CA Service Management

Currently our Service Desk Manager data (categories, groups, etc.) does not match in TEST vs PROD.

Recently in TEST, many changes were made and I need to find out the steps on how to get those changes into our production environment without having to do it manually (as it took a few weeks to do in test):

1. Area
   
   • some made inactive
   • symbol field changed
   • new area created
2. Area Property List (Area > Properties tab)
   • some made inactive
   • sequence # and/or label changed
   • new property created
3. Property Validation Rule
   • description field added or changed
   • property value added or changed
   • new rule created
4. Groups
   • some made inactive
   • group name field changed
   • new group created

Is there a fairly easy way to do this ... maybe export/import table or excel file?

thank you

Katherine

Hi Katherine,

While we do have a "promotion utility" built into the product, it has been known to have some issues.  What we recommend from a support standpoint is to replicate the entire production database to the test environment, and then simply blank out the email addresses on all user records so that false notifications do not go out.  We have some documented procedures on copying the database from one system to another which you can find here: Move the CA MDB Database on Microsoft SQL Server - CA Service Management - 14.1 - CA Technologies Documentation 

I would recommend reading over that, and then letting us know if you have questions or concerns there.

Thanks,

Jon I.

Jon,

Thanks for the information and link (which I will read over and look into getting done) but for this scenario the problem I have is that all my changes are done in TEST and I want to get them into production.

We also have a few other things setup in TEST (like service catalog) but not production and we are not ready to promote all that ... of course so much of this was done before I came on-board as the Service Desk Admin and enforcing changes to be made in TEST first and NOT production as well as working on getting the two environments identical.

Any other help or suggestions would be appreciated.

thanks

Katherine

Hi Katherine,

The is no "fairly easy way to do this". Here is an example why:

You create a group in your Test environment and then you create a group with the same name in your Production environment. Those group contact records will not have the same uuid (primary key) by which all references to the group contact record are made.

My recommendation to clients has usually been that you should be refreshing your Test environment from Production periodically to keep the two environments close to being the same.

Cheers,

Lindsay