The CI Dependency View

From the Dependency View can show related services in the "Details" section at the bottom of the page.

  1. Open a CI.
  2. Click on the "Dependency Views" button in top-right of the relationship formatter.

Dependency Views button on the Relationship Formatter

Then you can view related services by:

  1. Clicking on "Details".
  2. Clicking on "Related Services".

Related Services in Dependency Views

Dave's thoughts: This can be useful and easy to use, but it's a shame the services aren't in a list. It's annoying when large service names get shortened in this view.

The Relationship Formatter

The Relationship Formatter on the CI form shows a lot more relationships than the immediate Relationships [cmdb_rel_ci] records that point directly to the CI you're looking at.

For example, if you look at a server CI, the "Used by - Services" section shows relationships to services, but there are no Relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] records directly linking the server CI to that service. Somehow, ServiceNow is automatically figuring that out.

Below is a screenshot of the Relationship Formatter showing many relationships.

Relationship formatter, with services

Here's the relationship editor. You can see that there are no relationships defined, but they still appeared in the relationship formatter.

Relationship editor, with no services defined

Dave's thoughts: probably the easiest way to find services that a CI supports, it can be seen by anyone and it's right there on the CI's form. It's great how the services are figured out by the platform automatically. However, it cannot be added in reports or data exports.

The table svc_ci_assoc

The table "Service Configuration Item Associations" [svc_ci_assoc] is a regularly updated table linking CI's to the services they support.

cmdb_ci_assoc

So what kinds of services will make these links?

  • Mapped services? Yes
  • Tag-based services? Yes
  • Dynamic CI groups? Yes
  • Manual relationships? No. Creating a chain or relationships from a CI up to a service will not create an svc_ci_assoc record.

Dave's thoughts: This table is great if you need to do a data export of the CI's that support a service. But remember: this table only has associations for automatically mapped CI-to-service relationships, not manual ones.

Script Include CIUtils

For the pro-code developers and administrators, there's a script include called global.CIUtils that has some functions like:

  • _getImpactedServicesFromAffectedCIs
  • servicesAffectedByCI

The function servicesAffectedByCI gets services by:

  • Getting services by relationship by running SNC.CMDBUtil.getRelatedServices(ci, maxDepth, maxSize)
  • Getting services by mapped services by running SNC.BusinessServiceManager().getServicesAssociatedWithCi(ci, useSvcCiAssoc)

Here's an example script using servicesAffectedByCI to find all of the services that a CI is related to.

var id = "3a70f789c0a8ce010091b0ea635b982a"; 

var services = new global.CIUtils().servicesAffectedByCI(id); 

for (var i=0; i < services.length; i++) { 
    var serviceID = services[i]; 
    var grS = new GlideRecord("cmdb_ci"); 
    grS.get(serviceID); 
    gs.print(""+(grS.getDisplayValue() || "(empty)")+" ("+serviceID+")"); 
} 

// *** Script: SAP Materials Management (26e44e8a0a0a0bb40095ff953f9ee520)
// *** Script: SAP Controlling (26e46e5b0a0a0bb4005d1146846c429c)
// *** Script: SAP Sales and Distribution (26e494480a0a0bb400ad175538708ad9)
// *** Script: SAP Enterprise Services (26da329f0a0a0bb400f69d8159bc753d)
// *** Script: SAP Human Resources (26e51a2f0a0a0bb4008628d2254c42db)
// *** Script: SAP Financial Accounting (26e426be0a0a0bb40046890d90059eaa)
// *** Script: SAP Plant Maintenance (26ee44500a0a0bb4005561915af6d450)
// *** Script: SAP Labor Distribution (26ed9ad90a0a0bb40035d0e9d2d6f0a2)
// *** Script: SAP Payroll (26e540d80a0a0bb400660482030d04d8)

Dave's thoughts: This is cool and very effective, but pro-code level of difficulty.
In the future, I'm going to try using this to automatically populate the "Impacted Services/CIs" related list on incidents. Watch this space!