Now Platform
Overview
The platform layer everything else runs on: user management, authentication, core data, the CMDB, integrations, and data quality. Nothing in this family solves a business problem by itself — it's what makes every other family's modules implementable. Almost every requires edge in this wiki eventually lands here.
Foundations in this family
- Platform Core Setup — users, access, SSO, branding, localization
- CMDB Foundation — the inventory and dependency map
- Integration Foundation — connecting other systems
- Data Foundation & Quality — clean, owned, refreshed data
Modules in this family
CMDB Foundation
The CMDB (Configuration Management Database) is ServiceNow's inventory of everything your business runs on — servers, laptops, applications, network gear, cloud resources — and, crucially, how those things connect to each other. Each entry is a configuration item (CI).
Data Foundation & Quality
Getting the data that feeds ServiceNow clean, loaded, and kept clean: your people, departments, locations, vendors, and any records migrated from an old tool. Every module's usefulness is capped by the quality of this data — bad data in means wrong assignments, misleading reports, and frustrated users.
Integration Foundation
The plumbing that lets ServiceNow talk to your other systems — your email, chat tools (Teams/Slack), HR system, monitoring tools, and anything with an API. Most real implementations live or die on integrations, because ServiceNow is rarely the only system in the building.
Platform Core Setup
The basic setup every ServiceNow instance needs before any application can go live: getting your people into the system, deciding who can do what, connecting your company login, and making the instance look and behave like yours (branding, time zones, currencies, languages).
Official docs: Now Platform landing page ↗