Finding the Right CI - Change Requests - Best Practice

[Tom104]

Hi All,

We're currently processing Change Requests and Incidents without selecting the relevant configuration item.

As such, this results in poor MI for reports, poor confidence in our Service Awareness, etc.

We have approached the Change Manager and Infrastructure teams historically, and they will not make the CI mandatory for the following reasons:-

1) It takes too much effort when we're working in an agile fast paced environment
2) The configuration items aren't always identifiable (Lack of historic knowledge).

Point 2 links back to point 1, but there is a certain element of (Even if point 2 was fixed we wouldn't bother).

As such, does anyone have any recommendations on how to make CIs clearly identifiable within the CMDB.

I do realise I may be screaming into the void, but at least if the CIs can be identified I can give a bit of push to say "Here you go, they're easy to find".

We have over 5000 Servers in our organisation, with a standard hostname naming convention and it is largely these that are selected.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

[Sohail Khilji]

Hi @Tom104 ,

This is a poor practice not having CIs updated in your INC,PRB,CNG modules, As a result your consequence are before you now...

Generally most of the orginizations have huge CMDB based on the size of the infra, but still they manage to fill or update the CI field someway or the other . Below are few idea which may help you update CI fields as an habit and good practice.

1. You can configure your CI reference field to show CIs which matters for your business hence reducting the total count.

2. You can Configure the CI reference field to show the most commonly selected CI to appear on the top. This will easily let you select the CI rather searching for it.

3. You can use text based search in CI field to find or filter the appropriate CI. Ex: *mailserver =MYsql etc...

4. You can think of having certain rules which automatically updates the CI field based on other field on the form.

5. Based on Category, Sub Category , Assignement group , Services, Service offering fields you can update the CIs.

6. You can Define a process to Assigned to or Assignement group team to update CI mandatorly as part of process.

I hope this help !!!