Handle CMDB tables begin with "u_cmdb_ci" Product Success Playbook Adhere to standard naming for custom CMDB Classes A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate nonstandard CMDB customization 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 This playbook does not provide specific remediation steps, but general guidance in identifying CI Classes not adhering to standard naming. CMDB customizations should be reviewed to ensure they are both relevant and appropriate. Details about this playbook Author Bibu Elias PunnachalilDate 06/08/2022Addresses HSD # HSD0007912Applicable ServiceNow Releases All ReleasesPrerequisites CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboards Version 1.2.0 or aboveTime Required Approximately 1 to 8 hours (depending on your environment) Audience Configuration Manager or Configuration Management teamServiceNow Administrator Problem Overview ServiceNow provides enormous amount of flexibility to meet specific business outcomes. While customizations can often help achieve business value, using customizations inappropriately - either when an out-of-the-box solution exists, or at an incorrect implementation level, should be avoided. For CMDB, ServiceNow provides options to create new classes through CI Class Manager or using the generic new table creation approach. When created using generic new table creation approach ServiceNow does not enforce any CMDB Class naming standards. Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals Having standardization of table names reduces operational, development, and enablement effort and increases overall efficiency How this playbook is structured This playbook is structured to guide the user through four plays: Play 1 (Review) helps you identify your instance's custom classes which are not following the standard namingPlay 2 (Analyze) helps you to analyze why were these classes were created, who owns them and are they still usedPlay 3 (Fix) Provides considerations to be taken while deleting the custom classes identified for removalPlay 4 (Governance) helps to monitor and prevent custom classes not having standard naming Problem Analysis Upstream Causes Custom CI Classes created using the generic table creation No governance process for CMDB customizationNo review process in creation of CI ClassesDefault suggestion of u_cmdb_ci was ignored and deleted Downstream Consequences Data Consequence Reporting based on custom CMDB Class data may become more difficult Operation Consequence Development teams may take more time and effort to locate the required CMDB tableOperational reporting and table lookups may become more time consuming App Consequence Automation using CMDB Classes, and queries may become more complex to implement Impact on Your Business Incorrectly named tables can impact the following: Increase Operational Visibility Process Alignment Audit/Compliance Data GovernanceProcess Gaps Process Automation Data Accuracy Engagement Questions: Consider the answers to these questions: Do you have governance process for customizations?Does your configuration management team creates new CI ClassesAre CMDB tables created using CI Class Manager?Who is allowed to create new tables? Remediation Plays SummaryThe table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later. Play Name Review your data What this play is about Identify CMDB tables not having standard naming Required tasks Review CMDB Data Foundation Dashboard Analyze Play What this play is about Analyze the CI Classes identified Required tasks Perform the steps provided Fix Plays What this play is about Lists the potential approaches for fix Required tasks Perform the steps provided Data Governance What this play is about Monitor for any new classes with nonstandard name Required tasks Review CMDB Data Foundation Dashboard on a regular schedule Play 1 - Review your data What this Play is about Identify if there are CI Classes not following the standard naming convention Required tasks Navigate to Configuration > CMDB Data Foundations Dashboard. Open the tab ITSM ProcessesCheck the counter for "Custom CMDB Tables Not Using Standard Naming"If the count is zero, this playbook is not applicable to you. If its non-zero, click on it to open the Analytics hubClick on "Show Records" button to list table names not having standard naming Play 2 - Analyze your Custom Classes What this Play is about Identify the reason behind why these custom classes exist. Find out why were they created, who owns them and are they still used. Required tasks For each custom class identified from the steps above, consider the following: Who is the owner of the class and who is using that data?A team or individual should ultimately be responsible for adding the class in the CMDB in the first place. This team or individual often can also be the person consuming the information that is captured here.If an owner cannot be identified, or more importantly, if individuals or teams cannot be identified who are actively using the data, the class is a strong candidate for removal (not migration).Is the information used for a business-critical process?While the information captured in the custom class may have an identified owner, often the class additions were to support a legacy business process. Identifying the business value that a particular custom class delivers is an important factor in determining if the class should be retained. If the class population is done simply because "we've always done it this way" or because it is to maintain historical trend data that otherwise has no current value, then that class is also a candidate for removal. Are there now equivalent base classes available?Many custom classes were created for good reason: they captured data critical to a business process in a class that was not available in the product at the time of release / implementation. However, with the rapid evolution of the ServiceNow platform, new and improved table structures are introduced with every family release. Forms, reports, dashboards, workflows, notifications, and much more are all built to make use of these classes.One way to check if a similar class exists is through the CI Class Manager by searching for similar class names. Migrating to an out of the box is recommended. What is the effort to correct this custom class? If the effort to recreate this custom class with the proper naming is too significant, it may be better to document the reason and leave the table as is. Play 3 - Fix Play What this Play is about Once you have identified candidate classes for retirement or migration to a base class, you should review the usage of it before carrying out any remediation. This section does not give explicit step-by-step instructions on everything that can be impacted. However, as a general rule, you will need to confirm what uses the extraneous classes you have today, and then determine if that usage outweighs the costs of having each custom class. This effort can require time and careful consideration. It may be best to align efforts to coincide with platform upgrades when users are already expecting small changes to their experience. You may save time in User Acceptance Testing by doing these in tandem. Remember to not make changes directly in production. Always follow your established development practices such as a frequently cloning production down to dev and test instances. Use scripts to migrate existing data in custom classes to any base or equivalent fields, making sure to check that field types and maximum lengths are the same or appropriate.Check for any CIs and relationships that use a particular custom attribute including: FormsReportsBusiness RulesRelationshipsUI ActionsClient ScriptsEmail ActionsTransform MapsAny other components Required tasks Once you have identified where any data is used (if at all), you can understand the impact of deleting the custom classes. Reference ServiceNow docs for more information around deleting tables Data Governance What this Play is about This play lists the healthy habits around periodic validation of custom classes with non standard naming Required tasks Rerun Play 1 periodically, evaluate additional improvement steps to achieve higher compliance with properly tracking custom classes without standard nameInstitute a code review process that watches for new CI Classes without standard namingIt is recommended that the CMDB owner, in partnership with the CI Class Owner, should approve any new CI Class Congratulations You have completed this Product Success Playbook.