Definitions for Affected and Impacted

[hillaryr]

Hello,

This question is really broader than Incident but I had to choose one, so that's my choice of the day.

I am wondering if someone can please provide official definitions for the Affected CI's and the Impacted Services. I'd like to start to use the two related lists on incidents, changes, problem and eventually relate them to outages, but I can't seem to get a clear picture of which is which and why. I'm thinking that there should only be one and only one service that is Affected but could be many that are Impacted.

Here are my (made up) definitions:

Affected: The service or CI that the change/incident/project/problem is happening within. Easy example: We pull a network router out of the wall. The Affected CI is the router, the Client Service is Network Services.

Impacted: Services, CI's that the change will impact. Easy example continued: The router that got pulled enables OnBase, and the mainframe and SAP and others to be accessed. They are all Impacted Services.

 Thank you in advance for any guidance,
Hillary.

[Mwatkins]

Also check out Associate CIs to a change request

There is some useful information in this document. However, the document seems to imply that the Business Services listed in Impacted Services is somehow controlled by the CI's in Affected CI's. I have reviewed the code and have found no relationship between the "Impacted Services" and "Affected CIs" lists. The "Refresh Impacted Services" UI Action auto-populates the "Impacted Services" list based on the data in the cmdb_rel_ci table and does not take into account data in the task_ci table (the one that is populated by the "Affected CIs" list). I am pretty certain that the task_ci table does not in any way affect the content of the cmdb_rel_ci table so I believe the document is a little misleading in that sense.

[Inas Taha]

Hi

Came across your answer, and I might be confused as I am not a SN expert like you all.  However, the reply you provided seems to be opposite what is in the link Michael provided.

from the link ( Managing CI Changes - ServiceNow Wiki)... "The Impacted Services/CIs related list represents a many-to-many relationship between the Task [task] and CMDB [cmdb_ci] tables. The related list displays CIs, such as business services or other CI classes, that are impacted. You can add this related list to any task form such as an incident or problem form. You can also enter the details of the impacted services manually, as required"

from your reply ... Affected CIs (can contain CI's from any class) a many-to-many relationship between the Task [task] and Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] tables. The many-to-many relationships are stored in the task_ci table. The Affected CIs list can be manually edited through the "Edit" button or it can be edited through "Add affected CI" in the BSM Map. 

Could you please elaborate?

Thank you

[Fromsee Genene]

@Mwatkins   
Could you tell me the table maps the CMDB impacted services and Affected CI in one place?