Review your automated linking results

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You can check your automated linking results for a single asset or CI in the Assets or Configuration Items application. And you can check your automated linking results for a group of assets or CIs by running reports.

When automated linking is enabled, key information about the linking process is saved in the database. This information is helpful when trying to understand when and how assets and CIs were linked; for example, when and how they were linked after importing them into Maximo IT.

Because the linking is automated, it is not always obvious what processing is happening in the background: You just promoted a thousand CIs and imported two thousand assets. Did any of them link? Which link rules actually did the linking? For asset and CI management purposes, understanding your asset-CI reconciliation coverage, and link rule validation, it is useful to be able to answer questions like these.

Information about the automated linking

The following information related to automated linking of a CI to an asset is provided in the Configuration Items application:

Configuration Item Name: User-friendly name of the CI that the asset was linked to, followed by a description field.
Configuration Item Number: Authorized CI Identifier.
Associated Asset: Identifier of the asset that was linked to the CI, followed by a description field.
Link Date: Date and time the asset and CI were last linked.
Linked By: User responsible for the last link of the asset and CI.
Link Method: Method used to link the asset and CI. It indicates what triggered the linking: the asset-CI reconciliation task (Reconciliation), a user action in the UI (User Interface), or something else, such as a data import from the Integration module, called the integration framework, or from Integration Composer (Other).
Link Rule: Link rule that was used by the asset-CI reconciliation task for linking the asset and CI. The link rule can match an asset and CI by using discovered data (a Data Integration Services Integration identifier, where the link rule identified is CCIAssetCIDISGuid), can match an attribute (a serial number, where the link rule identified is CCIAssetCISerialNum), can be a user-defined link rule, or can perform the linking after a generic asset or CI was created (where the link rule identified is CCIAssetCICreateGeneric).

The following information related to automated linking of an asset to a CI is provided in the Assets application:

Asset: Asset number of the asset that the CI was linked to, followed by a description field.
Configuration Item Name: User-friendly name of the CI that was linked to the asset.
Configuration Item: Configuration Item number of the CI that was linked to the asset.

Link Date Linked By Link Method Link Rule: Same as for Configuration Items application

For individual assets and CIs, this kind of database information is available to you by selecting an action in the Assets and Configuration Items applications.

You can also use Advanced Search in these applications to search for one or more assets and CIs using the automated linking criteria listed.

Additionally, you can look at the same kinds of database information for particular groups of assets or CIs that you define in several customizable reports that you can run. The groups are defined by specifying a linked on or after date for the report or by marking a check box to see only the links made during the last run of the asset-CI reconciliation task.

Asset-CI automation reports

Report	Description
Assets Linked to CIs CIs Linked to Assets	These reports show any linkage of assets to CIs, whether they were linked by the automated asset-CI reconciliation task, which is a cron task, and if so, by what link rules; by a manual user action in the user interface, such as linking from the Assets or Configuration Items applications; or by some other method, such as linking that results from importing CIs with integration framework (Integration module). Use these reports to view all your linked assets and CIs, and see how, why, when, and by whom the assets and CIs were linked.
Assets Linked to Generic CIs CIs Linked to Generic Assets	These reports show assets and CIs that were linked by the reconciliation task to their CI or asset counterparts that were created automatically (called generic assets and CIs). The reports are sorted by classification because the automatic creation of a generic CI or asset is set by individual classifications of assets and CIs in the Classifications application. The reports indicate who was responsible for automating the linking and the date the linking occurred. Use these reports to check if any assets or CIs have been automatically created with a generic classification. The presence of generics might indicate that at some point you need to take a manual action to change those assets and CIs to a more appropriate classification; for example, after you import their equivalent discovered assets and CIs and more attribute data is available.
Assets with Missing Generic CIs CIs with Missing Generic Assets	These reports show assets and CIs that should have been linked to their counterpart CIs and assets, in accordance with the current Autocreate settings in the Classifications application, but were not linked. Use these reports if: You have indicated that you want certain classifications of assets or CIs to have generics automatically created, when necessary, to ensure that linking occurs in the absence of an existing match And you want to quickly determine if any such asset or CI was not linked as expected Assets and CIs could appear in these reports, if, for example, the asset-CI reconciliation task has not run since the Autocreate option was set in the Classifications application. In this case, the expected generics did not get created (yet) for the missing matches, so there was nothing to link to and the links did not get made.