2. Configuration Control

Service Manager configuration management has a set of processes and approvals that are required to change a configuration item's attributes. ITIL best practices recommend that changes to CIs require an RFC. The default Service Manager configuration enforces the need of an RFC for certain changes to the CI. The RFC captures the details of the change, and is managed by the Changes workflow, which enforces the collection of appropriate approvals and tracks the implementation steps.

The management of CIs can span across other process teams in addition to the Configuration Management team. For example, before a request for change is implemented, the attributes of the associated CI may need to be validated against the RFC by the Change Management team. After the change is implemented, the validation can be repeated by the Configuration Management team to ensure consistency.

After the RFC has been approved and the changes have been made, SBM automatically baselines the existing CI and records the changed information. See Understanding Baselines for more information on how baselines work in Service Manager.

Note: Updating from an RFC is different from using the Update transition on the item directly. The Update transition prevents modification of some fields such as version number. These fields can only be modified using an RFC.

The ability to create, manage, and update CIs and their attributes depends on how administrators assign roles within Configuration Management. Access privileges may grant read-only access for some roles, but update privileges for other roles. Data attributes can also be classified, and access to each data classification can be granted through the role. The right to transition changes from one state to another can also be controlled by the role privileges. Details of the roles in Configuration Management are described in Configuration Management System Roles.

Administrators can manage the workflow of CIs by determining owners for each state. They can also set rules that determine who the owner will be based on the CI attributes; this automates the workflow by automatically assigning items to the correct owner.

The fields that contain the CI attributes can be configured to be required or optional. You can fine-tune the requirements by marking the field as mandatory throughout the life cycle of a configuration item (CI) or only for certain transitions from one state to another. Field settings are customized using SBM Composer.