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Features and Benefits

 

What's new in Discovery Admin v9.7 | What's new in Discovery Admin v9.6

 

Seamless Upgrades | Security and Access | Navigation

Initiating the Troubleshooting | Scheduled Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting (Form) | Troubleshooting in Progress | Log Analysis (Form)

Incident Error Code | Incident Generation | Incident Description

Data-Driven Configurations | Discovery Admin Website

ServiceNow Store | ServiceNow Platform | Use Cases | Limitations



 

TIP

 

We recommend the Technical audience peruse both the Features and Benefits.

The non-Technical audiences can focus on just the Benefits.


Consider exploring Customer Use Cases to get practical insights on leveraging Discovery Admin to make ServiceNow Discovery work EVEN BETTER.



 

What's new in Discovery Admin v9.7

 

Summary:

Upgrade to Discovery Admin v9.7 is recommended for all Discovery Admin Customers.

Follow the step-by-step instructions to Upgrade Discovery Admin.


Release Notes:

For Customers already on the Washington DC Release of ServiceNow, there have been updates to the logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery corresponding to Credential Errors.

This version of Discovery Admin has updated intelligence/rules to detect these new logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery in the Washington DC Release and assign the appropriate Incident Error Code.


NOTE:

  • If you are already on Discovery Admin v9.6, this is a minor release with NO CODE CHANGES.

  • If you are NOT on Discovery Admin v9.6, please see the video below for the new features in v9.6 as Discovery Admin v9.6 is a major release.


 

What's new in Discovery Admin v9.6 (33 mins :: 52 secs)

 

The Video below is a recording of the live Webinar hosted on 2024-04-10 with details on New Features, Enhancements, and the Next Steps to upgrade to Discovery Admin v9.6



 

Seamless Upgrades

 

Features:

  • Discovery Admin automatically runs self-diagnostics after the Upgrade to ensure the integrity of the Discovery Admin Upgrade across all the features of Discovery Admin [v9.0]

  • Post Upgrade Steps are automatically executed eliminating manual administration steps [v9.3]

  • Conflicts resulting from Upgrades are automatically resolved using best practice recommendations. Applicable Customer configurations are retained during the Upgrade and others automatically are reverted to out-of-the-box [v9.3]


Benefits: 

Automated processing eliminates the need to engage Platform Admins for Post Upgrade Steps and protects Discovery Admin from any unwarranted customizations. 


 

Security and Access

 

Features:

  • Security and Access driven by Discovery Admin roles [v5.0] - deprecated in v8.86

  • Security and Access updated to work with out-of-the-box ServiceNow Roles minimizing the need for user administration [v8.86]

  • Additional updates to Security and Access to eliminate the need for user administration for using Discovery Admin and viewing Reports and Dashboards created on data generated by Discovery Admin [v9.2]


Benefits: 

Moving Security and Access from Discovery Admin roles to out-of-the-box ServiceNow roles which are already assigned to Discovery Admin users eliminates user administration overheads for on-boarding and off-boarding resources.


 

Navigation

 

Features:

  • Primary Navigation via the Modules under the Discovery Admin Application under the Left Navigation Filter [v5.0] - deprecated in v8.16

  • Elimination of the Left Navigation (except for Discovery Admin properties) [v8.16]

  • Discovery Admin properties page to control key features of the App by admin users [v8.16]

  • Additional Discovery Admin properties to provide complete control of the Discovery Admin features by non-admin Discovery Admin users [v8.84]

  • UI Pages to simplify the configuration instead of using the ‘New’ UI Action in ServiceNow [v8.86]

  • Navigation streamlined to use Discovery Admin UI Actions instead of relying on out-of-the-box UI elements including the Back button on the Browser or the need to open multiple Browser tabs [v9.3]


Benefits: 

Aligning with the introduction of the Next UI in ServiceNow, navigating between the Discovery Admin features eliminates dependency on the Left Navigation enabling a full-screen UI experience.


 

Initiating the Troubleshooting

 

Features:

  • Troubleshooting initiated via the Troubleshooting Form via the Left Navigation [v5.0] - deprecated in v8.16

  • Simplified UI Navigation resulting in Troubleshooting initiated via the ‘Discovery Status’ List View or the ‘Discovery Status’ Form [v8.16]

  • Introduction of Scheduled Troubleshooting as an alternative to ad-hoc Troubleshooting [v8.16]


Benefits: 

Initiating a new Troubleshooting is intuitive (via the Discovery Status module) and hands-free (via Scheduled Troubleshooting).


 

Scheduled Troubleshooting

 

Features:

  • Discovery Admin can be configured to run at a pre-configured time using pre-determined Discovery Status Records (generated by the corresponding Discovery Schedules) [v8.16]

  • Ability to trigger ad-hoc Troubleshooting using the existing Scheduled Troubleshooting filter [v8.85]

  • Intuitive UI Page for actions during the creation of new Scheduled Troubleshooting [v8.86]

  • Proactive logging of Scheduled Troubleshooting execution in the ServiceNow Platform Logs [v8.86]

  • Intuitive validation of the accuracy of which Discovery Status records are selected to be analyzed [v9.0]

  • Validation to avoid selection of inactive records via the Reference fields [v9.3]

  • Scheduled Troubleshooting Records can be daisy-chained, i.e. the next Scheduled Troubleshooting Record is initiated after the previous Troubleshooting is complete [v9.3]

  • Up to two Scheduled Troubleshooting Records can be analyzed at the same time [v9.3]

  • Automated Incident Generation via Scheduled Troubleshooting can be controlled via the Scheduled Troubleshooting Form [v9.3]

  • Global Control to prevent automated Incident Generation via Scheduled Troubleshooting [v8.84]


Benefits: 

The ability to schedule the analysis was introduced in v8.16 and is the most used feature of Discovery Admin. 

Since ServiceNow Discovery runs on a regular basis, it makes sense to automate the Troubleshooting of the ServiceNow Discovery Logs (generated each time ServiceNow Discovery runs) via the Scheduled Troubleshooting feature of Discovery Admin. 


 

Troubleshooting (Form)

 

Features:

  • Hints on all attributes on the Form, which can be accessed by hovering over the attribute Label [v5.0]

  • Intuitive UI to track the progress of the analysis and the Incidents Generated by Discovery Admin [v5.0]

  • Addition of additional attribute on the Troubleshooting Form to provide insights into Incident Generation [v8.84]

  • Display relevant Properties values configured for Incident Generation on Troubleshooting Form [v9.0]

  • Addition of additional attributes on the Troubleshooting Form to provide Live Progress, Duration of the Troubleshooting, and relevant Timestamps. [v9.0]

  • Ability to support more than 5,000 Discovery Schedules in a single Troubleshooting [v9.2]

  • Troubleshooting Form redesign to display Timestamp attributes in ascending order of Troubleshooting progress [v9.3]

  • Discovery Status Records selected for analysis are displayed (and processed) in ascending order increasing the predictability of the analysis [v9.2]

  • Contextual Field Messages on certain attributes on the Form to provide additional information [v9.3]

  • Audit History, triggered by the Troubleshooting Status provides detailed insights into the history of the Troubleshooting and Incident Generation [v9.3]


Benefits: 

The Troubleshooting Form provides insights and controls to manage the Troubleshooting and Incident Generation with Discovery Admin.


 

Troubleshooting in Progress: 

 

Features:

  • Lookup CIs in the CMDB by IP Address to provide additional context for the CI failing ServiceNow Discovery [v8.84]

  • Events generated for every change of ‘Status’ of Troubleshooting Analysis enabling customized actions including configuring Email Notifications [v9.2]

  • Ability to cancel an actively running Troubleshooting and Incident Generation, with a contextual UI Action on the Troubleshooting form [v9.2]

  • Ability to pause and resume an actively running Troubleshooting with contextual UI Actions on the Troubleshooting Form [v9.3]

  • Advanced deduplication based on current and historical Troubleshooting to further reduce noise and false positives in the Troubleshooting results [v9.3]

  • Deeper insights and correlation into similar or different errors associated with the SAME IP Address to provide additional context and derive the most actionable remediation [v9.3]

  • Auto cancelation of the Troubleshooting, if there are access issues with associated ‘Discovery Log’ tables [v9.3]

  • Performance improvements resulting from the elimination of a recurring GlideRecord Query [v9.5]


Benefits: 

The Troubleshooting can take anywhere from a few minutes to many hours to complete, based on the number of logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery. Discovery Admin provides various features and controls while the Troubleshooting is in progress to provide insights into the status of the Troubleshooting.


 

Log Analysis (Form): 

 

Features:

  • Hints on all attributes on the Form, which can be accessed by hovering over the attribute Label [v5.0] 

  • Automatically control the maximum number of rows in the Log Analysis Table by Row Count [v8.86]

  • Limits the maximum number of rows in the Log Analysis Table to 1 Million Records (modifiable via Discovery Admin Property) [v9.3]

  • Form Section - Main (Top Section): captures attributes aligned with the Incident Error Code generated by Discovery Admin [v5.0]

  • Form Section - Root Cause and Remediation: details why a specific CI is not being discovered and provides a suggested solution to help fix the issue [v5.0]

  • Form Section - IP Address Insights: provides additional context for other similar or different errors seen on the same IP Address including how many times a specific error has been consecutively seen on the same IP Address [v9.3]

  • Form Section - ServiceNow Discovery: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes for ServiceNow Discovery Schedule and ServiceNow Discovery Status [v8.16]

  • Form Section - Affinity: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes providing insights into the Credential Affinity associated with the IP Address [v8.16]

  • Form Section - Affinity: includes additional out-of-the-box attributes which otherwise would require several clicks to retrieve the information [v9.3]

  • Form Section - CMDB Lookup: provides insights into the CI(s) in the CMDB configured with the same IP Address with the ability to retrieve additional attributes directly on the CI (via dot-walking), on the CI Related List or via CI Relationships (including CMDB Groups) [v8.84]

  • Form Section - CMDB Lookup: can exclude configured CI Classes from the Lookup and prioritize which CIs should be returned via the Lookup [v8.86]

  • Form Section - IP Address Table Lookup: provides insights into the CI(s) in the CMDB configured with the same IP Address via the IP Address Table (instead of the IP Address attribute on the CI) enabling visibility into CIs that have multiple IP Addresses. [v9.3]

  • Form Section - Discovery Log: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes on the Discovery Log Table [v5.0]

  • Form Section - Device History: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes on the Device History Table [v5.0]

  • Form Section - ECC Queue: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes on the ECC Queue Table [v5.0]

  • Form Section - (Pattern) SA Log History: captures relevant out-of-the-box attributes on the SA Log History Table [v5.0]

  • Form Section - (Pattern) SA Log History: to include a direct link to the Pattern Log providing direct access to all the steps executed by the Pattern [v7.0]

  • Form Section - SysIDs: captures System IDs of the corresponding records referenced via the Log Analysis Table [v9.3]


Benefits:

The Log Analysis Table is a single Table with a 360-degree view for Reporting / Dashboards / Trending detailing only the relevant and actionable data to help determine the root cause for why a CI is not being discovered by ServiceNow Discovery.


 

Incident Error Code

 

Features:

  • Ability to create and manage new Incident Error Codes to align with Customer requirements [v5.0]

  • Ability to have multiple Incident Error Code Mappings associated with a single Incident Error Code [v5.0]

  • Enforce uniqueness for Incident Error Code [v8.84]

  • Ability to validate Incident Error Code Filters via an auto-generated Link [v9.0]

  • Intuitive UI Page to create and manage Incident Error Codes [v9.2]

  • Prevent the creation of incorrect Incident Error Code Mapping rules with intuitive error messages displayed on the Form [v9.3]


Benefits: 

The Incident Error Code (IEC) is the unique code associated with a Root Cause and Remediation assigned to a IP Address by Discovery Admin, during the Troubleshooting of ServiceNow Discovery Logs.


 

Incident Generation

 

Features:

  • Generate Incidents and automatically assign them to the team responsible for remediating the identified issue [v6.0]

  • Each generated Incident contains one or more IP Addresses with the same Root Cause and Remediation [v6.0]

  • Deduplicate IP Addresses from being populated in the current Incident if they are already present in a previously generated active Incident by Discovery Admin [v6.5]

  • Populate additional attributes (including custom attributes) on the Incident Form when Incidents are generated with Discovery Admin [v8.86]

  • Enhancement to the population of generated incidents leveraging Discovery Admin Properties [v9.0]

  • Looked-up CIs or Services on the CI can be populated as Affected CI / Impacted Services using Discovery Admin Property [v9.2]


Benefits: 

After the Troubleshooting is complete, Discovery Admin can be OPTIONALLY configured to (manually or automatically) generate Incidents with the necessary details to fix the identified issues and assign them to the correct team for resolution. 


 

Incident Description

 

Features:

  • The incident Description contains the Root Cause and Remediation for resolving the issue defined by the log and list of IP Addresses along with additional information about ServiceNow configurations corresponding to the Discovery Log [v6.0]

  • The number of characters in the Incident Description can be limited to control Incident Description length [v8.84]

  • Custom message (for the team receiving the Incident) can be added at the beginning of the Incident Description [v8.85]

  • The incident Description contains a link to the Log Analysis Table with a filtered list of all the IP Addresses corresponding to this Incident [v8.86]

  • Incident Description contains a list of previous Incidents due to the deduplication of IP Addresses [v8.86]

  • Incident Description contains a count of IP Addresses excluded due to the deduplication of IP Addresses [v9.0]

  • The number of IP Addresses in the Incident Description can be limited to control Incident Description length [v9.0]

  • Incident Description includes the CI Lookup information from CMDB corresponding to the source IP Address which has a List of Looked up CIs along with the URL corresponding to each of these CIs [v9.0]

  • The ability to ONLY include recurring issues in generated Incidents [v9.2]

  • Incident Description includes the URL to the Log Analysis Table corresponding to the specific IP Address, so the complete context for why the IP Address failed ServiceNow Discovery is easily accessible [v9.3]


Benefits: 

The Incident Description provides the necessary details for the teams receiving the Incidents Generated by Discovery Admin to resolve the identified issues. Details captured in the Incident Description can be tweaked to align with the unique requirements of the teams scoped for receiving the Incidents Generated by Discovery Admin. 


 

Data-Driven Configurations

 

Features:

  • Data-Driven Configuration for the rules that power Discovery Admin without the need for any code modifications [v5.0]

  • Data-Driven Configuration via System Properties (by ServiceNow PLATFORM administrators) to control the features and capabilities of Discovery Admin [v8.16] - deprecated in v8.86

  • Data-Driven Configuration via System Properties (by ServiceNow Discovery administrators) to control the features and capabilities of Discovery Admin, eliminating the dependency on ServiceNow Platform administrators [v8.86]


Benefits: 

Enabling different features and capabilities of Discovery Admin using Data Driven Configurations allows for the same code base to be deployed across ALL Discovery Admin Customers while allowing each Customer to align Discovery Admin with their unique use cases and requirements to support their ServiceNow Discovery implementation. 


 

Discovery Admin Website

 

Features:

  • Comprehensive Discovery Admin Documentation [v9.2]

  • Simplified enablement for resourcing using Discovery Admin [v9.3]


Benefits:

Comprehensive documentation with an extensive Knowledge Base is available on the Discovery Admin Website to provide immediate answers to common questions and a seamless way for new resources to get familiar with the latest features of Discovery Admin. 


 

ServiceNow Store

 

Features:

  • Seamless trials via ServiceNow Store [v5.0]

  • Seamless installation via ServiceNow Store [v5.0]


Benefits:

Discovery Admin is only available for Installation and Upgrade via the ServiceNow Store. Discovery Admin goes through a rigorous certification process by ServiceNow, which includes automated and manual validation of the Application by ServiceNow, before it is available on the ServiceNow Store. This ensures the integrity of Discovery Admin with the same level of trust that you already have with the ServiceNow Platform. 


 

ServiceNow Platform

 

Features:

  • Single Background Application Queue (in the Global Application Scope) [v5.0] - deprecated in v8.5

  • Single Background Application Queue (in the Discovery Admin Application Scope) with no impact to the ServiceNow Platform [v8.5] - deprecated in v9.3

  • Multiple Background Application Queues (in the Discovery Admin Application Scope) for increased throughput with ad-hoc Troubleshooting, Scheduled Troubleshooting, and Incident Generation, with no impact to the ServiceNow Platform [v9.3]


Benefits: 

The Background Application Queue in the Discovery Admin Scope, runs with a lower priority than the Global Queue eliminating performance impact to the ServiceNow Platform. Discovery Admin also gets throttled by ServiceNow when other Background activities (eg. Integrations, Platform Upgrades, etc.) are executed in the Global Scope. We have observed Discovery Admin taking longer to execute during Platform Upgrades as Discovery Admin is automatically throttled by ServiceNow.


 

Use Cases

 

Features:

  • Troubleshooting ~1 Million Logs per day (ad-hoc) [v5.0]

  • Troubleshooting logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery Patterns [v7.0]

  • Troubleshooting ~ 1 Million Logs per day via Scheduled Troubleshooting and up to 5 Million Logs per week [v8.16]

  • Improved Troubleshooting throughput by 2x to analyze up to 10 Million Logs per week [v9.3]

  • Provide Best Practices for the operationalization and maintenance of ServiceNow Discovery [v9.3]


Benefits: 

Discovery Admin started as a log parser with the ability to parse millions of logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery, accurately and reliably. Over the years, with new features and capabilities, Discovery Admin stands as the preferred solution and the best practice to operationalize the maintenance of ServiceNow Discovery, and provides the maximum return on investment for ITOM Visibility.


 

Limitations: 

 

Features:

  • Customers need to have IP Based (Discover = Configuration Item) ServiceNow Discovery (uses: ITOM Visibility Licenses)

  • Any Logs that are not in the 4 standard tables populated by ServiceNow Discovery (Discovery Log, Device History, ECC Queue, Pattern Log History) are not analyzed by Discovery Admin

  • Logs generated by ServiceNow Discovery can only be accessed by Discovery Admin via the corresponding Discovery Status generated by ServiceNow Discovery

  • Any Integration or API Based Discovery that does not populate the 4 standard tables and does not generate a corresponding ServiceNow Discovery Status can not be analyzed by Discovery Admin

  • Any API Based Cloud Discovery (for example: Discover = Cloud Resources) should ALSO be discovered via the standard IP Based ServiceNow Discovery (aligned with persistent Servers) for analysis with Discovery Admin

  • Only actionable errors are analyzed by Discovery Admin. Successful ServiceNow Discovery (including Serial Number swaps, i.e. successful discovery that is updating the same records based on incorrect identifiers) are not analyzed by Discovery Admin. We recommend using the out-of-the-box ServiceNow Discovery Home to get insights into successful ServiceNow Discovery. 

  • For very rare use cases, any additional logs that are not captured by ServiceNow Discovery can be included in the 4 standard tables populated by ServiceNow Discovery using Business Rules, thus enabling Discovery Admin to detect and analyze any subsequent errors. 


Benefits: 

Discovery Admin to optimal for troubleshooting errors generated by IP Based ServiceNow Discovery which is the foundation for automatically populating the CMDB in alignment with the Common Services Data Model.

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