Service Mapping

Activate the Service Mapping AI Agent and the Business App Mapping AI Agent from the Service Mapping home page to start automated service map creation.

The Service Mapping Candidate skill provides ServiceNow Otto the ability to classify app service candidates and generate a description for them. The skill is active by default. If needed, administrators can activate or deactivate the skill.

The Service Mapping Candidates Impact skill analyzes connections and effects on servers. It enables generating an impact summary, using ServiceNow Otto. The skill is active by default. If needed, administrators can activate or deactivate the skill.

Activate the CMDB MCP Server and configure the OAuth inbound integration so that external AI clients can connect to your ServiceNow instance and query application service data.

Create rules for automatically adding traffic-based connections and the CIs they lead to in discovered service instances. Create rules that add CIs to multiple application services.

Create rules for automatically adding traffic-based connections and the CIs they lead to in discovered service instances. Add CIs to specific application services using connection rules.

If discovery based on Predictive Intelligence is enabled, newly mapped application services include only configuration items (CIs) and CI connections added using discovery patterns. Use the suggestions for CI connections, generated by Service Mapping, to complete the application service.

You can remove a branch of a service and place it into another application service, either new or existing. Transfer map segments to split large services or when you want to organize services differently from the initial mapping result.

After an application service is reviewed and approved, you can define attributes that enhance its discovery, reflect its importance, and control access to it.

AI-powered features in Service Mapping help administrators automate service map creation, connect business applications to discovered services, and query live service topology using natural language.

Automated Service Suggestions provides meaningful name suggestions for service identification, which you can access on the Application Service Suggestions tab in the Service Mapping workspace.

Automated Service Suggestions simplifies the processing of mapping application services or adding to an existing service by providing application service candidates using machine learning. Mapped services provide key information to help you make data-driven decisions, prioritize services, and respond to situations.

After the Service Mapping administrator maps IT services and fixes errors in them, the administrator and the owner collaborate to review and approve the service maps. The review and approval process is available only for discovered and manually created service instances.

Fine-tune Service Mapping collaboration with other components and modules as well as customize data display in service instance maps.

You can perform initial mapping of multiple or single application services in your organization using a method that best suits you.

The ServiceNow Service Mapping application discovers all application services in your organization and builds a comprehensive map of all devices, applications, and configuration profiles used in these application services.

Service Mapping creates maps to help you see the architecture and organization of application services. These maps are useful for planning change or migration, as well as analyzing the continuity and availability of services.

Maps offer you a visualization of data on configuration items (CIs) comprising application services, and relations and connections between these CIs.

Before you start mapping application services, verify that you configured MID Servers to discover application services and provided all the necessary host and application credentials.

Service Mapping deploys different methods for collecting information about configuration items (CIs) and organizing them into application services. The available mapping methods are: pattern-based, tag-based, traffic-based, and discovery based on Predictive Intelligence. Learn about the mapping methods to use the ones that best suit the needs of your organization.

Service Mapping supports the new and the legacy algorithms for selecting a MID Server for a discovery request. Depending on your organization needs, you can choose which algorithm to enable.

Several preconfigured CI relationships participate in tag-based discovery, by default. The Traversal Rules for Application Services [svc_traversal_rules] table stores these relationships.

Service Mapping in cloud environments provides critical visibility into application dependencies and connections. By identifying how different application components interact within IaaS and PaaS environments, your organization can gain better insight into its application services and improve overall service management.

Using data stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), you can run top-down discovery and map your organization's application services without having to access a MID Server.

Several types of components are installed with activation of the Service Mapping Plus plugin, including tables and scheduled jobs.

Several types of components are installed with activation of the Service Mapping plugin, including tables, user roles, properties, and scheduled jobs.

In deployments upgraded to Istanbul or earlier, Service Mapping uses the default MID Server when it cannot find a MID Server with the matching IP range. Configuring a default MID Server improves the discovery process.

Configure Agent Client Collector to discover and map application services without having to configure credentials for the MID Server.

Configure Service Mapping and MID Servers to work together.

Enable Service Mapping to perform discovery based on data collected using the Netflow protocol. This setup results in fully automated data collection flow, where all involved components send, collect, and analyze data automatically.

Enable Service Mapping to perform discovery based on data collected using Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) logs. This method is relevant for organizations using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Add the Service Mapping MCP Server as a custom connector in Claude Desktop so you can query application service data from your ServiceNow instance in natural language.

Review details of connection suggestions to decide which connections are relevant for application services.

Assign user roles to service groups to grant users access to application services in your organization. Your organization may restrict access to some services for security or secrecy reasons.

Convert a Service Mapping service instance to Lightweight to minimize storage footprint and optimize performance.

You may want to create a PDF for a map to share information about the service content with other people. PDFs are especially useful during the review and approve process for application services discovered by Service Mapping.

Service Mapping identifies application configuration items (CIs) that it failed to properly discover as generic applications. Correctly identify generic applications by creating a simplified discovery pattern from an application service map, rather than creating a fully functional pattern from scratch using the Pattern Designer.

Service Mapping can perform discovery based on data collected using the Netflow protocol. Netflow is a protocol that Service Mapping can use to collect data about CIs and their connections along with Netstat and lsof commands.

Service Mapping can perform discovery based on data collected using VPC Flow Logs. Amazon VPC hosts Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances that provide Amazon Web Services. VPC Flow Logs collect data on IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in the VPC.

Service Mapping uses traversal rules to bring in related configuration items and expand the application service map. Several predefined rules are provided by default to help find and correctly map these relationships.

For each service instance, select a criticality level that reflects how important it is to your organization operations.

Domain separation is supported in Service Mapping. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

Activate pre-configured CI relationships that Service Mapping does not include by default or add additional relationships to use in the tag-based discovery process. For example, you can add a CI relationship between Linux servers and storage devices to discover servers hosting storage devices based on tags.

Make Service Mapping use traffic-based connections to discover CIs making up an application service.

When preparing to map application services based on tags, create tag categories that contain tags with similar use. Define a tag-based service family and the tags you want to use for mapping. In addition to tag categories, you can also define tag values to narrow the criteria for the service candidates created by Service Mapping. Use these examples for guidance.

Exclude preconfigured CI relationships from the tag-based discovery process to refine the application services created. Service Mapping consists of preconfigured CI relationships and includes CIs in these relationships even if they do not have assigned tags. Choose which preconfigured CI relationships to exclude and the remaining CI relationships participate in tag-based discovery.

Use the CI installation status to create CI classes and exclude CIs from application services during tag-based discovery. By default, application services based on tags exclude CIs with the Retired or Absent install status. You can expand this list of excluded CIs to include additional installation statuses such as Pending install or Stolen.

Define CI fields for which the system reflects changes in the change history for application services. The change history view shows changes to CIs making up application services as well as changes to application services themselves.

Service Mapping classifies errors by their root cause, for example, missing credentials or task timeout. For a fast and efficient process, fix errors belonging to the same category in bulk.

Service Mapping does not offer semi-automated resolution options for errors that require advanced resolution. Fix such errors using symptoms and discovery messages.

You can address discovery issues in each application service map individually.

This method suits you if your organization has performed cross-organization mapping and analysis and collected some information about planned service instances. If so, you can organize the collected information in a specific order and save it as a CSV file. Service Mapping extracts information from this file and creates potential service instances referred to as service candidates.

Use CI classes to identify which CIs Service Mapping includes in application services during tag-based discovery. By default, this list appears empty and includes all CIs belonging to all CI classes. Define CI classes and allow only CIs belonging to these classes or their extensions to participate in tag-based discovery.

You can install the Service Mapping Plus application (sn_sm_scoped_app) if you have the admin role. The application installs related ServiceNow Store applications and plugins if they are not already installed.

You can manually link two application services by adding a reference to one application service into another application service. The service that contains the reference, becomes a dependent service. The service that you include as a reference is a contained service. You can link application services to create dependencies for impact monitoring in Event Management.

If the discovery based on Predictive Intelligence is enabled, the newly mapped application services include only CIs and CI connections added by discovery patterns. Use connection suggestions to decide which configuration items (CIs) to include or exclude globally. Service Mapping then updates all relevant discovered application services to reflect your decisions.

Add configuration items to manually created application services or to services discovered by Service Mapping.

Configure Service Mapping to use the existing data within your CMDB to run top-down discovery and map application services.

Use this reference to define the name, description, owner, and group for a new application service created through service mapping.

Map a new application service based on automatically generated suggestions. Use the Automated Service Suggestions or Service Fingerprints features to create an application service or add to an existing service.

You can map multiple application services identified and suggested by Service Mapping in a single operation. This method suits your organization if you do not have much information about application services.

Use tags that help categorize and organize configuration items (CIs) in your organization to map application services. Tag-based mapping doesn't require configuring credentials or providing users with elevated rights.

Categorize and organize organization's configuration items and map them into application services using the Tag-based dashboard in the Service Mapping workspace.

Kubernetes Visibility Agent (KVA) and Service Mapping discover and visualize application dependencies across Kubernetes clusters and related resources, providing complete visibility into containerized environments.

Service Mapping can discover service instances containing a Microsoft Exchange Server and the Exchange Server components.

Service Mapping can discover application services containing Citrix XenApp, Presentation Server, and Citrix Usage Collector.

Service Mapping can discover application services containing Oracle GlassFish Servers.

Discovery can find Tibco ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks and Enterprise Message Service (EMS). Service Mapping can discover application services containing Tibco BusinessWorks, Enterprise Message Service (EMS), and their components.

Service Mapping can discover application services containing Oracle Tuxedo platform and its components.

For ServiceNow deployments upgraded from earlier versions to Istanbul, Service Mapping uses the legacy algorithm to choose a MID Server for a discovery request.

Service Mapping uses the MID Server parameters during discovery and mapping. Do not change default values for these parameters unless you are troubleshooting the discovery process.

Customize a map view to display relevant information and increase clarity.

You can change tag definitions that Service Mapping uses for tag-based mapping. Service Mapping uses updated tag definitions to create new tag-based services without applying tag-related changes to services you mapped earlier.

Multi-source service mapping combines data from multiple discovery methods to create a single, comprehensive service map that provides complete visibility into your organization's hybrid IT infrastructure.

The MID Server needed to map an application service might be misidentified in subnetworks with overlapping IP ranges and reused IP addresses. To enable the successful discovery of resources associated with a subnetwork, Service Mapping provides several properties for MID Server identification.

The Analyze potential impact agentic workflow analyzes how a change request might impact servers and services. This analysis helps you make informed decisions about the next steps regarding the change request.

Organize application services by groups to perform actions simultaneously on multiple services, and to control user access to services. You can use Event Management to track service health by service groups.

Pattern-based discovery is the main method of Service Mapping collecting data about devices and applications used in application services. After Service Mapping collects data, it then creates a map of application services and stores the collected data in the CMDB.

Service Mapping uses data processed by Predictive Intelligence to generate suggestions for traffic-based connections.

Organize information about potential application services (candidates) in your organization and save it in a CSV file.

Analyze, review, and define tags in your organization for successful mapping.

Learn about credentials, users, and user permissions you must configure to let Service Mapping access and discover applications inside your organization private network.

The Service Mapping plugin includes several properties specifically related to tag-based discovery.

As an application service owner you may receive a request for information about entry points in an email notification. Provide information about entry points to enable administrators to start discovery of an application service.

After upgrades and deployments of new applications or integrations, run quick start tests to verify that Service Mapping still works. If you have customized Service Mapping, copy the quick start tests and configure them for your customizations.

Service Mapping uses commands requiring elevated rights to discover and map Unix-based hosts in your organization. In addition to configuring necessary credentials, configure servers in your organization to allow Service Mapping to run these commands with elevated rights.

There are credentials and permissions that Service Mapping requires for discovering hosts.

Service Mapping comes with a wide range of preconfigured entry point types that cover many commonly used applications. Check attribute definitions to correctly add entry points to your application services.

Most of commands utilized by Service Mapping for discovery and mapping do not require elevated rights.

Review the information on the dashboard to confirm that you’re ready to discover and map application services based on machine learning (ML). Service Mapping uses data processed by Predictive Intelligence to generate suggestions for traffic-based connections.

Recalculate application services after you refine the default configuration to control which CIs to include during the tag-based discovery process.

Keep application services up to date and track changes to services through the recomputation capability of the Application Service feature of Service Mapping. Recomputation jobs recalculate mapped application services when changes occur to an associated configuration item (CI) within the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

Recreate tag-based services if the way your organization uses tags have changed or after modifying tag definitions for tag-based service families.

Remove CIs erroneously mapped as part of an application service by Service Mapping. Unnecessary CIs included in the map can generate irrelevant alerts in Event Management. For example, when creating an application service for a web portal, Service Mapping might automatically discover a connection to unaffiliated external services, such as PayPal.

The most important attribute you must know and configure to discover an service instance is an entry point. If you do not know the entry points for the service instance, request this information from the service instance owner.

As an administrator, you tweak and fine-tune maps based on comments from the application service owner.

As the application service owner for the application service map, you receive an email notification that the application service map is assigned to you for review. Review mapping results for correctness and either provide your feedback or approve the application service map. The review and approval process is available only for discovered and manually created service instances.

After you map an application service, send it to the application service owner for review to make sure that the map is accurate.

Service Mapping creates maps to help you see the architecture and organization of application services. These maps are useful for planning change or migration, as well as analyzing the continuity and availability of services.

The Service Mapping AI agents automate the creation and maintenance of service maps in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), reducing manual effort for Service Mapping administrators.

Learn about high-level tasks users having different roles perform in Service Mapping.

Service Mapping discovers all service instances in your organization and builds a comprehensive map of all devices, applications, and configuration profiles used in these service instances.

The Service Mapping tools expose live application service data and enable AI clients to query service topology, identify mapping gaps, and create application services in natural language.

Reference topics provide additional information about mapping and fine-tuning application services using Service Mapping lists and forms.

You get started with Service Mapping by configuring roles, credentials, and MID Server connections.

Agent Client Collector enables the discovery and mapping of application services without requiring you to set up credentials for the MID Server.

You can access all service instance maps and service forms using a keyboard in the accessibility mode.

If you know what configuration items (CIs) and connections make up your service instance, you can enable Service Mapping to continue discovery of the service instance even if there are some errors. You can skip errors to troubleshoot later so you can complete mapping most of the service instance, even if some CIs are missing.

Use this reference to interpret the tables in the Service Mapping AI Agent activity list.

The Service Mapping workspace provides a central location to streamline the process of mapping your application services. Use the visualizations and reports to analyze, monitor, and update your resources, create application services, and manage your service mapping tasks efficiently.

The Lightweight Service Model is an optimized architecture for storing and determining service topology. It maintains current service data without storing historical snapshots, reducing storage overhead and improving performance for large configuration item inventories.

Assign the required roles to users so they can connect to the CMDB MCP Server and call the Service Mapping MCP tools.

Details on the six Service Mapping MCP tools, including their inputs, outputs, and example natural-language queries for use with Claude, and service creation workflows.

Service Mapping accesses network infrastructure devices like load balancers and routers using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) v1/v2c/v3. Configure SNMP community credentials to enable this type of access.

Service Mapping is available under ITOM Visibility subscription and requires installation and updates on the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes. For details, see Request Service Mapping Service Mapping is available under ITOM Visibility subscription and requires installation and updates on the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes. For details, see Request Service Mapping..

You can drill down to see objects behind a connection on a map for troubleshooting service performance or maintaining your network. This feature is not available for manually created services or for services on instances using Edge Encryption.

You can see if a particular configuration item (CI) is part of other application services and check if it depends on other CIs.

You can see a summary of application service changes at a glance by comparing two versions of an application service. This feature is useful for checking the application service status before and after a certain change or problem.

The Search Assistant feature of Pattern Designer allows you to search within files or registries. Upload grep files on to your instance to enable this feature to search on Windows servers.

You can control what configuration item (CI) attributes the system displays in the Properties pane of service instance maps.

You can configure your ServiceNow AI Platform to support Windows servers that use non-English Windows operating system (OS).

Service Mapping can discover and map CIs by detecting the inbound and outbound traffic that the CIs generate. Create a traffic-based discovery rule to determine which configuration items are available for traffic-based mapping.

If your network uses load balancers running on Linux hosts, create a discovery behavior to ensure that Service Mapping and Discovery discover them correctly.

After Service Mapping discovers configuration items (CIs) belonging to your service instance for the first time, it then rediscovers CIs to find changes and updates. Create or modify discovery schedules to control how often Service Mapping rediscovers services or CIs. For example, you may create custom discovery schedules to avoid redundant stress on the infrastructure.

In addition to mapping application services in bulk, you can map individual, single application services by defining attributes for each application service. Use this mapping method if you already know or are planning to find out application service details. You must have Service Mapping enabled to map or review application services.

You can troubleshoot mapping errors caused by patterns.

You can view the changes made to an application service as a whole and to the individual configuration items (CIs) comprising the service. Change history is useful for maintenance, planning, or troubleshooting procedures.

An application service map displays attributes for each configuration item (CI) that is part of the application service, as well as for the application service itself. The attributes come from the CMDB.

You can refine the default configuration to control which CIs Service Mapping includes in application services during the tag-based discovery process.

The Tag-based service mapping dashboard offers an intuitive way to manage tag-based services. Use the widgets, data visualizations, and list navigation to review and update your services, or create new tag-based services in a few steps. The dashboard enhances the Service Mapping Workspace, offering an efficient and user-friendly interface for organizing and optimizing your service mappings.

If your organization uses tags, or establishes them in a local ServiceNow instance, you can use these tags to map application services.

The tag-based application service form provides a centralized location for viewing detailed information about a selected tag-based service, including its configuration and its associated configuration items.

If your organization uses tags for asset management, you can use the Service Mapping workspace to manage these tags and create tag-based application services.

Configure and test Service Mapping discovery process based on data collected using the Netflow protocol.

Learn about schedules that trigger top-down discovery of application services.

Refer to this chart for information about traffic-based connections when you remove CIs from an application service.

Service Mapping can discover and map configuration items (CIs) following their traffic-based connections. This method is referred to as traffic-based mapping and complements pattern-based mapping.

Save time and effort by exporting definitions of service instances from the source instance and importing these definitions into the target instance. You can use this method to copy definitions of service instances only of the discovered type.

To edit an existing CI relationship or add a new CI relationship during the tag-based discovery process, complete the Traversal Rules for Application Services form.

Traversal rules identify and map relationships between configuration items to create comprehensive application service maps. They connect relevant configuration items based on predefined relationships, promoting accurate service mapping and visualization.

Search for mapped and unmapped services to unify. The flow is available using the Service Mapping workspace.

Delete a unified service using the Service Mapping workspace.

Add or remove services to update a unified service. The flow is available using the Service Mapping workspace.

Maximize the use of your organization's resources by mapping application service candidates that include unmapped servers. Use the Service Mapping workspace's unmapped servers widget to create an application service and ensure that your servers are used efficiently.

Upload the rctrlx.exe file to MID Servers to enable running discovery commands on Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010, and Citrix XenApp.

Use the Analyze potential impact agentic workflow to assess the effects of a change request. This workflow highlights the potential impacted servers and suggested services to help you identify risks, benefits, and make any necessary adjustments.

As the Service Mapping administrator, you support companies in their efforts to map and maintain critical application services so that they remain service-aware.

View a complete list of CIs that make up an application service, including CIs not shown on the application service map: tracked configuration files, endpoints, processes, and network devices.

You can view attributes of connections between configuration items (CIs) in application service maps in classic Service Mapping.

A contained application service is a reference included into another, dependent application service. You can open the contained service map directly from within the dependent service map.

Check which application services depend on an application service and open maps for dependent application services.

View a hierarchical map of CIs and the relationships between them by adding access to the Unified Map feature to the Service Mapping Workspace.

Maps offer you a visualization of data on configuration items (CIs) comprising application services, and relations and connections between these CIs.

Customize a map view to display relevant information and increase clarity.

View changes made to a service instance and to the individual configuration items (CIs) comprising the service in Agent Workspace. You can also compare the service status before and after a certain change or problem. The change history is useful for maintenance, planning, or troubleshooting procedures.

Use maps to see the details of application services. Maps show configuration items (CIs) making up application services, connections between these CIs and other service-related details.