A customer recently asked me to implement a solution whereby they could grab a list of CIs from an excel spreadsheet and paste them straight into the affected CIs list within a change, as you know you could use the EDIT button to go find the CIs but if you have a big list that could take a while, so I went off and found a way to do this using a few pieces:1. a field on the change (can be hidden VIA UI policy) called Mass CIs (u_mass_cis)2. A UI Action (Add Mass CIs) which is going to be calling our old friend a UI Page (mass_add_cis)Name: Add Mass CIsAction: mass_add_cisOnclick: massaddcis()Client - TrueCondition: define your own condition as to whom can do this and whenScript:

function massaddcis() { //Get any values to pass into the dialog var number = g_form.getValue("number"); //Initialize and open the Dialog Windowvar dialog = new GlideDialogWindow("mass_add_cis"); //Render the dialog containing the UI Pagedialog.setTitle("Add Affected CIs to " + number); //Set the dialog titledialog.setSize(500,1000); //Set the dialog sizedialog.render(); //Open the dialog}

3. A UI Page which is going to present the user with a large text box for them to paste the CIs into.One thing I did notice is that I had to replace line breaks with commas so that in our next phase which is a business rule we can easily split the CIs:I have attached the UI page html code as I noticed it disappears here (will fix this later)Name: mass_add_cisHTML:

<!-- Set up form fields and labels -->

CLIENT SCRIPT in the UI Page:

function validateCIs() { //Gets called if the 'OK' dialog button is clicked //Make sure dialog comments are not empty var comments = gel("dial_comments").value; comments = trim(comments); if (comments == "") { //If comments are empty stop submission alert("Please provide comments to submit the dialog."); return false; } //If comments are not empty do this... GlideDialogWindow.get().destroy(); //Close the dialog windowvar cis = comments.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm,","); //this turns line breaks into commas which are easier to split in the upcoming business rule g_form.setValue("u_mass_cis", cis); //Set the 'mass CIs' field with the values in the dialog}

OK so now we have our CIs (comma seperated) in our field on the change form and next we will call a business rule next time the change is saved to convert these values into the affected CIs list:We also check the CIs actually exist and if they don't then give them an error messageBusiness RuleName: Add Mass CIs to CIs affectedwhen: before - insert or updatecondition: current.u_mass_cis.changes()script:

/Created to automatically add any list of Mass CIs added via the 'Add Mass CIs' action to the affected CIs related list/addaffectedcis();function addaffectedcis(){var chg = current.sys_id;var cis = current.u_mass_cis;var array = cis.split(","); //split the cis into an array this is why we used commasfor (var i=0; i < array.length; i++) { //start going through each onevar cmdb = new GlideRecord('cmdb_ci'); //Indicate the table to query fromif(cmdb.get('name', array)) //if CI is found in the cmdb database, n.b. We should not need to query as name should be unique so when we find it stop the query{//check to see its not already on the affected cis listvar gr = new GlideRecord('task_ci'); //Indicate the table to query from//The 'addQuery' line allows you to restrict the query to the field/value pairs specified (optional)gr.addQuery('task', current.sys_id);gr.addQuery('ci_item.name', array);gr.query(); //Execute the queryif (gr.next()) { //While the recordset contains records, iterate through them //Do something with the records returnedgs.addErrorMessage('CI already in Affected CIs list: ' + array);}else {//Create a new Affected CI record on the task_ci table and populate the fields with the values below I.e. The change number and the ci itselfvar taskci = new GlideRecord('task_ci');taskci.initialize();taskci.task = chg;taskci.ci_item = cmdb.sys_id;taskci.insert();}}else{gs.addErrorMessage('CI not found in CMDB!: ' + array); //inform user ci cannot be found and show as error message does not stop submission though}}current.u_mass_cis = ''; //empty the field out}