If the option is enabled, then it means that it doesn’t have child capability. Capabilities follow a parent-child hierarchy. The Leaf node attribute in the capability denotes that it isn’t a parent of any other capability. Note: The system updates the field and the user can’t. |
| Owned by | User who owns the business capability. |
| Hierarchy ID | Hierarchy ID of the business capability. For level 0 capability, a hierarchy ID is generated based on the order. For all non-root capabilities, the hierarchy ID is generated based on the hierarchy ID of its parent.
The number is prefixed to the business capability and you can view it in the capability hierarchy map. The capabilities are structured vertically according to their hierarchy IDs. Whenever a capability is updated such as if a parent is added or deleted, then the hierarchy ID is automatically updated. Note: By default, the system updates the field. So, you can’t edit the field. However, if you prefer a different number or value for the hierarchy ID from what the system generates, you can reset the system property flag to True. Setting the property to true makes the Hierarchy ID field editable in the Business Capability form and you can enter the value. By this action, the system default logic of generating the hierarchy ID is overridden by your custom hierarchy ID. |
| Description | A short description of the business capability. |