Managing Configuration Items › Configuration Audit and Control Facility (CACF) › Change Specifications › Defining Bulk Changes

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Defining Bulk Changes

Creating identical changes to a large number of CIs, for example, when changing the location for a collection of CIs, with the following steps:

  1. Create a Change Order.
  2. Define a single change specification which describes the change and leave the CI name blank.
  3. Attach all the CIs to the Change Order.

If you do not know the exact details of a change in advance of the implementation, for example, you acquire a new Server and you only know the CI Name, complete the following steps:

  1. Create a Change Order.
  2. Create a change specification that specifies Any Managed Attribute as the attribute name.
  3. Leave the planned value empty, since it is unknown.
  4. Move the ticket through the change management process.
  5. When the Change Order is in a verification active state, and discovery runs, the inbound CI data loads into the CI (assuming that the policy allows it).
  6. When all discoveries for the CI complete, the Change Manager must mark the change specification as verified manually.

Follow these steps when there are a large number of dissimilar changes to a large number of CIs. For example, when moving a collection of servers from one location to another, and also assigning each one a unique IP address.

  1. Create a Change Order
  2. Create a spreadsheet and list on each row the Change Order number, CI and, the new attribute values. Each row results in a distinct change specification.
  3. Load the spreadsheet with GRLoader to create the required change specifications.
  4. Promote the Change Order and its change specifications as usual.

Note: For more information about using GRLoader, see the CA CMDB Technical Reference Guide.