Configuration Items (CI)

Configuration Items (CI) are hardware, firmware, and software components configured to work together to provide a service. CI also include licensing certificates for software, registered in the R-Service (RR Tech Service Management) system. CI can be considered assets if they represent financial value for the organization that owns them.

By registering CI within your organization, you can link them to assignments (i.e., requests, problems, and tasks). This simplifies the work of service support specialists: they can more easily search for specific hardware or errors within a particular software version, monitor problems related to CI, etc. Over time, linking CI with assignment records creates a history for each CI.

It is recommended to store as little technical information about CI within the R-Service (RR Tech Service Management) system. This information should be collected and automatically maintained by system management tools. However, the information about CI stored in the R-Service (RR Tech Service Management) system may not be detected by these management tools. Examples of information supported within the R-Service (RR Tech Service Management) system for a specific CI include:

• Physical location of the CI (including this being important for finding the licensing certificate for software or the main version of the software);
• Team responsible for the CI;
• Service instances that are part of the CI;
• Users of the CI;
• CI suppliers;
• Warranty expiration date;
• Financial owner of the CI.

Using the System ID field, you can link a CI record in the R-Service (RR Tech Service Management) system with information that is automatically maintained by the management tools.

New hardware CI can be created based on a product that represents a CI model. A new CI can be registered for a software version or a licensing certificate from the product representing the software application.

Only person with the configuration manager role in account can manage these CI.

Using the “Duplicate Configuration item (CI)” option in the configuration manager menu, you can copy information from an existing CI and paste it into a new CI.

When using the duplication option, attachments and fields such as “System ID,” “Serial Number,” “Asset ID,” start date, and warranty expiration are not copied. CI relationships are also not copied, except for software relationships, where only the software CI are duplicated.

When registering a new CI, buttons “Save and Add Another” and “Save” are located at the bottom of the form. Pressing the first button allows you to save the CI and proceed to fill out a new CI form, where the same information that was added to the just-saved CI is displayed. This is similar to the “Duplicate Configuration item (CI)” option, but with the difference that when using the “Save and Add Another” button, fields such as “Purchase Order Number,” "Purchase Cost," start and end dates of the warranty are also copied.

The fields for configuration Items (CI) page provides recommendations for using each field in the configuration item form.