Customers and configuration itemsCustomers and configuration itemsWhen you create customer records, you create detailed agreement and pricing information for the customer and the services that you expect to provide. By associating customers with configuration items (CIs) you can provide the appropriate response to customers and their CIs and ensure timely and accurate billing for services that you provide.
When you associate customers with CIs, you can keep the CI records restricted to the users who have permission to access the data of a customer. You associate customers with users in the Security Groups (SP) application.
You create customer records in the Customers (SP) application. You associate customers with CIs in the Configuration Items (SP) application.
You can associate more than one customer with a CI, but one customer must be the primary customer.
When a ticket or work order for a CI is created, information about the primary customer is copied to the ticket or work order. The combination of location, asset and customer on the ticket or work order is used to determine the best matches when a service desk agent or workflow process searches for service level agreements, price schedules and response plans.
The primary customer of a CI determines the classifications, and attributes of classifications, that a CI can use. All CIs can use global classifications and global attributes that apply to the CI. When you want to use customer-specific classifications or customer-specific attributes, the primary customer of the CI (or parent of the primary customer) must match the customer on the classification or attribute.
By default, the first customer that you associate with a CI is the primary customer. If you select multiple customers to associate with a CI, and there is no primary customer for the CI, the first customer alphabetically in the selection becomes the primary customer. You can change the primary customer at any time.
A network administrator discovers that a particular IP address on the network is trying to make frequent calls to the Internet. The calls are degrading performance for all PCs in a particular part of the LAN. The administrator suspects that a server has been infected by a virus, and calls Robert, the service desk agent.
Robert creates an incident for the server configuration item. The server will be removed from the network and will have a full virus scan performed. The primary customer for the configuration item is the Engineering Department and the owner of the server is contacted to report the problem and the action being taken.