The Change Requests table is used for Change Management. A Change request is created when a change is needed to an asset or to any other business object that may require a set of approvals before such a the change can be completed.
Once a change request is created, it can be assigned to the appropriate teams or individuals for one or many approvals, and may . It can then be moved along in the process, from approval, to scheduling, to action by staff members actually making the change, to completion, testing, and release.
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By default, Change Requests are not visible to end - users and cannot be created by them. This is defined by group permissions, and if you would like to allow end users to submit change requests, you can simply change the group permissions of the relevant groups to enable this.
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When a technician submits a Change Request, the Submitter contact information fields automatically populate based on the details in his/her User the user's record. In the default setup, a request cannot be submitted on behalf of a user who has no user record in the system. However, the creator can select a different person if needed.
The user is required to select a service after selecting a service category. When the service is selected, the user will see a description of the service , and any special instructions for that service.
When a technician creates the CR he they may choose the Change Management Team and the Change Manager from the drop-down fields. If he does they do not choose the team, when the record is saved, the request will be assigned to the Service Responsible team, if any, or to the Change Management Team, if there is no responsible team defined for the service.
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The Change Request table pulls its services from linked entries in the Services table. A user creating a change request chooses the category of service from a drop-down, and then sees all the active services that belong to that category in a second drop-down list called Service Title. The default service categories for change requests can be seen in the Assets table ( or by creating a CR record and opening the drop-down list). When the service is selected, several additional fields are pulled in with the service, including fields defining whether approvals are needed and the approval generation type.
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Once the main fields are filled in, the user navigates to the Assets tab. This allows the user to look up several assets. The assets can be filtered by first choosing a an Asset Type first and then clicking the Select Assets lookup.
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Note that if no assets are involved in the change request, you are still required to select one , because of the way tasks are managed in change requests. We have created a "Use the No Asset Involved " asset record with the Asset Type of None that can be used in this situation. This will allow allows all task generation and other functionality to work as expected.
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This saves the change request (validating , validates the required fields), sets some background fields that control visibility of the approval and task buttons, and sets the status to Pending Change Manager.
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If the status is not Closed when saved, the rule named "CR- All Creation Actions" will send system sends the submitter an acknowledgement email and will also send an email to either the Change Manager, if there is one, or to the Change Manager Team (Rule: CR- All Creation Actions).
Changing Assigned Team or Change Manager
If a technician needs to reassign the Change Request to a different Change Management Team or Change Manager, he or she they simply changes change the field(s) and the system will email the new assignee notifying them of the reassignment (Rule: CR - Edit Actions (API Enabled), Action: Assignee Change Notifications).
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As the first approvals are completed, those with the next step number are set to Pending Approval and their assignees notified. Any approval notes put into the approvals are copied up to the change request in the running All Approval Notes field.
Two fields below the approvals table track the Number of Approvals Needed and the Number of Approvals Completed, and once those two numbers are equal and great than or equal to 1, the Status is changed to Approved and the Requester and the Change Management team are notified.
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Here the default task template is the one called Upgrade Windows OS. Clicking the Generate Tasks button will generate one task for each of the selected assets (just one in this case).
The user may then select another task to generate when that is done, if desired. He They may also check the box for Create New Task to Generate? to create another task template that can be generated for all the selected assets. Checking that box will bring up some display fields to fill in for the ad hoc task:
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Once the approval has been received, clicking click the Launch Tasks button will to set the first tasks (, those with no prerequisite or with any prerequisites completed or not needed) , to a status of Assigned. It will also set the Status of the Change Request to In Progress, if it is not already in that status.
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Previously we used parent-child change requests to manage multiple changes to assets. That possibility is still available but the fields for relating parent and child change requests have been removed from the layout, since that was a much more cumbersome process. If there is a need to relate change requests in a parent child structure, this logic can be reutilizedused again.
Reporting Time Spent
Technician users may easily report the time they spend on handling change requests. There are two fields and an action button: Time Spent, Time Description, and Add Time on the Work Notes tab of the layout. Entering values there will automatically create a new time entry record when the Add Time button is clicked. The time entry will show the work done by the technician and on the current date.
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All the time entries for a request can be seen on the Time tab as well. If a technician needs to report time that was spent on a different day or by a different user, he they may click the New button on the Time spent table to submit a time entry directly and change the date or "Done by" field. All time entered is totaled in the All Time Spent field, which can be used in reporting or billing.
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Records in the Change Request table are " owned " by the person whose login matches the Creator Login field.
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