In this post, I’ll shortly introduce new features included in DCM release 5.0. If you want to know more or see these features in action, please book a private demo or subscribe to our mailing list for future updates on our product and related topics.
Let’s then get to those fantastic features.
Interactive Filters on DCM Dashboards
I have waited a long time for this: ServiceNow finally made Interactive Filters available for scoped applications with no need for a Performance Analytics license. Of course, we took those into use immediately.
You can now filter all dashboards in DCM by details such as Data Domain, Blueprint and Audit Category, or Implementation Phase. There is also a new Data Provider filter when checking data quality related to your domain.
Below is an example of the DCM Audit Dashboard, showing the overview of your data quality for the whole instance.
And the same, when I want to see audit results for the “Business Applications” Data Domain only.
The filter also updates the “Top10” reports at the bottom of the dashboard, so I can easily see the most significant problem areas in the Business Applications domain.
With a combination of Data Domain, Blueprint, Audit Categories, and the Implementation Phase, you can dig into details and analyze your audit results from different perspectives without creating any custom reports.
More Dynamic Blueprints with Advanced Links
Advanced links are a collection of new link definitions that allow more dynamic blueprints and a better understanding of your data in a dynamic world.
Advanced Links include three new features in Blueprint Designer:
- Conditional Links
- Alternative Links
- Cohesive Links
This new version also includes new demo data templates that utilize these new features. In the example blueprint for Business Applications below, we use the new advanced links features in the following way:
Conditional Links
- If Audited Business Application is with Architecture Type “Platform Application,” then it should have a Platform Host reference to another Business Application
- If Architecture Type is something else, it should have a “Consumes” CI Relationship to an Application Service
Alternative Links
- Application Service must have at least one downstream CI Relationship, but it doesn’t matter which one of the following alternatives:
- “Depends on” Application
- “Runs on” Server
- “Depends on” Database
- With all alternatives, the Application Service relates to a Server either directly or via another CI relationship
Cohesive Links
- Both Support Group references from a Business Application and an Application Service should relate to the same group.
While adding all these capabilities into our Blueprint Designer, we also changed the way Links are created. Previously there was more of a step-by-step wizard view to create and edit a link, but now it’s just split into Basic and Advanced.
Most of the time, you can quickly create a new link with just a couple of clicks using the basic settings. You only need the Advanced options for more complicated setups.
Data Provider Configuration and Audit Results
We often talk about the Consumer – Owner – Provider Model (COP-model) in our training materials and presentations. (READ: How to Establish Owenership in your CMDB using the COP model). It is now possible to define the Providers for each Blueprint version with a dynamic Data Provider Configuration.
In practice, this means that you define where to find the provider information, starting from the root class. For example, you could say that the “IT Application Owner” reference field on the Business Application form defines the data provider. Or, you could use a “Managed By Group” for the same.
If those references would happen to return an empty value, you can also define a default value based on our data governance model. This information is added to the blueprint when publishing a new version.
So, what’s the point?
Let’s imagine you have 100 Business applications managed by 20 different people, each responsible for 5 of the applications.
These 20 people are referenced by the “IT Application Owner” field on the Business Application record. We can now use this information to relate all the audit results to these Data Providers and give them a personal view of their responsibility for the data quality. You can do this for every blueprint, using different tables and different data providers configurations, and still use a single set of reports for data quality.
Here’s an example of the new Data Provider Dashboard showing “personal data quality” for the current user related to the Business Applications domain.
Now, it should be easy to see what everyone needs to do to maintain high-quality data for all the others to consume.
Record Search in Data Content Planner
Last on the list is the improved search capabilities of the Data Content Planner. Until now, you could only search for records one attribute at a time. The results list was somewhat limited. In the new version, you can use the standard Condition Builder to add filters to the record list and see additional details on each record.
These improvements will make finding the correct records and including them in your data set much more straightforward.
What else?
In addition to the features listed above, we included a bunch of smaller enhancements to improve usability and bring clarity into certain parts of the product.
We hope you find these features useful. If you want to know more, you can check out the release notes, including minor enhancements and bug fixes. And as always, you can book a live demo to see all these in action finetuned to match with your current case.
Yours truly,
Mikko | Chief Product Officer
