Administer > Scheduled maintenance > Automated task generation

Automated task generation

There are two ways that Scheduled Maintenance automatically generates tasks.

  • Create the scheduled maintenance task from an existing incident record, change request, or Request Management quote.
  • Create the scheduled maintenance task from a default incident, change, or request template identified in Administrative Options for a Configuration Item (CI) in Configuration Management.

Generating tasks from an existing record

Generating scheduled maintenance tasks can be tedious, especially if you must generate a large number of tasks to do approximately the same thing. For example, you might want to generate 10 scheduled maintenance tasks to back up 10 servers. When tasks are similar, you can use a standard template. For example, you can create a default Change Management template for server backups.

Scheduled Maintenance enables you to access Incident Management, Change Management, or Request Management, find a record, and generate a scheduled maintenance task. Therefore, instead of creating 10 scheduled maintenance tasks manually that are variations on the default template, you can access the template from Change Management and select Generate Maintenance 10 times.

You must create a separate recurrence schedule for each task, but Scheduled Maintenance automatically copies many of the details from the change request. The following table lists the fields that migrate to the maintenance task.

Incidents Changes Requests
category* description description
brief.description category category
assignment logical.name** requestor.name
logical.name** coordinator assigned.to
ticket.owner work.manager coordinator
priority.code assigned.to priority
problem.status priority action

*   Override if the device has a default Incident Management category.
** Override with the device name of the selected item in the Configuration Management application when you choose this option.