Locations without a Parent Location

Get Well Playbook

A step-by-step guide to analyse and remediate the location records for which parent location is not specified

Table of Contents

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

Audience

Problem Overview

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

How this playbook is structured

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Downstream Consequences

Impact on Your Business

Engagement Questions

Remediation Plays

Summary

Play 1: Review your data

Play 2: Analyze your CI records

Play 3: Fix Play

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

The goal of this playbook is to help you identify and manage locations associated with a configuration item,that do not have a parent location populated

Details about this playbook

Author

Bibu Elias Punnachalil

Date

03/10/2021

Addresses HSD #

HSD0004476

Applicable ServiceNow Releases

All Releases

Prerequisites

CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboards Version 1.2.0 or above Time Required

Approximately 1 to 16 hours (depending on your environment)

Audience

Configuration Manager or Configuration Management team ServiceNow Administrator

Note : As you follow the instructions in this playbook, you may need help from people with the following roles:

ServiceNow Administrator User Administrator

Problem Overview

Location data is non-discoverable and hence its either populated manually or through an integration with a third-party system. Due to gap in the updates or process for updating parent location, the relationship hierarchy is not maintained. When these location records are associated with CIs, it leads to error prone and time consuming impact analysis for multi-location change requests /incidents and also makes it difficult to get management reports based on location hierarchy

This playbook helps you to identify and fix the locations which are associated with configuration item but does not have a parent location populated

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

This playbook helps in identifying and fixing the gaps in location hierarchy and in turn helps in the below business goals,

Improved MTTR Cost optimization Improved service reporting

How this playbook is structured

This playbook guides you through four plays.

Play 1 (an analysis play) helps you find the locations associated with configuration items which do not have a parent location Play 2 (one of the two fix plays) guides you how to add the parent location by using the edit option in related lists feature. Play 3 (the second of the two fix plays) shows you how to change Transform Maps and provide the capability to populate parent location Play 4 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for location hierarchy management. Use these guidelines to monitor and maintain location hierarchy Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Location records were loaded during the ServiceNow implementation and since then have not been maintained Location records get created through the transform maps, loading the User or Configuration Item records. In case of any unmatched location, a new location is automatically created without any parent due to the transform map configuration Location data is loaded through an integration with a third-party tool and the integration is not designed to update parent location Location data is maintained manually, the manual process is not having the steps laid out to update the parent location Merger/Acquisition caused new locations getting created, but the hierarchy was not updated Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

Queries to get data(Eg CI, Incidents, Changes) based location hierarchy provides inaccurate or incomplete data Operation Consequence

Incident/Change Management impact analysis takes more time or may become inaccurate as impacted location structure is not quickly visible Location tree picker would not have the hierarchical tree structure which makes it difficult to navigate to the required location Field agents are not optimally deployed for onsite fixes resulting in delay and increased operational cost Asset deployment is not optimal resulting in delays and also additional cost App Consequence

Other ServiceNow products rely heavily on location data and non-maintenance of location hierarchy impedes smooth functioning of these modules These products include ITSM, CSM, ITOM, HR, ITAM & Facilities Management

Impact on Your Business

Having incorrect/incomplete location structure will affect the user experience and management reporting

Incident Management With the location impact not clearly available for the service agent, the prioritization of an incident may not be done correctly. This can lead to increased MTTR and in turn increased service downtime Field agent deployment for the onsite repairs will not be optimally done which will lead to increased MTTR and also additional operational cost Change Management reduction in successful changes and increased high priority incidents caused by failed Change Requests – As part of change impact analysis, if the locations affected are not clearly identified, there could be incorrect impact estimation for multilocation changes. This incorrect impact estimation can lead to increase in high priority incidents and service downtime Asset Management Asset deployment from stock will not be optimal and this can result in delay as well increased operational cost User Experience Lookup of location will be difficult as all the locations will be available without any structure for selection. ServiceNow has a tree picker capability for location lookup which will be ineffective Management Reporting Summary reports across the platform using location aggregation will have incomplete data

Engagement Questions:

Consider the answers to these questions:

Do you have field agents working on sites? How was the location data populated in ServiceNow initially? How are the new locations added in ServiceNow on an ongoing basis? Are you getting accurate data for geographical summary reports? Do you have a process to validate the accuracy of location data? Are you facing issues handling multi-location changes/incidents?

Remediation Plays

Summary

The table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later.

Play

Play 1: Analysis

What this play is about

This play helps you find the locations related to Cis and that have empty parent location value

Required tasks

Check the dashboard to find and analyze impacted location records

Play 2: (1 of 2 Fix Plays )

Replace missing values in the parent field using the Update Multiple feature

What this play is about

This play tells you how to add parent value by using the Update Multiple feature.

Required tasks

Follow the steps to update the records.

Play 3: (2 of 2 Fix Plays )

shows you how to change Transform Maps creating location records without relating it to parent.

What this play is about

Explains how you can add scripted calls to the IRE to frequently used Transform Maps.

Required tasks

Follow the steps to create the scripts.

Play 1 - Review your data

What this Play is about

Identify locations related to CIs that does not have parent location value

Required tasks

Install CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard from the ServiceNow App Store Navigate to the CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard module in the left navigation menu Select the Foundation tab Select the Location with Parents report to view % of CIs associated with location which has parent . If you see a result of 100% then this playbook is not applicable to you.

The dashboard can provide you with the list of Configuration Items which has locations without parent. To get a consolidated view of the locations without parent you can run this script as a Fix Script. Fix script will produce an output as given below

Validate the output and then decide which parent locations needs to be linked to these location records

Play 2 – Add child locations to each parent location

What this Play is about

This play tells you how to add the missing child records in parent location by using the Edit Feature

Identify the top most parent location and perform the steps till the last layer of parent location is added with all its child locations

Roles Required: list_updater, form_admin, user_admin (to write to cmn_location)

Required tasks

Open locations in list view Type cmn_location.list in the filter navigator search box. Press Enter All the locations are listed. Select a location which is a parent location for which you need to add the child locations If you see locations related list you can skip the next steps and move to step 8 In case locations related list is not available click on hamburger (---) and the select configure and inside configure select Related Lists Add Location->Parent from Available to Selected and then click Save

Check the Locations related list and in case Edit button is available you can skip below steps and move to step x If no Edit button is available, right click on the header for Locations and select Configure and inside Configure select List Control

In List Control, uncheck the Omit edit button checkbox and then click Enable edit and then click on Update location form

Click on Edit to open the member selection form.

Select all the Child locations from collection and move it to Locations list Click Save Next Steps

Complete the steps in this play as needed for updating the child locations for each parent location.

Play 3 - Fix Play

What this Play is about

This play lists the solutions you can use to solve the root causes for location getting created without parent field being populated

Required tasks

Find the Data Import Set causing the problem and review the transform maps being used. Navigate to Transform Maps under System Import Sets and filter by ta r get table =cmn_location

Review Each transform map for the:

Field Map where the target field is set to parent Transform Scripts where the script contains the parent Presence of parent in any of the recent data imports

Update the transform maps for the parent field with appropriate reference configuration. Parent field is a reference field, the transform map needs a way to match incoming source values to existing records in the reference field's source table. Since most imports do not provide a 32-character sys_id value, you must specify a column from location table that contains values that match the incoming source values. When there is a matching record, the transform map stores the sys_id of the matching record in the target field. If there is no matching record, the transform map creates a location record and stores the sys_id of the new record in the target field.

Data Governance

What this play is about

Regularly monitor the number of locations that do not have parent locations. This play explains how to run a specific report that shows you that level of detail.

Use the CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard for ongoing monitoring, refer to the first play

Set up a Data Certification workflow that assigns the a task for the update of missing parent location For more information about using Data Certification, see Data Certification

Congratulations

You have completed this Get Well Playbook.