Any CSDM experts? Issue in determining the 'Assignment Group' on Incident form.

[Suggy]

We have 'Support group' populated on the 'Service Offerings'.

See the definition of it in docs:

Support group

Group that provides expert support to the service offering. This group is usually a level 2 support team.

We have also populated the Support group on every Infrastructure CIs.

Issue

We have a service offering say 'ABC' where the support group is 'GROUP ONE'. they are the group of experts to support the service offering.

Above service offering is linked to 'Application service/service instance', which is tied to many Infra CIs like Database, servers etc.

Now the monitoring tool has created an Incident with CI populated as 'Windows server prod', and the support group has value as 'GROUP TWO'

Question is - Which group should support in this case? GROUP ONE or GROUP TWO?

PS - I am asking this question wrt ServiceNow's recommendation on auto assigning the incidents using CMDB and CSDM framework. So we have filled all the types of groups in all the CI types.

There is also an OOB BR "Populate Assignment Group based on CI/SO" which takes the precedence of using the CI's support group in case of support group present for both CI and SO.

On what context ServiceNow has designed this? How can this framework assign the incident blindly (based on BR?)

To me, auto assigning of incident based on CSDM framework will never work for anyone. Its just adding more and more confusions...... unless anyone has something to say or defend.

I would be happy to learn if I am missing anything.

[Barry Kant]

Hi Suggy, 

one can setup this way:

 

The Groups on the CI level within the Dynamic CI Group gets synced by the Groups from the related Technical Service Offering. (So administration is done on the Technical Offering only). 

BR,
Barry

[Suggy]

Hi @Barry Kant 

If TSO is selected on the Incident form, then the support group for TSO and CI will be the same. Then we wont have any issue as its the same Support group.

Consider a scenario where a monitoring tool has created the incident. CI is populated by the monitoring tool.

Agent working on the incident fills the BSO and BS.

Support group for SO is 'GROUP ONE'

Support group for CI is 'GROUP TWO'

Now the OOB BR "Populate Assignment Group based on CI/SO" will forcefully assign to 'GROUP TWO'.

Where as sometimes the agent might want to assign this incident to GROUP ONE as they are the specialists in handling all the issues related to 'Inventory management'.

So automating of Incident assignment will not work for every situation I what we are feeling. If you have any suggestions on this please share.

Also can you share the deck which you are referring above?

Thanks!

[Barry Kant]

Hi Suggy, 

This is my view:
1 - If an incident is created from a customer side (consumer initiated incident) then we register the Business Service Offering and the parent Business Service. As an action we need to triage the CI level for the cause. 
2 - If an incident is created from monitoring or a provider or 2nd line (technical initiated incident) then we register the Configuration Item, the related Technical Service Offering and its parent Technical Service. As an action we need to identify the business impact.

This way auto-assignment will work in most cases as technical initiated incidents in general will be resolved by the responsible group of the related CI. If your operational model is of a DevOps concept (where the Ops team is supporting the stack as a whole) then it is slightly different, and the prime TSO might be related to the whole stack (via a dynamic CI group). If needed it needs to be elevated (new task/child incident) for another TSO. 

I am not referring to a document, it is a picture I made to explain it is a visual way.

BR,
Barry

[Suggy]

Hi @Barry Kant  Thanks again for replying. But my question is still not answered. 

In the example scrreenshot that I shared, its an incident created by Business user. 

So BS and BSO is filled.

CI is also filled.

BSO has support group - 'GROUP ONE'

CI has support group - 'GROUP TWO'

GROUP ONE are specialists in resolving the issue related to that BSO. 

But the OOB BR "Populate Assignment Group based on CI/SO" will forcefully assign to 'GROUP TWO' because support group of CI takes precedence.

Even if I consider the image that you shared, HELP DESK is the support group for BSO.

In which scenario the ticket will be automatically assigned to 'HELP DESK'? (when CI is filled and CI has different support groups)

It never gets assigned to HELP DESK automatically right 🙂