Best way to track incident down to the application/module level?

[JasonK1]

We are looking for the community for some advice. We have a need to track incidents down to the module level for some of our applications. For example, in our cloud HR/Finance solution:

Level 1: Name of Overall Cloud HR/Finance Application (corresponds to Sub Category on the Incident table)

Level 2: Cloud HR Application:

Level 3:

• • • Benefits
    • Time and Labor
    • ...

Level 2: Cloud Financial Application:

Level 3:

• • • Accounts Payable
    • Accounts Receivable
    • General Ledger
    • …

Category/Subcategory on the incident form won’t work here as it’s already taken up with existing values at a much lower level of detail.

2 options that we can think of are either (1): adding custom field(s) to the incident record or (2): using the CMDB structure to capture this. Option (2) seems preferable for several reasons, but we are not sure on how to approach this as we have not yet implemented our CMDB.

Has anyone done anything like this? Is there better alternate ways of doing this? If using CMDB, how would one capture a module within an Application?

Thanks

[Tom Sienkiewicz · Accepted solution]

Hi, just my persoanl two cents: I think what you describe is more a "business application" or "business service" view - not an application in the strict CI sense, such as Tomcat or Apache.

You could set up business services/application services in CMDB, they can have parents and relationships to other services/applications/other CIs as well. Check out the "Configuration > Application services" module. There can be app services classified as business service, as app service (discovered or manually added) etc.

Once you are ready to add Discovery and Service Mapping,, you will be able to "automatically" discover the technology stack behind each lowest-level application, e.g. accounts payable portal (e.g. running on Tomcat/Apache, hosted on Win Server with connection to Oracle DB etc.). This is a pretty advanced concept though, so for now you might want to just manage your services manually.

Custom fields would be a quick way to do that but I think if you can spend more time and thought to get this in your CMDB it will be better.

Also make sure you read up on CSDM 4.0 where the various concepts are nicely explained.

[Mark Manders]

Use the CMDB. By adding everything there, the relationships are better and if anything is wrong on level 3, you can see what else can be affected.

It will take more effort than a custom field, but you will have profit from it. And since you still need to setup the CMDB: make sure you read up, like Tomasz said and plan these levels to be included in it.

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Mark