About Groups, Queues, and Lists

Applies To: System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1

The Library pane contains items such as groups, queues, and lists. You can use groups to manage configuration items, and you can use queues to manage work items. You can use lists to customize forms.

Using Groups to Manage Configuration Items

In System Center Service Manager 2010, groups contain objects. Typically, these objects are configuration items. Groups can include collections of objects of the same class or of different classes. For example, you decide to create the Exchange Servers group. You have several methods to do this. You can create a static group, a dynamic group, or a combination of static and dynamic. A static group is defined by specific objects such as “Exchange1” and “Exchange2”. A dynamic group is defined by inclusion rules. Inclusion rules are based on comparing a formula to the actual property value of a configuration item. The following table shows inclusion rule samples.

For example, you want to restrict access to Exchange servers to only specific users. To do this, you create a new group that is named Exchange Servers and add all Exchange servers in this environment. Later, you can configure user roles to limit access to the Exchange Servers group to only the specific users to whom you want to grant access. You can use the Exchange Servers group as criteria when configuring notification subscriptions. You can also use the Exchange Servers group as criteria for a report parameter.

Using Queues to Manage Work Items

In Service Manager, queues are used to group similar work items that meet specified criteria such as all incidents that are classified by analysts as E-mail incidents. All work items in a queue must be of the same type such as incidents, change requests, activities, or trouble ticket. Queues use membership rules to determine which work items should be included in the queue. Queues membership rules are dynamic and are periodically recalculated to ensure that the queue membership list is current.

You can create a queue to group work items with a specific type or with a specific priority. You can then configure user roles to limit access to that queue to only specific users.

For incident escalation, you can use queues in various ways to speed the resolution of higher priority or common incidents. For example, you can configure Incident Management to automatically escalate specific incidents to a high priority queue

For example, you can use queues as follows:

• In notifications, a queue can be used as criteria in a subscription to specify which work items to notify about.

• In security, a queue can be used in user role configuration to limit the scope of control that groups of users have over work items.

Using Lists to Customize Forms

Lists in System Center Service Manager 2010 let you classify different objects such as incidents, change requests, activities, or configuration items. A list represents a property of an object, and it includes one or more list items. Each list item represents a possible value for the property.

Lists are used in forms and dialog boxes throughout the Service Manager console. Lists and list items let users select a value from a predefined list of values. When you use lists, you can customize the console to reflect the business practices of your organization. Additionally, Service Manager contains several predefined lists, such as the Incident Classification list.

For example, when creating an incident, you notice that Printer Problems is an option under Classification Category. At your company, some standard laser printers in your accounting department might be used as specialized check-writing printers. To better route incidents, you want printer-related incidents to be categorized as being either for standard laser printers or for check-writing printers. Because lists are customizable, you can add a list item such as Laser Printers and Check-Writing Printers to the Classification Category list when you create an incident. Optionally, you can build lists as a hierarchy, for example laser printers and check-writing printers could be listed under printers.

To do this, you can add Laser Printer and Check-Writing Printer list items to the Incident Classification list.

About List Items

In Service Manager, several default list items exist. It is important that you not delete the default list items. Each default list item is defined by a globally unique identifier (GUID). Some of the default management packs reference these list items by their GUID. If you delete a list item, some management packs or workflows might not work.

If the name of a default list item causes an issue in your environment, you can change the display name of the existing item but leave the GUID intact. For example, you can change the name of the Printing Problems default list item to Laser Printing Problems if that is better in your environment.

See Also

Tasks

How to Create a Group in Service Manager
How to Create a Queue
How to Edit a Queue
How to Add a List Item

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