Service Topology

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Adding the Service Topology tab to Service view provides a graphical representation of the service and its assembled components. The visual diagram helps IT/OT service administrators understand the makeup of the service as well as the relationships between various service components; including Assets, Configuration Items (CIs), and other connected Services. The Service view application has three tabs; Service insights, Service details and Service topology to assist service administrators, SRE’s, agents and others in the IT team to manage the services. In addition to the visual diagram of the topology view, IBM Maximo IT also now shows when there are incidents associated to the service components through a red marker on the component itself. This easy to see and click on marker allows for faster view of the incidents, and how to remedy a possible failing service.

By leveraging the Service topology feature, users can gain better visibility into service construct, improve incident response times, and ensure efficient service management within the organization.

The topology view provides agents and site reliability engineers to visually view what a service is constructed of, inter dependencies in complex services where multiple, assets, configuration items and services interconnects to form and deliver a service or many to the business. It enables many in IT roles to trace connections, identify affected components, and efficiently manage alerts and incidents. For assets, services and configuration items which construct a service, alerts and incidents can be flagged via the red exclamation mark and/or red boundary on the asset node.

Key Features

  1. Graphical representation of service components
    • Displays service components (assets, configuration Items, services) as nodes, visually linked to the primary service.
    • Helps in identifying dependencies between the services, assets, and configuration items, that make up a service.
    • Provides visual clarity in environments with numerous interconnected services.
    • The color and shape of nodes representing services, Assets, and CIs are as follows:
      • Yellow circle with Black boundary – Service
      • Cyan circle with Black boundary – Configuration item
      • Green Rhombus with Black boundary – Asset
      • Any of above with Red boundary – Incident/Alerts is associated with them.
  2. Flagged nodes for active incidents and alerts on the component
    • Nodes representing Services, Assets or Configuration Items (CIs) are flagged with an exclamation icon and a red boundary if an Incident is associated with an asset, service or a configuration item. Alerts and incidents for assets are also representated by the same.
    • This feature enables quick identification of affected components, aiding in faster resolution of incidents impacting the service to the users.
  3. Quick View of Active Records
    • Clicking a flagged node opens a dialogue box displaying details of associated Incidents and Alerts.
    • Information is presented in a tabular format, allowing administrators to review active issues without navigating away from the topology view.
  4. Expand and collapse nodes
    • Each service node is comprised of the assembled component nodes.
    • Nodes can be collapsed for a simplified view or expanded to reveal detailed connections and service assembly.
    • Icons for plus (+) and minus (-) on the active nodes allow users to navigate through the full visibility of the service construct.
  5. Zoom Controls for Enhanced Navigation
    • The Zoom-in and Zoom-out feature allows the user to ensure detailed view of the service when it is extremely complex or if small snippets need to be captured in a screen capture.
    • Users can zoom in for a detailed view of a specific service node and its dependencies.
    • Zoom out provides a broader perspective of the entire service topology, helping in understanding complex interconnections.
  6. Interconnection of Nodes (CIs and Assets)
    • The topology view also shows the relationship between various CIs and Assets.
    • Interconnection of CI-CI, Service-CI, Service-Asset, CI-Asset, service-service is also represented in the extended topology view.
    • It makes it simple for service administrators to understand the relationship between Services and their dependent CIs and Assets in a complex scenario.
  7. Navigation from Topology to Source application
    • Clicking on a node, Asset, Configuration Items, or Service in topology view takes the user to the application corresponding to the item selected.
    • This allows users to access the full information and perform necessary actions within the application, of either asset, configuration item or service.