Importing CIs Overview

There are several ways to bring configuration items (CIs) into your CMDB, and a couple of settings pages that shape how those imports behave. This page explains what CIs are, then helps you pick the right import method and understand the order they depend on.

What is a CI, and why manage it in SysAid?

A configuration item (CI) is anything in your organization that's worth tracking on its own and connecting to the rest of your service management data. For IT teams, that usually means workstations, servers, network devices, and software. But a CI doesn't have to be a piece of IT equipment: HR teams might track onboarding equipment or company vehicles as CIs, and Finance teams might track contracts, leased equipment, or software licenses tied to renewal dates.

Managing these items as CIs in the CMDB, instead of in a spreadsheet or a separate system, means you can see how they relate to each other (which laptop belongs to which employee, which contract covers which software), attach service records directly to the item they affect, and report across all of it from one place.

This page focuses specifically on getting CIs into SysAid. For a fuller walkthrough of the CMDB concept, including how to view relationships and attach service records to CIs, see the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Guide.

Before you start

SysAid includes preconfigured CI types and sub-types, such as: Asset, Software Product, Catalog, Company, End User, and Administrator.

For relationships, these types come preconfigured and cover most cases: Consists/Part of, Installed on/Contains software, Used by/Uses, Connected to/Connected to, Hosts/Hosted on, Covers/Is covered by, Provided to/Receives, Owns/Owned by, and Company/Company.

If you want to use CI types, subtypes, or relationship types beyond SysAid's preconfigured ones, define them first; otherwise, you may end up creating something that already exists: CI Types, CI Sub Types, CI Relation Types.

How it works

Import Settings and Importing System Items both create CIs for System Items (Assets, Software Products, Catalog Items, Companies, and Users), they just differ in when that happens.

Import Settings is a switch. Turn on the relevant checkboxes, and the moment a System Item is created (or deleted) elsewhere in SysAid, SysAid creates (or removes) the matching CI automatically. All five types have their own add/remove checkbox pair, plus two more checkboxes for automatically attaching service records to the right CI.

Importing System Items is a button, one per type. Clicking it creates CIs for everything of that type that's missing one. It only adds what's missing, so clicking it again won't create duplicates.

You'll use the manual buttons even with automatic import on: automatic import isn't retroactive, so the first time you enable it, you'll still click Import once to backfill anything that existed before.

Two more things live on the Importing System Items page: Update CI Relations, which is always manual; there's no automatic equivalent, and an asset-only filter that limits which assets get pulled in.

The order CIs and relationships get created in

Whether you're setting up the CMDB for the first time or adding new CIs later, three things happen in this order:

1. (Optional) Configure Import Settings and Import Asset to CI Settings if you want CIs created automatically with specific fields mapped. Set these before the import runs, they don't apply retroactively to CIs that already exist.

2. Create the CIs themselves, using Importing System Items (assets, software products, catalog items, companies, and users already in SysAid) or Importing CIs from a Delimited File (any CI type, from a CSV).

3. Create relationships between those CIs: automatically for computers, software, and catalog items using the Update CI Relations button on Importing System Items, or in bulk using Importing CI Relations. Either way, the CIs on both ends of a relationship must already exist, since relations reference CI IDs.

Choosing how to continue