Add Fields to CIs and Changes

Organizations can save themselves a lot of frustration, time and money when they do not try to register the technical attributes of their configuration items in their CMDB (see Afraid of the CMDB?). It is better to leave this data in the system management tools that automatically discover it. A link from the CI records to the corresponding records in the system management tools is enough to give specialists direct access to the most up-to-date technical information about the CIs.

The information that cannot be discovered automatically, but which is necessary for the support of the organization’s ITSM processes, should be registered in the CMDB. This includes information like the support team that is responsible for a CI, the supplier from which the CI was acquired, its warranty expiration date, etc. 4me already provides the necessary fields for this out of the (completely imaginary) box.

But there may still be some special fields that organizations want to add for certain types of CIs. We have just expanded the UI Extension functionality to make this possible. While we were at it, we also made it possible to add fields to specific types of changes.

To make additional fields available for CIs, start by defining these fields in a UI extension. Select the “Product” option to indicate that the UI extension is intended to be applied to products.

Next, select the UI extension that you just created in the products that represent the types of CI for which the fields are intended. When a new or existing CI that is linked to one of these products is opened, the fields will be available.

To add fields to changes, select the “Change Template” option in the UI extension. After that you can link the UI extension to the change templates that represent the types of changes for which the fields should be available.