We are struggling with this as well, going from a custom helpdesk app with
4 levels of categorization to the new ITSM 7 with 3 OpCat + 3 ProdCat.
Here is BMCs emplanation from the ITSM Config manual:
Operational categories list all the operational services that a typical
help desk provides, such as add user account, and change server password. It
can also contain items that represent symptoms of incidents or problems,
such as application failure and network failure.
Products can be any items used by an organization and are usually IT-
related. Products are typically used to classify a configuration item, an
incident, a problem, or a change request.
The Product Categorization structure is defined as Tier 1 > Tier 2 > Tier 3
> Product Name and Manufacturer > Model Version, which is used to
categorize different products or configuration items in BMC Atrium CMDB
--------
Interestingly, if you loaded the DSL data, you will see that BMC added
Product Categories, especially for software, just to have 3 tiers.
Does Software -> Applications -> Third Party -> Microsoft Excel make any
sense ? Tier 1 and 2 are redundant, however, all three are required.
I found that you could add '- None -' in Tier 3, which came in handy for
hardware, where you would want to have more details for items that can
break.
Ex: Hardware -> Laptop -> - None -
Hardware -> Laptop -> Battery
Now, when you create these, you also MUST select a 'CI Type' such
as 'Computer System' or a system component.
I am still trying to figure out how to relate this now to Product Name and
Manufacturer. Each computer system should have a Product Name and
Manufacturer but that is not necessairly true for system components.
BTW: Has anyone tried to import this kind of data ? Good luck. You
basically have to import into one form, then export again to get the
automatically created IDs, then import into another form to create the
relationships. I have seen the same thing with the site/location as well.
Unfortunately, there is no documentation on any of this and it is pretty
much trial and error, once you figure out which forms you need to import to.
[stepping down from soapbox and catching my breath]
You will also need to decide if you want these CTIs across all modules
(Incident, Problem, Change, Request, etc).
Next step is to understand the relationship between CTIs and the CMDB/DSL
better.
Rgds,
Chris
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