Using FootPrints with ITIL

FootPrints is certified for Incident, Problem, Configuration, and Change Management.  The Change Management process is outlined in the “Using FootPrints for Change Management” document.

An ‘Incident’ is defined as: any event that is not part of the standard operation of a service and causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service.  A ‘Problem’ is a known underlying cause of one or more Incidents, and a ‘Known Error’ is a Problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which a Work-around has been identified.  Configuration Items (CIs) may be hardware, software, or documentation.

Incidents and Problems can be tracked in the same Workspace as they are similar, usually related to one another, and have the same fields for the most part.  All initial calls/requests that come into the helpdesk will start out as Incidents.  At some time they may be elevated to a problem or linked to a problem using a Global Issue/GlobalLink relationship.  The workspace should contain a drop-down field that distinguishes the Incidents, Problems, and Known Errors.

Along with the other desired statuses, there should be a status of “Require Change” for Incidents/Problems that spawn a Request For Change (RFC) in the Change Manager workspace.  This can be a manual process, or an instant escalation rule can be created to automatically perform a cross-workspace copy. In addition to these specific configuration options, the Workspace should behave like a normal Service Desk workspace.

Configuration management can be handled using the BMC FootPrints Asset Core add–on module, a separate asset management database, or in another FootPrints workspace.  Configuration Items, or CIs, should all be stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and should be accessible from both the Change and Incident/Problem Management Workspaces.  BMC FootPrints Asset Core and MS/SMS already provide this integration.  If using another database or FootPrints Workspace, use the Dynamic Field Mapper (an add-on module to FootPrints) to pull in the CI information.