Enable the CMDB Feature (Service Cloud ITSM)
Takes an org from "CMDB off" to "CMDB feature enabled" by walking the first three layers of the
CMDB prerequisite stack in order. Every call runs through the Salesforce-hosted Headless-360 MCP
server (server key headless-360) via its four meta-tools (discover, describe,
dispatch_readonly, dispatch). The org is derived from the OAuth JWT bound to the current MCP
session — the skill never handles an org id, alias, or credentials — so this works identically
against production and sandbox with no per-user MCP install.
This skill covers Layers 0–2. User access (Layer 3) and content bundles (Layer 4) are separate skills — see the end of this file.
The gate this skill lifts
Every CMDB Connect API checks:
Until orgHasCMDBEnabled is true, CMDB APIs return 403 FUNCTIONALITY_NOT_ENABLED. CMDBEnabled
is NOT a directly settable preference — it is flipped as a side effect of enabling the feature in
Layer 2. This skill's job is to make that gate return true.
Necessary but not always sufficient for a given user. Lifting this org gate does not by itself let a specific user read CMDB data. Some CMDB reads (e.g.
bundleListView) also enforce user-level CMDB access and return the same403 FUNCTIONALITY_NOT_ENABLED("not enabled for this user") when the running user holds no CMDB permission sets — even though the feature is correctly ENABLED. That is Layer 3 (service-itsm-agentic-setup-cmdb-access-assign), not a failure of this skill. Confirm this skill's success via the featurestatus == ENABLED, never via a CMDB data read.
Scope
- In scope: verifying the CMDB org permission (Layer 0), triggering + polling CMDB tenant provisioning (Layer 1), pre-checking + enabling + verifying the CMDB feature (Layer 2).
- Out of scope: permission-set assignment (Layer 3 —
service-itsm-agentic-setup-cmdb-access-assign), bundle installation (Layer 4 —service-itsm-agentic-setup-cmdb-bundle-deploy), CMDB record CRUD, Discovery / Service Graph Connector, identification rules.
Mechanism
All operations dispatch through headless-360 MCP tools. Reads go through
mcp__headless-360__dispatch_readonly, writes through mcp__headless-360__dispatch — both take raw
HTTP: {"url": "<path>", "method": "GET|POST", "body"?: {...}, "queryParams"?: {...}} — not
{operation_id, arguments}. See references/mcp-invocation.md for the exact url / method /
body of every call. The four tools:
mcp__headless-360__discover— semantic search over the indexed operation catalog. The Setup/Connect routes this skill uses are not always ranked first (or indexed), so a miss does not mean the route is absent — dispatch the exact path directly (seereferences/mcp-invocation.md).mcp__headless-360__describe— pull the full input schema and canonical route before any POST.mcp__headless-360__dispatch_readonly— the dispatcher for every read (GET).mcp__headless-360__dispatch— the dispatcher for every write (POST/PATCH).
The skill never handles credentials — the org is bound to the current OAuth session. If a dispatch*
call returns an auth error, tell the user to re-authenticate the headless-360 MCP connection (and
confirm the session points at the intended org), then stop.
Clarifying questions
Ask only what you cannot infer from conversation:
- Which org? Confirm the target org and state plainly that this org will be modified (tenant provisioning and feature enable are writes). For production, get explicit confirmation.
Do not re-ask for anything the user already provided; pre-populate and note "(from conversation)".
Workflow
All steps are sequential and gated — do not advance past a failed layer. Always read before you write: run the read-only check before every mutation.
Layer 0 — Verify the CMDB org SKU (read-only, hard gate)
CMDB requires the org permission ITSrvcsCnfgMgmnt, granted only by edition / license / org
template. No API can set it. The most reliable, universally-available way to verify the org
carries the CMDB SKU is to probe for the CMDB permission-set license — it exists only in orgs
provisioned with that license:
- totalSize == 1 → org is CMDB-licensed; proceed to Layer 1.
- totalSize == 0 → STOP. Tell the user in plain language (no developer names or API references
in the message they see):
This org isn't licensed for CMDB. CMDB availability is determined by the org's edition or license and can't be turned on through setup — it has to be included when the org is provisioned. Please have the org set up with CMDB (or use one that already has it), then run this again.
The core Connect API GET /services/data/v63.0/setup/org/permissions/ITSrvcsCnfgMgmnt
({"isPermissionEnabled": true|false}) is an alternative, but it 404s on some org types
(including orgfarm test orgs), so prefer the PSL probe above. See
references/mcp-invocation.md for the details. If no probe resolves, report that the org perm could
not be verified and ask the user to confirm the org has CMDB licensed before continuing.
Layer 1 — Provision the CMDB tenant
CMDB runs on a dedicated tenant (the CMDB tenant) that must reach status PROVISIONED (asynchronous).
-
Check current status (read):
Branch on
status:PROVISIONED→ already done; skip to Layer 2 (no trigger, no poll).UNPROVISIONED→ no job has run; go to step 2 and trigger it. Do not wait or poll on this state — waiting never starts provisioning and just burns the budget.PROVISIONING_IN_PROGRESS→ a job is already running; skip the trigger and go straight to the poll in step 3.FAILED→ treat as the FAILED case in step 3 (surface the reason; do not retry via API).
-
Trigger provisioning (write) — only when step 1 showed
UNPROVISIONED. Confirm with the user first:After the trigger returns, tell the user provisioning has started and typically takes 2+ minutes, so there is nothing to check yet.
-
Poll the GET until
status == PROVISIONED. This is async and reliably takes 2+ minutes (measured completion clusters right around ~2 min 40 s), so an immediate poll is a guaranteed no-op. Anchor all timing on the response'striggeredAt, not on when this run started — the job may have been triggered by an earlier run (thePROVISIONING_IN_PROGRESSentry from step 1). ParsetriggeredAtas a UTC epoch and computeelapsed = max(0, now − triggeredAt)— clamp to≥ 0so a clock skew (or a server-vs-agent timezone mismatch) can't yield a negativeelapsed(waits forever) or a false timeout. IftriggeredAtis missing or unparseable (the trigger POST response may not have populated it yet, or an in-progress row from an earlier run may omit it), fall back to anchoring on this run's start — treatelapsed = 0and wait the full ~2-min floor, so a branch always fires deterministically. Then:elapsed < ~2 min→ wait until ~2 min aftertriggeredAtbefore the first check (skips the guaranteed-useless early polls), then poll every 30 seconds.~2 min ≤ elapsed < 10 min→ poll immediately (the initial wait has already passed — do not wait a fresh 2 min), then every 30 seconds.elapsed ≥ 10 min→ do not start a fresh wait; treat it as the timeout case below (report the last-seen status and let the user decide).
The overall budget is 10 minutes from
triggeredAt(≈16 checks after the ~2-min floor). The ~2-min floor is a floor, not an extra delay — it brackets the typical ~2:40 completion within a poll or two; do not stretch it longer. Do not poll during the initial wait. Exit the loop as soon as:status == PROVISIONED→ success, advance to Layer 2.status == FAILED→ stop immediately. Do NOT retry via the API — surface the failure to the user in plain language with three things:- The failure reason, decoded to human-readable text. Read it from the response body (the
FAILED payload carries a detail field such as
error/failureReason/message— unescape any HTML entities like</>and strip markup). If the response carries no detail, say the tenant provisioning failed without a returned reason. - A link to the org's tenant provisioning Setup page, built from the target org's instance
URL:
<org instance URL>/lightning/setup/CMDBProvisionalSettings/home. - Ask the user to open that page and try provisioning manually, then re-run this skill once
the tenant shows
PROVISIONED. Only if the manual retry also fails does it need Salesforce support.
- The failure reason, decoded to human-readable text. Read it from the response body (the
FAILED payload carries a detail field such as
- the 10-minute window elapses → stop, report the last-seen status, and let the user decide whether to keep waiting (re-run) or investigate. Never spin past the 10-minute bound.
Polling in the background (runtime-permitting). Provisioning is a multi-minute wait, so the user should not have to sit idle. If — and only if — the executing runtime supports backgrounded work (e.g. an agent runtime that can spawn a detached sub-agent or a scheduled wake-up), delegate the wait-then-poll loop to a background task so the user can keep working, and report the outcome (
PROVISIONED/FAILED/ timed-out) when it finishes. If the runtime is a single-threaded turn (the ADK / Agentforce / headless-360 production path is single-threaded — a poll loop blocks the conversation there), poll inline instead. Either way: (a) tell the user up front it takes a few minutes, and (b) give a resume path — if they step away and the turn ends, they can re-run this skill and Layer 1 picks up from the current status (an alreadyPROVISIONEDtenant skips straight to Layer 2). Never require a background primitive the runtime may not have.
Layer 2 — Enable the CMDB feature (this lifts the 403 gate)
The feature api name is service-cloud-itsm-cmdb-integration.
- Pre-check status (read):
status == ENABLED→ already done; skip to verification.status == NOT_ENABLEDwithenableBlockedReasons: []→ clear to enable.enableBlockedReasonsnon-empty → STOP and relay each reason to the user in plain language (these are prerequisites the org still needs — do not attempt the enable).
- Confirm with the user, then enable (write):
- Verify (read) — do NOT trust the POST response alone:
status == ENABLEDis the definitive — and only — confirmation this skill needs. Layer 2 succeeds or fails on this check alone; it does not perform any CMDB data read to confirm the gate. A CMDB data read (e.g.bundleListView) also depends on the running user's own CMDB access, so it cannot cleanly confirm the org-level enable — see the note under "The gate this skill lifts". Once the feature showsENABLED, Layer 2 is done.
Rules / Constraints
Verification checklist
- Layer 0:
ITSrvcsCnfgMgmntconfirmedtrue(or stopped with a clear license message)? - Layer 1: tenant
status == PROVISIONED? - Layer 2: pre-check showed
enableBlockedReasons: []before enabling? - Layer 2: enable returned
success: true? - Layer 2: verification GET shows
status == ENABLED? (this is the sole success criterion — no CMDB data read is used to confirm) - Confirmed the target org and each write with the user first?
Output expectations
Keep internal jargon out of user-facing output (no record IDs, HTTP status codes, error codes,
endpoint or developer names). If any step fails, stop and tell the user — in plain language — which
part of setup didn't succeed and what it means for them, then point to the relevant fix. Translate
any raw error (e.g. a 403 or FUNCTIONALITY_NOT_ENABLED) into what it means ("CMDB isn't enabled
yet"), rather than echoing the code.


