How can we setup a relationship between two configuration items (CIs) that have different tenants?

Products

• SUPPORT AUTOMATION- SERVER
• CA Service Desk Manager - Unified Self Service
• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

We have the multi-tenancy option installed and we want to create a relationship between a Configuration Item (CI) of one tenant with a Configuration Item for a different tenant.  The tenant of the Configuration Items is different and both of the tenants are not the service provider tenant. 

How can we achieve that?

Environment

CA Service Desk 17.1 and higher

Resolution

CA Service Desk Manager does not allow a CI belonging to a non-service-provider tenant to have a direct relationship with a CI belonging to a different non-service-provider tenant.

Instead, you could create an indirect relationship.  To do this, you would set the tenant of the Provider CI to the service-provider tenant. Then, you would make a relationship between that service-provider-tenanted Provider CI and several non-service-provider-differently-tenanted Dependent CI's.

The set up the indirect relationship, follow these steps: 

1. Set the parent of both of the non-service-provider Tenants to the service provider Tenant.
    
2. Create the CI relationship, starting with the service-provider-tenanted CI instead of with the non-service-provider-tenanted CI, as follows:
   
   2.1. Under the Administration tab, open the CA CMD folder, click on CI Relationship List.
   
   2.2. Click on Create New in the Configuration Item Relationship List
   
   2.3. In the Create New Configuration Item Relationship, do NOT select a Tenant in the Tenant dropdown, click on the "Provider CI / Peer CI" lookup and select the service-provider CI. Change the Tenant field to the tenant of the non-service-provider CI.
   
   Note: You can only do this step because the non-service-provider tenant has a parent as the service-provider tenant as per step #1.
   
   2.4. Click on the "Dependent CI / Peer CI" lookup and select the non-service-provider CI. Note that the Tenant field is set to the tenant for the non-service-provider CI. The relationship is tenanted to the non-service-provider CI.

Additional Information

How Multi-Tenancy Affects CIs

CI Relationships