About Business Objects

Use Business Objects to manage data and workflows for business processes (example: Incident Management). A Business Object can be complex (example: Incident) or simple (example: IncidentCategory that holds the list of categories that can be used within an Incident).

Business Objects are the heart of CSM and are extremely versatile. You can define various options to determine what data they contain, how they behave, and how they can be used. For example, you can define a lifecycle, define what information is tracked, and/or require values to be entered into certain fields (example: Priority) before records can be saved. Business Object records are represented as Forms and Grids in CSM.

Business Objects are categorized as:

• Major

  A Major Business Object is a standalone Business Object that represents a major component of a business. It can exist by itself and have child objects that are part of its composition (using Relationships) (examples: Incident, Problem, Change, Knowledge Article, Customer, Configuration Item, and Service).

• Supporting

  A Supporting Business Object is a Business Object that exists solely to complement, or support, a Major Business Object. Examples include Task, Journal, and Approval.

• Lookup

  A Lookup Business Object is a Business Object that supplies valid values to other Business Objects. More precisely, it stores values for Fields that require constrained selections (example: The Incident Cause Lookup Object holds values such as Hardware Malfunction, Outage, Permissions, etc.).

• Group

  A Group Business Object is a set of Business Objects that share common Fields. For example, the Configuration Item Group has Group Members named Computer, Printer, and Telephony Equipment. A Group Leader (example: Configuration Item) is the Business Object that is the root of a Group. It stores common Fields that all Group Members share. All Group Members are descended from the Group Leader.

All Business Objects belong to one or more Business Object Views, which allow you to have multiple instances of a Business Object with different behaviors and appearance for different Users (example: A Default View for Business Objects accessed from the CSM Desktop Client and a Portal View for Business Objects accessed from the Portal). Although the rules, behavior, and appearance can differ among Views, the structure of the Business Object is always the same.

Within the Object Manager are several Business Object-specific tools, including:

• Business Object Editor: Edit various aspects of a Business Object (properties and Fields).
• Relationship Editor: Add, edit, and delete Relationships for a Business Object.
• Form Editor: Edit the various aspects of a Business Object Form.
• Grid Editor: Edit the various aspects of a Business Object Grid.

  Business Objects and their associated Fields, Relationships, Forms, Grids, Form Arrangements, and Activity Panes are created, edited, and deleted within a Blueprint. To commit changes to your system, you must publish the Blueprint.