Creating and Managing Configuration Items

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As an administrator, you can create a relationship of CIs, custom fields, and Category-Class-Type-Item (CCTI) classification. You can use the CI Attribute Templates to group related custom fields and relate them to a CCTI classification. You can perform the following tasks with this feature:

• Create CI and select CCTI. The custom fields get applied to the CI.
• Relate the CI to other CIs.
• Relate CI to contacts/groups.
• Add service hours.
• Relate tickets.
• Relate attachments.
• View the message board for the CI.
  

You can use this feature to create CIs corresponding to the various components of your IT infrastructure, like all your services and assets. You can view the existing CIs by navigating to WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK> Configuration Management. You can filter the list of CIs by Status, Class (from CCTI), and Organization. For example, if you want to view all the active services, you can filter the list on the following criteria:

• Status = Active
• Class = Service

Note: The Configuration Management workspace is set to public access rights, by default. As an administrator, you can modify the permissions for this workspace. You can restrict this workspace to Administrators, Configuration Management, and Configuration Management Analysts roles. This setting ensures that the CIs are not subjected to unauthorized modifications.

Considerations

• The CI status describes the status in its life-cycle. For example, a software package can have a status like Ordered, New, Configured, or In Use.
• The status of a newly configured CI is Active.
• You can relate a CI to an organization and also assign an owner to the CI.
• Permissions are required to create or modify a CI record.
• The maximum number of CIs that you can create concurrently are 25.
• Two CIs can be related to each other by a logic, network, power source, or service.
• You can relate a user to a CI as a user, approver, reviewer, or provider.
A CI is related to a CI attribute template through a CCTI. When you create a CI attribute template, relate it to a CCTI, and then relate that CCTI to your CI.

Prerequisites

Verify the following prerequisites:

• To relate custom fields to a CI, ensure that the Custom fields and CI Attribute Templates exist.
•  To attach the CI to a CCTI, ensure that the CCTI records are created.
• To associate a holiday list with the CI, ensure that the Holiday group is created.
• To relate the CI to contacts or support groups, ensure that the contact group, support group, or both are configured.

For more information about creating and managing CIs, see Create and Manage CI Attribute Templates.

Manage Configuration Items

Managing configuration items involves the following tasks:

• Creating and managing CIs.
• Managing CI- CI relation.
• Manage Tickets - CI relation.
• Managing CI-Contacts relation.
• Managing Service Hours.
• Manage Attachments.

You can bulk import the CI records and then update the records as required. You can access, create a CI, and modify an existing CI, depending on the assigned permissions. A Self-Service user can only view a list of the CI records, such as Owner, User, and Change Approver. If this feature is enabled through a slice parameter, the users can relate a CI to a ticket.

The Board section on the CI page works as an audit trail and displays a list of all the changes and modifications that are made to that CI. The list gets generated automatically, and you cannot delete or modify it.

Create and Manage CIs

Create CI:

1. Navigate to WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK> Configuration Management.
   The configuration management workspace displays the list of configuration items depending upon the configuration of the application. If the organization-based security is turned on, you can view the CIs related to your current organization. If the organization-based security is turned off, you can view all CIs of the application instance. You can filter the list by status, class, or organization.
2. Click Actions> Create New.
3. Search and select the values for the following mandatory fields: 
   • CCTI: To relate the CI to existing CCTI. When you relate a CI to a CCTI, the CI attribute template that is related with CCTI gets applied to the CI as well. As a result, the corresponding fields are attached to the CI. For the CI attribute template containing attributes that are not automatically attached to the CI during its creation, attach the attributes manually by using the Attach Attributes action under the Actions menu.
     
   • Organization: To relate the CI to an existing organization. You can search by organization or sub organization and relate it to the CI.
   • Owner: To assign an owner to the CI.
4. Select Actions, Save to save the CI record. 
5. The application displays Attributes, Related CIs, Related Tickets, Attachments, Contacts and Groups, Service Hours, and Board sections. Service Hours of a CI indicates availability or unavailability time for a CI.

Relate CIs:

Click Relate CIs under Related Configuration Items, select the Relation Domain, Relation Type, and Select CIs.

You can relate a CI to other CIs based on the following relation domains and relation types.

• Logical: A child-parent relation. The types of relations are Child of, Parent of, and Related to.
• Network: A downstream-upstream relation. The types of relations are Downstream of, Upstream of, and Related to.
• Power: A receive-supply relation. The types of relations are Receives from, Supplies to, and Related to.
• Service: A depend-support relation. 

Relate Tickets:

Click Relate Tickets and select one or more tickets and relate it to the CI.

Relate Attachments:

Click Add New to relate one or more attachments to a ticket. You can also relate an existing attachment by clicking Relate Existing.

Relate Contacts or Groups:

Click New Related Contact under Contacts and Groups, select the Relationship Type, Contact Type, and other necessary information to relate a contact, group or both to the CI.

You can relate contacts and groups to a CI based on the following Relationship Types.

• User
• Approver
• Reviewer
• Provider

If the relationship type is Approver or Reviewer, the Approval Phase field is enabled. Select the Approval Phase and click Relate Approvers or Relate Reviewers. Specify the Contact/Group and click Relate.

Add Service Hours:

You can add a schedule for the service availability of a CI, or for the outage, or maintenance of a CI. Specify the start and end date with recurrence details and click Save.
You can associate an existing holiday list to a CI. If you do not specify the time zone, the application sets it to default.   

Click Save to save the relationship details.

Deactivate or Delete Configuration Items

The status of a newly configured CI is Active. In order to deactivate a CI record, set its status to Deprovisioned. You cannot relate a Deprovisioned CI to tickets and other CIs.

To delete CI's you have two options. You can delete a CI individually by opening the CI, clicking the Actions button and selecting delete. You can also delete Deprovisioned CIs in bulk by using the Delete option within the bulk import feature.

Modifying a Configuration Item

You can modify an existing CI only if it is in an active state. If the CI is in an active state, you can open it, make the necessary changes, and save it.

We recommend that you follow a change control process for any modifications to CIs. For example, from a change request, relate the CI to the change and use task tickets and change approvals to manage the CI updates. The approval phases ensure that the appropriate change approvals are received before modifying a CI. The tasks related to the change request should be assigned to the necessary groups or individuals only after the approval, to ensure that appropriate procedures are being followed for CI updates.

You can also track whether the updates to the CI are authorized updates or not. You can run an advanced report to pull a list of all recently modified CIs and compare it with the Standard Report named CI Related Open Tickets Report.

CI Version Management

For CIs that fall in the Hardware or Software classes, you can also maintain the version information. Scroll down to the Attributes section, click CIs with Class as Hardware or Software, and enter the version. The version can also be automatically updated through actions originating from external applications. You can view information about CI version changes in the Board section of a CI.

Additional Actions on CIs

Open a CI and click the Actions menu button to view the additional actions available for that CI. Some of these actions depend upon the Class of the CI and its state. For example, if you are working with a CI of the type Service, you can see the option for deprovisioning that service.

The actions menu provides the following options, among others:

Copy to New - You can use the Copy to New option to create a copy of that CI. You can also use this option to assist with CI version management, by creating copies of a baseline version.  Use the Name field to name the copied CI, and use the Identifier field to add information that identifies the new CI as a separate version or copy of the original CI.

Attach Attributes - You can add additional attributes to the CI by clicking this option.

Other options include, options to change the ownership of the CI and to change its status.