All the auditing capabilities and reporting that Data Content Manager provides are based on Blueprints. They are visual representations of data models you want to follow or enforce in ServiceNow. Typical examples would be Blueprints around the CSDM, which allow you to start your CSDM alignment efforts quickly or accelerate progress.
While CSDM is undoubtedly one of DCM’s prime use cases, you can create Blueprints for any data in your platform, including Foundation Data and even custom tables. If the data is in your ServiceNow, you can model it with DCM Blueprints.
We provide best practice templates for CSDM that you can use to get a quick start. Of course, you can tweak them to your specific requirements since not everybody can or wants to follow CSDM precisely as prescribed.
For example, in a CSDM template for Business Applications, you could remove the SDLC component if you are not using it and add a requirement that each Business Application should be linked to a Business Unit. Then, add attribute-level requirements and filters, if needed.
Regardless of the use case, designing a Blueprint, either from a template or from scratch, only takes a few minutes.
Watch this short video to see how:
What do Blueprints do?
Blueprints are the basis for Audits
Unlike diagrams drawn in Visio or PowerPoint, the Blueprints you create with Data Content Manager reside in your ServiceNow instance. This means you can use the Blueprints to run audits on your data with just a couple of clicks.
The Audit will use all the requirements you’ve set in your Blueprint and examine your actual data. It will then provide detailed results about how well your data matches the requirements.
In real life, the audit will always discover gaps between the data and the requirements. These gaps will then be automatically reported to the individuals responsible for that data so that they can update the data they are responsible for.
Learn more about running Audits with DCM!
Blueprints are the basis for Data Quality Reporting
The audits you run against your Blueprints will produce detailed reporting of your data gaps. Each requirement in the Blueprint will result in an audit message. With the wealth of Audit messages, Data Content Manager produces relevant reports, Dashboards, and Data Quality Workspaces for all relevant stakeholders.
The level of detail ranges from management overviews to personalized workspaces, which only contain details relevant to an individual and everything in between. The reporting will guide your team’s work and communication, and the personalization of data quality gaps will allow for easy and precise communication with the individuals who need to do something to improve data quality.
Because auditing can be set to run on a schedule, the reporting and possible task creation for individuals can be largely automated.
Learn more about automating data quality management with DCM!
Blueprints Guide Fixing of Data
The Blueprint acts as a visual guide in the Data Content Planner module, helping people fix their data so that making mistakes becomes nearly impossible, regardless of whether the data is a single attribute or a CI relationship.
While the Data Content Planner is aimed at power users, typical business users would use a personalized Data Quality Workspace to fix their data. For them, the Blueprint guides their updates invisibly in the background, and they only need to point and click to update their data gaps—including any CI relationships.
Learn more about fixing data issues with the Data Content Planner!
Blueprints are the Foundation for Data Quality
Overall, Blueprints in Data Content Manager are the fundamental building blocks for setting data quality requirements. Everything else in DCM follows automatically, and there is no need for customizations or scripting.
When requirements for your data change, you only need to update your affected Blueprint. Everything else follows automatically.
When Data Content Manager is set to run audits automatically and provide the results to different stakeholders automatically, you’re a long way ahead in turning data quality improvement and maintenance efforts from sporadic, painful projects into a well-managed process that can greatly impact your ServiceNow investment.
After all, you will not be able to reap the full benefits of the platform if your data quality is not good enough to use many of its advanced capabilities, including AI Agents that are becoming increasingly mainstream.
See DCM Blueprints in Action
Here are a few selected examples of using DCM Blueprints in real life. All the examples are based on real-world usage and applicable to any ServiceNow instance – including yours. Moreover, you can try any of these examples with a DCM Guided Trial!
- How to Validate ServiceNow Approval Groups
- Video: Ensure You Can Do Root Cause Analysis
- Video: How to Catch Invalid Business Application Owners in Your CMDB
- Video: How to Improve Foundation Data in ServiceNow and CSDM
- How To Ensure Workflows Don’t Fail Over User Data
- How to Ensure Server CI Relationships Exist
