Managing Configuration Items › CI Reconciliation › How to Identify and Resolve Ambiguous CIs › How to Identify Ambiguous CIs and Determine if their Identifying Attributes are Valid

More Information:

How To Calculate the Ambiguity Index

View Ambiguous CIs from the Administration Tab

View Ambiguous CIs from the Scoreboard

How to Identify Ambiguous CIs and Determine if their Identifying Attributes are Valid

Investigate any CI with a nonzero ambiguity index to determine if it is unique or was inadvertently created because of incorrect reconciliation. CIs are not ambiguous by themselves, they are ambiguous with other CIs. A system can have many sets of ambiguous CIs, each set containing CIs with common values for the identifying attributes.

When you research the ambiguity of a CI, you also research the ambiguity of other CIs in the same set. When you resolve the ambiguity of a single CI, you reduce or eliminate the ambiguity of other CIs in that set.

CA SDM has reconciliation management tools which enable you to find ambiguous CIs and the set of CIs which the ambiguous CIs is a member. You can research the underlying cause of the ambiguity and resolve it.

When managing ambiguity, do the following:

1. Calculate the ambiguity index for all CIs.
2. Use the scoreboard to view the list of ambiguous CIs. The scoreboard lists all CIs which are ambiguous, in descending order of ambiguity.
3. Starting with the CI that has the highest level of ambiguity in the scoreboard,
   1. Inspect all CIs in its ambiguity set. The reconciliation tab on CI detail form of a single CI lists all other CIs in the ambiguity set.
   2. Determine if all CIs in the set are legitimate or if there was an error made in reconciliation. Review the identifying attributes and determine if the CIs in the set are created correctly or are created due to a false negative reconciliation match.
4. Determine which CIs in the set, if any, are false negatives.

   When you have determined that a false negative reconciliation match has occurred, and addition CIs have been created, determine which CI is the valid one and which CIs were incorrectly created. Consider factors such as identifying attributes and other attributes such as last update date, related problems, issues, and other aspects of the CI.