Should I modify the "Environment" dictionary entry for special-use app instances?
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Wednesday
Hey everyone!
I'm currently trying to build a demo data model that aligns with the CSDM, and am working on the "Crawl" phase - Specifically Service Instances.
One of our major applications/services has 5 environments stood up: Production, Test, Development, Support, and Demo.
- Support is supposed to be a clone of the production environment, aimed specifically at troubleshooting production issues and reflecting current state.
- Demo is meant to be a clean install of the application with no customization. It should not be used for any active development work.
My plan is to identify all 5 of these as Service Instances (Application Services), all relating back to the parent Business Application. The name of the Service Instance will include "Prod/Test/Dev/Support/Demo" (matching the suggestions in the "CSDM Data Model Examples" powerpoint), so technically "Environment" could be seen as redundant. I don't know if I am going to run into many other applications or systems in our institution that have more than prod/test/dev instances that are running constantly.
The "Environment" Dictionary entry is a string-type column on the "cmdb_ci" table, which I know populates a TON of places throughout the system. With my limited knowledge, it does look like I could add more choices to this, which would (in theory) propagate down to all the places where "environment" gets used/extended.
The question is... should I?
I am unsure if it is best practice or not to modify the core delivered tables and columns, especially for something as important as the root of the Configuration Item tree. I have no clue if this will have implications with automation, future updates, etc, or if this is something we can modify and be fine with as the class is extended and modified in the future.
On the other hand, I could very easily classify "Support" As a test environment and "Demo" as a dev environment, but I don't know if that makes sense or if it is confusing. I could even leave the Environment field blank, and add a note to the description explaining why. But I know we're currently struggling with routing help desk incidents and change requests, and environment plays into those... I think.
My intention is to give a "vertical slice" of the services we provide, giving examples of just how we'd apply our systems into ServiceNow and get benefit out of all of the CSDM mapping. This particular scenario is an outlier towards that goal, but it also shows that we've considered some of our rarer and more complex scenarios and can therefore handle the easier stuff without too much trouble. So I'd like to have my demo have some kind of approach to this.
As always, your thoughts are very much welcomed.
