# Initial Configuration Steps

Summarizes the first essential steps of Designer configuration.

This guide is intended to provide you with general recommendations for the minimum initial configuration steps of the Designer Application within your organization.

Best-practice is to perform configuration work on a non-production instance e.g. development instance and migrate the configuration through XML file exports to the production instance in a controlled way.

{% hint style="info" %}
**ServiceNow Admin rights required**

To perform the initial configuration you need ServiceNow System Admin rights. Please contact your ServiceNow Admin for further support!
{% endhint %}

## Initial Configuration Steps

The fastest way to start using Designer is to:

1. Install Designer, and
2. Assign access rights to the users.

Designer is already pre-configured, but we don't know which tables you are using in ServiceNow. So our recommendation is the following:

3. Configure Class Definitions and cross-scope privileges (CSDM tables & relationships) you want to use and ensure the Class Definitions and Cross-Scope privileges are in alignment with your target metamodel.
4. Setup preferred shapes for your organization.
5. Setup your License Management Dashboard to track the available vs. consumed licenses.

## Enhanced Configuration Options

This will provide you a quick start within the first hour, but Designer can do much more. For that, you should have a closer look at the following articles:

* Global Settings
* Global Templates
* Global Filters
* Class Fields
* Realtime indicators
* Relationship Definitions
* Relationship Fields
* Customize Commit Button
* Approval Workflow
* Editing Shape Stencils


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