How to classify software with many versions to create a single CI to reference in incidents/problems

[rhysma]

My organization has asked that the CI dropdown in incidents and other tasks display a single entry for each desktop application we use, in addition to other CIs. I've got filtering the dictionary reference handled, but I am wondering how and what sort of CI should I be creating or setting up a process to create to serve as a parent or umbrella for the multiple versions that appear in the software table?

For example, what we have in the software table for Adobe Reader is:

Adobe Acrobat Reader 23.8.20421
Adobe Acrobat Reader 23.8.20470
Adobe Acrobat Reader 23.6.20380

Which we want to keep, but we want to have a single "Adobe Acrobat Reader" to select as the CI in incidents. 

The onboarding partner during our initial setup loaded a list of CIs into the Application table (which I've seen cautioned against repeatedly). Following the example above, there is an Adobe Acrobat Reader entry in the Application table that was manually put there by the onboarding partner and a dictionary override was set incidents and problems to only show Application classed CIs until we got our CMDB going.

 I'd like to correct this early before we start populating the CMDB in production. Please Advise.

[Community Alums]

rhysma

Hello,

I am in similar situation, just wondering if you have identified any solution for this scenario.

In my situation, Service Desk is mapping Incidents to a generic CI name called 'Application' instead of appropriate CI as they do not find the exact match. The incidents are raised for 'TOAD, DbVisualizer, Chrome' etc. What is the best way to have these CIs as opposed to using generic CIs?

[Erick18]

Did you come up with a solution? We are running into this situation as well. 

[David104]

With SAM, you would have a Software Product Model which is the normalised name that you are looking for, but I don't believe that you can reference that from the CI field.

You could also consider each managed software title as a Business Service Offering - Maybe a Business Service called "Desktop Software" and Business Service Offerings for each piece of software that is available as a supported offering. Then you can capture the Business Service and Business Service Offering relating to the software, as well as the CI being the device that it is installed on.

The other upside of that is that if you make those titles available from a catalogue item, you can tie that item back to the service offering also.

Regards,

David

[rhysma]

When we find a solution, I will happily post it here for those who asked. As best as I can tell David104's answer is the likely solution, to classify the actual 'Applications' that would be selected as CIs for incidents and the like as Business Services. If it is I will come back and mark his reply as the solution. We are still working on Discovery and have placed service mapping as the phase to follow, so unless we find a 'discovered' CI that fits our needs this will be postponed until service mapping.