CMDB data: a Service Graph Connector or a standard CMDB integration

• Your product discovers or manages things customers already track as configuration items: devices, servers, cloud resources, software installs.
• Customers want your data to update their existing CIs, not sit in a separate table.
• Data flows mostly into ServiceNow: your product pushes it to the Import Set API, which “transforms incoming data based on associated transform maps”, or the app pulls it on a schedule.
• Choose the Service Graph Connector when customers run ITOM and the branded category and sales alignment matter to your go-to-market; otherwise the standard integration fits. Our comparison covers the difference.
• If you only need to raise incidents or requests, you need neither: see the minimum certifiable Store app.

• For a Service Graph Connector, ServiceNow’s connector listings say: “Usage of this Service Graph Connector requires a subscription to a Subscription Unit based IT Operations Management (ITOM) Visibility or ITOM Discovery application.” ServiceNow’s Service Graph Connector Licensing listing also lets “identified third-party Service Graph Connectors” be “entitled with specific ITOM SU or ITAM SU based SKUs”. The ITAM ones it names are Software Asset Management Professional, Software Asset Management Enterprise and Hardware Asset Management Professional.
• The same listings say Managed IT Resources, such as servers, virtual machines, cloud resources and containers, “created or modified in the CMDB by this Service Graph Connector, but not yet managed by ITOM Visibility or ITOM Discovery, will increase Subscription Unit consumption within that application.”
• A standard CMDB integration doesn’t carry the programme’s ITOM requirement, unless your product itself relies on ITOM. Confirm the licensing posture for your app with ServiceNow.

• Build Program membership and your vendor instances. ServiceNow’s KB0794197 says “every partner receives two vendor instances”, initially provisioned on the release family “two releases prior to the current release (N-2)”, so upgrade before you certify.
• The CMDB and IntegrationHub ETL plugins your integration builds on, active on your vendor instance.
• A mapping from your data model to CMDB classes that follows ServiceNow’s common service data model (CSDM).
• For a Service Graph Connector, two customers willing to validate it: in our experience ServiceNow still asks for validation with two ServiceNow customers before release.

Certification reviews your documents as well as your app, and in our experience it’s the part most teams miss. ServiceNow’s certification guide says “Certification has two tracks”: an app review and a listing review.

• For the app review, ServiceNow asks for a “Design Document (for certification team only)”, a “Test Plan with results (for certification team only)” and an “Installation Guide (customer facing)”. Write the design document and test plan on ServiceNow’s templates; it provides a recommended template for the installation guide too.
• For the listing review, your Store listing “consists of marketing documentation, demo videos, and other resources”, and the team inspects it for “Accuracy” and “Adherence to branding guidelines”.
• For a Service Graph Connector, ServiceNow’s design review looks at your data model and CMDB mapping, so write the design document, with your mapping, as you design.

ServiceNow lists “How well you documented your architecture in your Design Documentation” among the things that decide how long certification takes. The calendar gives the documents a week of their own.

As a Service Graph Connector

Plan on roughly 17–23 weeks from the start of design to a Store listing.

As a standard CMDB integration

Plan on roughly 7–11 weeks from the start of design to a Store listing.

Not in ServiceNow’s Build Program yet? Add admission first: in our experience it takes 2–6 weeks, because ServiceNow reviews each application.

Weeks for design, build, the programme’s design review and customer validation, and the documents come from our own projects; ServiceNow publishes no duration for them. The review range is ServiceNow’s: certification “typically requires 3-5 weeks”, and no service level is published.

• Writing straight to CMDB tables, or pushing CIs in through the IRE REST API. Whichever way the data moves, land it in an import set that applies IRE: in our experience that’s the route certification accepts. ServiceNow’s docs say CI identification “can prevent duplicate CIs in the CMDB, which Import Sets might otherwise cause”.
• New columns or tables inside the CMDB. Keep external identifiers in the CMDB’s key-value store and anything custom in your own scope.
• For a Service Graph Connector, creating servers, virtual machines, cloud resources or containers the customer’s ITOM subscription doesn’t already cover, which shows up later in their subscription count.
• Records the app can’t ship because they live in the global scope, such as a custom data source choice. Our certification guide explains the clean pattern.
• Missing ACLs on custom tables and UI actions without conditions, two of ServiceNow’s ten most-failed checks.

• Maintenance is a release certification for each family release: retest on the new release and submit a revised test plan. ServiceNow’s Upgrade Policy says it “generally releases two new release families per year”. Any change to the app is a recertification, planned as new work. Connectors are exposed to changes in the CMDB and the reconciliation engine.
• Keep the class mapping current as your own product’s data model changes.

• Which credentials the integration stores, where (connection and credential records, not script properties), and what they can reach in your product.
• Whether it writes through the reconciliation engine, and which CI classes it touches.
• Whether it’s certified, and what that covers. Certification is strict on most security and performance issues, but it isn’t a full security audit, and the Store’s terms still leave use at the customer’s own risk. Have your own security answers ready.