Configuration item groups

A business enterprise may have a large number of Configuration Items (CIs) to acquire, install, repair, or manage in a variety of activities. Because many of these CIs are based on the same model or share other defining characteristics, creating CI groups is a simple way to classify CIs, to simplify tracking, and to manage changes.

Making global changes to CI groups is easier than updating CIs one at a time. Change Management can automatically open tasks for all CIs in a group. Service Level Management enables you to attach a CI group to a service level agreement (SLA) instead of attaching each CI individually to an SLA. Thereafter, Service Level Management can generate response and outage information at a CI group level.

Group types

Groups can be static, such as all monitors purchased on the same day, or dynamic, such as all monitors on the third floor. Configuration items can be grouped in many ways. For example, you might create the following groups:

Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`