Explore CMDB Workspace

Release version: Yokohama

Updated January 30, 2025

4 minutes to read

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Summary of Explore CMDB Workspace

The CMDB Workspace in ServiceNow Yokohama release is a centralized, modern interface designed for efficient exploration and management of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). It enables you to search, examine health, review recent activities, and access dashboards and tools that support CMDB tasks within your organization. The workspace integrates Performance Analytics, allowing detailed KPI analysis with drill-downs into trends and underlying records.

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Note that CMDB Workspace does not support domain separation and can be customized via the UI Builder.

Key Features

CI Details Views:
- CI Form (default): Offers a comprehensive, centralized view of configuration item (CI) details, including attributes, relationships, tags, services, CMDB Health, and CMDB 360 data. It supports editing with automatic application of IRE rules to prevent duplicates.
- CI Details Pane: If CI Form is disabled, a pane shows CI activity timelines (limited by thresholds), health summary, categorized attributes, activity streams, and relationships. It also allows access to Dependency Views maps and CMDB 360 data, and supports creating changes, incidents, or deleting CIs.
Views within CMDB Workspace:
- Home View: Default landing page showing key tasks, activity counts, CMDB Health summaries, and direct links to CMDB tools.
- My Work View: Focuses on managing lifecycle and compliance tasks like attestations.
- CMDB 360 View: Displays aggregated data from discovery sources, enabling tracking, issue identification, query creation, and reporting on CI attributes.
- Insights View: Highlights adoption and usage of key CMDB features and application services to improve CMDB health, with direct links to install and enable features.
- Management View: Provides CMDB administrators access to management tools, duplicate CI information, and recent CMDB activity insights.
Performance Analytics Integration: Allows drilling down from dashboards to detailed KPI data and records, with configurable filters and data scopes.
Configuration Identifiers Framework: Enables customization of CMDB Workspace feature behaviors on different workspaces, especially useful when integrating CMDB Workspace features elsewhere.

Access and Role Requirements

Access to various features requires specific roles such as CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User, itil, snincidentread, snchangeread, evtmgmtuser, appserviceuser, depending on the function (e.g., viewing incidents, changes, alerts, or CMDB 360 data).
Some features, like deleting CIs or saving changes, require CMDB Admin privileges.

Practical Benefits

Enables ServiceNow customers to efficiently monitor and manage the health, data quality, and relationships of their CMDB.
Supports proactive issue identification through CMDB 360 and health dashboards.
Provides task management and compliance workflows to maintain data integrity.
Facilitates detailed investigation and editing of CIs with safeguards against duplication.
Integrates with Performance Analytics to provide actionable insights and trend analysis.

Next Steps for Customers

Explore and customize CMDB Workspace views to fit organizational needs using UI Builder.
Review role assignments to ensure appropriate access to CMDB data and features.
Leverage dashboards like Home, CMDB 360, and Insights to monitor CMDB health and adoption.
Use Configuration Identifiers Framework for advanced customization and workspace integration.
Consult detailed guides on individual views (Home, My Work, CMDB 360, Insights, Management) for deeper understanding and configuration.

Learn more about CMDB Workspace, its different views, and its benefits when using key CMDB features such as CMDB Health, CMDB Data Manager, and CMDB 360.

CMDB Workspace overview

The CMDB Workspace is an efficient, central, and modernized way for you to work. Use CMDB Workspace to search and explore the CMDB, examine health and recent activity, and access various CMDB dashboards and tools to support tasks in your organization.

General interaction and additional information

CMDB Workspace leverages many Performance Analytics capabilities and features, such as indicator sources. Throughout the CMDB Workspace views, you can select the various cards to drill down to Performance Analytics KPI Details panes that show trends for the associated data. On a KPI Details pane, you can modify different settings to change the scope of the data. You can also select Show Records to list the records associated with the chart.
Lists throughout the CMDB Workspace have a filter icon () that you can select to show the filter definition used for the list.
You can open your Configurable Workspace experience in UI Builder to access and edit your CMDB Workspace experience.
See List of workspaces for a list of all Workspaces that ServiceNow® provides.
CMDB Workspace doesn't support domain separation.

CI details

When you drill down to CI details, how those details appear depends on system settings:

CI Form

By default, the system property sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled is set to true, enabling the experience of the CI Form feature for viewing CI details. Using CI Form, you are navigated to a centralized location with a comprehensive set of CI details organized by sections. Use the forms provided by CI Form to examine and edit CI attributes, relationships, tags, services and offerings, CMDB Health and CMDB 360 data associated with the CI, related lists, and activities. When updating CIs in CI Form, IRE rules are applied to avoid potential issues such as duplicate CIs.

For more information, see:

Components installed with CMDB Workspace: sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled system property.
Manage CI details in CI Form.

CI details pane

If sn_cmdb_ws.explore_ci.record.enabled is set to false, then the CI details pane is used for viewing CI details. When you drill down to a CI record in CMDB Workspace views and pages, the following details for the CI appear:

CI Timeline - Last 14 days: A timeline of CI activities such as change requests.
Note:
A CI timeline in CMDB Workspace fails to load when the number of any of the following activities exceeds its threshold:
- History: 200
- Incidents: 100
- Requests: 50
- Total Events: 200
Select the Open CI Timeline link in the error message to open the CI timeline in the base system, which shows activities for the CI, up to the specified threshold numbers.
CI Health: A summary of the health of the CI, showing related items such as critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships for the CI.

Role requirement: sn_cmdb_user or itil (for accessing incidents).
Details: CI attributes, grouped into categories such as Key attributes, Asset attributes, Discovery attributes, Operational attributes, and More attributes.
Note:
Use the CMDB - Workspace form view for a CI class to configure which attributes appear.
Activity: An activity stream to track what's changed in the CI record.
Infrastructure Relationships: List of the infrastructure CIs related to the CI.
Service Relationships: List of business applications, service offerings, and application services that the CI may be related to.

On the CI details pane, you can:

Select Open Dependency View to open the Dependency Views map and display a graphic infrastructure view of the specific CI record.
Select View CMDB 360 Data to show CMDB 360 details at the CI attribute level for the specific CI record.
Select Save to save any changes made to attributes for the CI record.
Select the More Actions icon (...) for additional functions:
- Select Create Change to create a new change request for the CI record.
- Select Create Incident to create a new incident for the CI record.
- Select Delete to delete the CI record.


UI activity	Additional requirements
CI Details Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User
CI Health Accessible to: Incidents card: sn_incident_read to view Change requests card: sn_change_read to view For remaining cards: At least sn_cmdb_user	itil
Related Open Changes Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_change_read role
Related Incidents Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	sn_incident_read role
Related Alerts Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Event Management (com.glideapp.itom.snac) plugin evt_mgmt_user role Set up Event Management
Related Application Services Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	app_service_user role
View CMDB 360 Data Accessible to: CMDB Admin, CMDB Editor, CMDB User	Enable and configure CMDB 360
Save Accessible to: CMDB Admin
More Actions/Delete Accessible to: CMDB Admin

Shared pages

For information about the shared pages, see the Dev site as follows:

What to explore next

To learn more about configuring and using CMDB Workspace, see: