Adding a relationship between CIs


In BMC Helix CMDB, most relationships between configuration items (CIs) are created in bulk by discovery applications, such as BMC Discovery. 

However, to suit your business requirement, you can use the CMDB Explorer to manually create relationships between CIs. For example, you might enhance your service model by relating business service CIs to physical CIs. You can also create relationships between CIs that were created manually through the CMDB Explorer.

Related topics

Creating-a-CI-for-an-existing-service-model

Editing-CIs-and-relationships-in-BMC-Helix-CMDB-Explorer

Retrieving-federated-data-stored-externally-by-creating-federated-classes


Best practices for CI relationships

We recommend that you add impact relationships between CIs. In BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT, a change coordinator can perform an impact analysis to determine the impact of a change, as described in  Determining the impact of changes in Smart IT.

When you create CI and relationship instances, follow the recommendations outlined in Representing-CIs-and-their-relationships-in-the-Common-Data-Model. If you do not follow these recommendations while creating CI and relationship instances, the out-of-the-box queries might ignore these instances while displaying the results list.


To add a relationship between CIs

Perform the following steps to add a relationship between CIs:

  1. Click the triangular icon just below the CI. 
    CI_edit_Icon.png

  2. Extend the arrow from the circled CI to the other CI on the Explorer canvas.
    CI_edit_Icon_1.png

  3. Connect the two CIs.
    The Select Relationship dialog box is displayed. Only the relationships that are available between the two CIs are displayed in the drop-down list. 
    Add relationship_box.png

  4. Select the relationship between the CIs and provide the other information for the relationship. 
    The Name and Short Description fields are populated with values based on the classes to which the CIs belong.

    Important

    When you want to add the same relationship type between multiple CIs manually, select the relationship type, enter the Name and Short Description, select the impact, and save the changes. In the subsequent relationships that you add, you do not need to select the relationship type again. You only need to enter the Name and Short Description, and select the impact.

    The previously selected relationship type remains unchanged until the relationship type is supported between the two CIs.

    To change the relationship type, select the required relationship type from the Select Relationship dialog box.

  5. Click Save.
    The following figure illustrates related CIs in the CMDB Explorer.

CI_In_Sandbox.png

After you add a relationship in the Sandbox dataset, you must promote those changes to the production (BMC.ASSET) dataset.

Where to go from here

Promotion-of-changes-from-a-Sandbox-dataset-to-production.


 

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