Actual CI promotion overview

You create a corresponding authorized configuration item for an actual configuration item. The authorized configuration items that you create can be used in changes and other processes.

You can promote one or more top-level actual CIs at a time. (The actual CIs are not required to be top-level CIs, but your promotion scope must map them to top-level authorized CIs). If you promote several actual CIs at the same time, they must be in the same actual CI classification, and you must use the same promotion scope to promote all of them.

If any of the actual CIs that you choose to promote were already promoted, the corresponding authorized CIs are updated if you select the Update Existing CIs check box.

You might want to repromote some actual CIs because attribute values changed, because new related CIs were discovered, or because you modified your authorized CI classes and promotion scopes. This process is called update promotion. When you use it, you are deciding to trust the actual CI record and copy its data to the authorized CI. If any of the existing authorized configuration items is in a protected state in its lifecycle, you must provide a valid change record in order to change the value of an attribute or the status of the CI. The change must be in Approved or In Progress state, and it must identify the CI as a target. You can enter the change number or select it from a list. If an authorized CI is in a protected state and you do not enter a valid change that targets that CI, the promotion will fail for that CI but will succeed for other CIs.

The first time that you promote an actual CI, all the customer associations are copied to the authorized CI. If you repromote an actual CI, the customer associations are not copied. If you modified the customer associations on the actual CI, you must edit the authorized CI to make the change.

To update existing authorized CIs from the corresponding actual CIs with slightly more granular control, use the synchronize function in the Configuration Items application.

Promotion and generic CIs

A generic CI is an authorized CI automatically created by the asset-CI reconciliation task.

When the update promotion process tries to match an actual CI to an authorized CI and link them, the CI that it finds might be a generic one. If so, the promotion process reclassifies the generic CI to the classification that was specified by the user and then performs the update promotion.