When to use Services or create services as Insight objects?

[Connor]

I'm working on configuring an internal IT service management portal using the ITSM template. I'm trying to decide whether to use the built in Services function of the template or to create my services as Insight objects. This support article briefly describes choosing between the 2 methods.

Via Ospgenie I can add "External services" such as Jira Software, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc. And those have the benefit of being tightly integrated with alerts/incidents/etc. But because I can't customize the Services objects within Insight, I lose that ability to document extra details about each service. 

I'm really struggling on deciding which method to use, and I'm hoping others can provide insight behind their decision or examples of their setup. 

[Mikael Sandberg]

If you have access to the new Insight for Jira any services you add will become an object in Insight. See How services work with Insight in Jira Service Management for more information. External service in Opsgenie is linked to your Statuspage, see Manage external services 

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hey @Mikael Sandberg ,

I get that it will be created as a Service object in the locked Services schema but with the inability to enrich that schema/those objects you lose a lot.

What I'm doing is creating a secondary schema and link that to the Services schema. So i'm basically duplicating my services in Insight (in a secondary schema) so we can have a proper service tree/dependencies/hardware links/.. which you don't have on the Services schema.

@Connor for me it's not so much a one or the other, but more a where do we draw the line. If you want to use the major incidents/opsgenie/change management link you are pretty much tied to the Services. If you however wish to enrich it you can always link to a new schema to enrich the services coming from JSM.

[Connor]

@Mikael Sandberg I do have access to the new Insight for Jira, in fact I linked that knowledge article in my original post. If I create an "External service" within Opsgenie it's still created within the read-only "Services" object schema, and displayed within the "Services" page of my JSM project. Like I and @Dirk Ronsmans mentioned though, you're not able to add additional detail to objects within that Services object schema. 

@Dirk Ronsmans I'm leaning towards a mix of the two as well, but I'm struggling to define what the actual user process will look like. If you can provide an example of how you're using this, or even a hypothetical I would appreciate it.

Here's an example of how I've currently setup my environment, and the questions I have. I created a Software object type, and I have Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Bitbucket, Confluence objects. I created an Insight custom field titled, Software, which I added to several request types. An example of it's use would be, a user creates a "Request a change" issue, and in the Software field they select the software objects that will be part of that change. What throws me for a loop, is if I decide to create external services for Jira Software, Bitbucket, etc. My users could then select those services within the default "Affected services" field when they're creating that "Request a change" issue.

So do I use "Affected services" only for incidents and change management, and my custom "Software" field for service requests? Which would mean training users on when to use each field. Or do I decide to just use Services only, or my custom Software object only?

[Natalya Ozhigova]

Hi @Connor 

We also faced with that issue. And we created the another insight object scheme and added attribute in it object type "Services". We can store there all related information. Also we created an insight field with this additional information. You can manage it by automation.

Hope it help you

Best regards

Natalia