Automated linking

Authorized assets and CIs that share some key attributes can be associated using link rules and then automatically linked.

Automated linking of authorized assets and CIs allows you to unify these two representations and easily navigate from one to the other. You can link a simple physical asset, an intelligent physical asset like a smart meter, a pure IT asset like a computer or a server, or any other business resource that is useful to manage in a unified way.

To be able to successfully link an authorized asset and a CI, some common data must exist between them. Having common attribute values is necessary in order to determine that they are representing the same IT resource. This is the same principle used when comparing the discovered and authorized forms of an asset or CI through reconciliation.

The common data is specified by one or more link rules in a reconciliation task provided to do automated asset-CI linking. Automated linking is accomplished simply by running this cron task periodically to look for authorized assets and CIs that match each other using these link rules. When a match is found, the matching assets and CIs are linked.