Use of Dynamic CI Groups for grouping Service Offerings?

[Andy H]

Hi, we have been asked to create multiple new custom attributes for Service Offerings to capture specific priority indicators currently managed on Excel. These will be used to describe what is in scope for certain enhanced processes e.g. Service Offering A is subject to control Y.

It has been proposed that we create Dynamic CI Groups rather than creating custom attributes. This would mean that we would create Dynamic CI Groups using an imported spreadsheet as the data source and then periodically, run a refresh using the same method.

Has anybody had any experience of doing something similar or can anybody suggest a different way of doing this?

[CMDB Whisperer · Accepted solution]

If you are looking to define a common scope that is shared among different Service Offerings, use the Service Scope table.  That is what it is for.  Define and describe the scopes you are looking to manage, and then associate them to the appropriate Service Offerings.  You can display them in a related list on the Service Offering form.  You could even associate them with a CMDB Query and base a Dynamic CI Group on that query if you wanted to, but unless you are specifically looking to manage that scope itself as a Service, I think it might be overkill.  If it's just visibility and query/reporting ability you need, Service Scope should give you that all by itself.

[Andy H]

Thank you this looks good. Would I need to create a Many 2 Many Custom table (reference table) or does one already exist?

[CMDB Whisperer]

There are already two lists out of box.  One is called In Scope and the other is called Out of Scope.  You can see them under Configure --> Related Lists.

[Andy H]

Thank you, I saw these and can see that you can create a Scoping Record, I just wondered if you would need any tables adding to store the relationships. Thanks again this is perfect for our use stories if we can get it to work 🙂