Viewing your network inventory configuration items with CMDB Workspace

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 5 minutes to read
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    Summary of Viewing your network inventory configuration items with CMDB Workspace

    CMDB Workspace in ServiceNow allows you to search, explore, and manage your network inventory configuration items (CIs) within the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). It provides tools to view CI details, monitor CMDB health, analyze recent activities, and access dashboards to support your organization's asset management tasks.

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    To use CMDB Workspace effectively, you must activate specific plugins and have appropriate roles assigned. This workspace enables better visibility and control over network asset CIs, improving the accuracy and completeness of your CMDB data.

    Prerequisites

    • Plugins: CMDB CSDM Support and CMDB Activation plugins must be enabled.
    • Roles: Access requires at least one of these roles: sncmdbadmin, sncmdbeditor, or sncmdbuser. Additional roles may be needed for some dashboards and features.

    Accessing and Using CMDB Workspace

    After installing the CMDB Workspace app, access it via Network Inventory > CMDB Workspace. It offers various functionalities:

    • CI Searches: Search network asset CIs by specifying up to five attribute-based conditions, then view detailed CI records including timelines, health overviews, and attributes.
    • CI Overview: View grouped network asset CIs by categories like Applications, Cloud, and Server. Drill down to specific classes and individual CIs for detailed insights.
    • CMDB Health: Monitor overall health metrics of network asset CIs and their relationships, based on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as correctness, compliance, completeness, and relationship integrity.
    • 7-day Activity Trends: Review charts displaying recent activity on network asset CIs and application services, including counts of new, updated, duplicate CIs, and service outages.
    • CIs Managed by Me: See a personalized list of network asset CIs you manage, grouped by class.
    • Quick Links: Access related dashboards and tools like CI Class Manager and CMDB Health Dashboard, contingent on your roles and installed applications.

    Detailed CI Information

    When viewing a network asset CI record, you get the following details:

    • CI Timeline: Activities over the last 14 days, such as change requests.
    • CI Health: Summary of critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships affecting the CI.
    • Attributes: Grouped into categories like Key, Asset, Discovery, Operational, and More, configurable via CMDB Workspace form views.
    • Activity Stream: Tracks changes to the CI record.
    • Infrastructure and Service Relationships: Lists related infrastructure CIs and business applications or services linked to the network asset CI.

    Actions available on the CI details page include opening graphical dependency views, accessing multisource data reports for discovery tracking, and saving attribute changes.

    Handling CI Deletion Errors

    If a CI cannot be deleted due to related child CIs, the error message will indicate the dependency. To resolve this, delete the related child CIs first. Administrators have the option to customize the deletion process to suit organizational needs.

    Why This Matters

    Using CMDB Workspace helps ServiceNow customers maintain a reliable, accurate, and comprehensive network inventory within their CMDB. It empowers IT teams to monitor asset health, track changes, and manage dependencies effectively, supporting better decision-making and operational efficiency.

    You can use CMDB Workspace to search and explore the CMDB, examine its health and recent activity, and access various dashboards and tools to support the tasks in your organization.

    Prerequisites for the CMDB Workspace

    • Plugins: You must activate the following plugins before you can use CMDB Workspace:
      • CMDB CSDM Support (com.snc.cmdb.csdm)
      • CMDB Activation (com.snc.cmdb.csdm.activation)
    • Roles: To access CMDB Workspace, you must, at a minimum, have one of the following roles:
      • sn_cmdb_admin
      • sn_cmdb_editor
      • sn_cmdb_user
      Note:
      In CMDB Workspace, some dashboards and list views require specific roles in addition to the key admin, editor, or user roles. Depending on which role is assigned to you, you might only have access to some of the features that are available in the CMDB Workspace
      .
    • Features: CMDB Workspace provides access to a wide range of applications and features. However, to provide meaningful reports, overviews, and trends, you must set up and configure some of those features so that CMDB Workspace can use the data that is generated.

    Accessing CMDB Workspace

    After you install the app from the ServiceNow Store, navigate to Network Inventory > CMDB Workspace.

    CI searches

    Specify up to five conditions to search for the configuration items (network asset CI) of a class. These conditions are based on the attributes for a selected class. In the results list, click a network asset CI to see the details about the network asset CI, including a time line, health overview, and attributes for the network asset CI.

    For more information, see the CI Details page section.

    CI overview

    Get an overview of the network asset CIs in CMDB that are grouped by common class categories as Applications, Cloud, and Server.

    Select a class group to see all the classes that are included in the group, and then select the class whose network asset CIs you want to see.

    In the Results list, you can click a network asset CI to see an overview page with a time line, health overview, and attributes for the network asset CI. For more information, see the CI Details page section.

    CMDB health

    Get the metrics for the network asset CIs and see the health of the relationships. Click the percentage numbers to navigate to the CMDB Health and CMDB Relationship Health dashboards where you can see the following information:
    • The overall percentage number represents the health of all network asset CIs as an aggregation of all three key performance indicators (KPIs), which are correctness, compliance, and completeness. Each network asset CI contains submetrics.
    • The relationship percentage number represents the overall health of the relationships as an aggregation of the orphan, duplicate, and stale relationship KPIs.

    7-day activity trends

    CMDB Workspace includes the following charts that provide an overview of the activity in the CMDB for the last seven days:
    CI Activity in Last 7 Days

    See a chart that shows the metrics that are related to the network asset CIs. For example, you can see the metrics for the number of new network asset CIs, updated network asset CIs, and duplicate network asset CIs.

    Application Service Activity in 7 Days

    See a chart that shows the metrics that are related to the application services. For example, you can see the total number of Application Services, new Application Services, updated Application Services, and the number of Application Services with outages.

    CIs managed by me

    See a list of network asset CIs that you manage, grouped by the network asset CI class. Network asset CIs appear in this list if you are a member of the group that is assigned to the network asset CI's Managed by Group attribute.

    Quick links

    See a list of the links to the CMDB dashboards and tools:
    Note:
    Links are conditionally available based on the installation of applications, active plugins, and your assigned role. If a link doesn't appear, make sure that all the requirements for the link are met.
    • CI Class Manager: You can view, create, or edit the basic class definitions and class settings for Identification and Reconciliation (IRE) and CMDB Health.
    • CMDB Health Dashboard: You can view the health reports and configure the health KPIs and metrics that the network asset CIs are evaluated by in the CMDB Health dashboards.

    CI details page

    When you drill down to a network asset CI record, you can see the following details for the network asset CI:
    • CI Timeline - Last 14 days: A time line of the network asset CI activities, such as change requests.
    • CI Health: A summary of the health of the network asset CI that shows the related items such as critical incidents, incomplete attributes, and stale relationships for the network asset CI.
    • Details: Network asset CI attributes, grouped into categories such as Key attributes, Asset attributes, Discovery attributes, Operational attributes, and More attributes.
      Note:
      You can configure the appearance of the attributes by using the CMDB - Workspace form view for a network asset CI class.
    • Activity: An activity stream to track what's changed in the network asset CI record.
    • Infrastructure Relationships: A list of the infrastructure network asset CIs that are related to the network asset CI.
    • Service Relationships: A list of business applications, service offerings, and application services that the network asset CI may be related to.
    On the CI details page, you can do the following actions:
    • To open Dependency Views and to get a graphic infrastructure view of the network asset CI record, click Open Dependency View.
    • To open the Multisource Data Report Builder and track how the CMDB is populated by the various discovery sources at the network asset CI attribute level of the network asset CI record, click View Multisource Data.

    • To save your changes to the attributes for the network asset CI record, click Save.

    CI error message

    The following table helps you to understand the CI error message that appears during the CI deletion and the solution that you can use to resolve the error:
    Table 1. Error message
    Error Resolution
    The current operation ended in state: ERROR. Detail: Operation(Delete All TNI CI Hierarchy./end) failed with error: Error: The CI "XXXX/XXXX/Copper Link/000118" cannot be deleted since there is a related CI "XXXX/XXXX/PON Access Path/100Mbps/000030" (sys_script_include.989afcd1cb330110202b2c52f8076d7e.script; line 52) Delete the child or related CI (Configuration Item) to delete the parent CI.
    1. Click the related or the child CI under Related Templates.
    2. Click Delete.
    However, an Admin can always customize the deletion action. To learn more, see Customizing deletion action.