Change Management integration with ITOM Visibility

Release version: Yokohama

Updated January 30, 2025

3 minutes to read

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Summary of Change Management integration with ITOM Visibility

This integration enhances Change Management by connecting it with ITOM Discovery and ITOM Visibility, enabling automatic maintenance and manual discovery of configuration items (CIs) with IP addresses involved in change requests. It allows change request fulfillers to trigger discovery processes directly, improving CI data accuracy during change management.

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Enabling Integration

ITOM Discovery requires installing the Discovery plugin (com.snc.discovery).
ITOM Visibility requires both the Discovery plugin and the Service Mapping plugin (com.snc.service-mapping).

Integration with ITOM Discovery

Upon activation of Discovery, Change Management introduces new configurable properties under Change Management > Administration > Change Properties to control discovery triggering:

Discovery Trigger Mode: Set to automatic, manual, both, or off to control how discovery is initiated for affected CIs.
Manual Trigger States: Defines change request states in which discovery can be manually started.
Automatic Trigger States: Defines states that automatically trigger discovery when the change request transitions to them.

Additional fields added to Affected CI related lists include Discovery State—showing discovery status with icons and links to logs—and Discovery last updated timestamp.

If manual or both trigger modes are selected, an Initiate Discovery link appears for change requests in the defined states, enabling users to start discovery on demand.

Integration with ITOM Visibility

This integration allows viewing changes within the context of application services via service maps. Changes to application services and their CIs are visually indicated, supporting impact analysis.

When the ServiceNow AI Platform is configured for change validation, changes are evaluated and marked as approved or unapproved on the service instance map:

Light gray balloon: Unapproved change with no effect on service behavior.
Dark gray balloon: Unapproved change affecting service behavior.
Green balloon: Approved change where AI validation is enabled.
Double balloon: Multiple changes occurring closely in time.

Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

Automates and enhances accuracy of CI data in change management processes through integrated discovery.
Provides visibility of change impacts within application service maps, aiding impact assessment and decision-making.
Supports manual and automatic discovery triggering tailored to organizational workflows.
Enables change validation through AI Platform for improved governance and compliance.

Next Steps

To fully leverage this integration, ensure the appropriate plugins are installed based on your ITOM subscriptions, configure the discovery triggering properties according to your change management process, and consider enabling AI-based change validation for enhanced change governance.

If your organization is subscribed to ITOM Discovery or ITOM Visibility, integration with these ITOM products is automatically enabled. With this integration, any configuration item (CI) with an IP address that is part of a change request process can be maintained automatically. Change request fulfillers can also manually request the discovery process for a CI.

Enabling integration

Depending on subscriptions purchased by your organization, you must install and configure the following plugins:

For ITOM Discovery - the Discovery plugin (com.snc.discovery)
For ITOM Visibility - the Discovery plugin (com.snc.discovery) and Service Mapping plugin (com.snc.service-mapping)

Integration with ITOM Discovery

When Discovery is activated, Change Management exposes three new properties within the Change Properties module (Change Management > Administration > Change Properties):

Table 1. Change Management properties for Discovery
Property	Description
Configures how discovery is triggered for Affected CIs (automatically, manually or off)	Determines whether to trigger discovery for the affected CIs automatically, manually, both, or not at all. Type: Choice list Values: Off, Both, Automatic, Manual Default value: Off Note: If the property below is set to Both, and you trigger discovery manually, then the automatic discovery will not be triggered for that change request.
List of Change Request states (comma-separated) where discovery can be triggered manually	Defines the change request state values to allow discovery to be manually initiated. For these defined state values, the Initiate Discovery related link is available. Type: String Default value: Implement, Review Note: If there are multiple languages used on the instance, then this property needs to be set to the internal state value for Review.
List of Change Request states (comma-separated) where discovery triggers automatically. E.g. when the Change Request's state changes to Review	Defines the change request state values for which discovery is automatically triggered. Discovery initiates when transitioning to the state values listed. Type: String Default values: Review Note: If there are multiple languages used on the instance, then this property needs to be set to the internal state value for Review.

Note:

For the last two properties in the above table, if there are multiple languages used on the instance, then the property needs to be set to the internal value, which is 0, for Review.

In addition to the new properties, the Discovery State and the Discovery last updated fields get added to the Affected CI related list. Discovery State provides one of five status values and a corresponding icon to reflect that status:

In Progress
Completed Successfully
Completed w/Warning
Completed w/Error
Cancelled

The Discovery State value is presented as a link to the corresponding Discovery log file. The Discovery last updated field contains a date and time stamp indicating the last time Discovery was executed.

If you have opted to manually initiate the Discovery module, or opted for both manual and automatic initiation, then the Initiate Discovery related link appears in the Related Links section when the state of the change request matches one of the defined states in the property. When Discovery is triggered, the values in the Discovery State and the Discovery last updated fields change.

change management integration with discovery — Figure 1. Change management integration with discovery

Integration with ITOM Visibility

You can view the changes in the context of application services. Service maps available in Service Mapping show changes to an application service as a whole and to the individual configuration items (CIs) comprising the service.

If the ServiceNow AI Platform is configured to validate changes, all changes are evaluated and rendered as valid or not. If a change is valid, its change record on the service instance map is marked as approved. For more information about configuring the platform for change validation, see Managing proposed changes.

The type of change mark depends on the nature of changes that it represents:

Light gray balloon (): Unapproved change that does not influence the service instance behavior. For example, a change in a network path or adding a node to a cluster.
Dark gray balloon (): Unapproved change that changes the service instance behavior.
Green balloon (): An approved change in deployments where the ServiceNow AI Platform is configured to validate changes.
Double balloon (): Multiple separate changes that happened a short time from each other.