Creating a New Change - Vocabulary and Workflow
To learn about creating a new change, please refer to the following instructions for an explanation.
Vocabulary (These are names of fields in change requests)
Change ID - a unique and automatically assigned number associated with a change request
Coordinator Group - the primary group of which the change coordinator (or submitter) is a member
Change Coordinator - the submitter (or creator) of the change request
Change Location - the moira-provided location linked with the change coordinator
Service - a selection chosen from the (MIT) Service Catalog list (i.e. Portfolio) which describes the type of change
Template - provides the ability to select a change template which will prepopulate certain fields depending on the template definition
Summary - a short description of the specific change
Notes - a more complete description of the change, when helpful
Class - the type of change; a Standard change will be the most common and only requires approval at the implementation phase; a Normal change requires approval at both the review and implementation phases
Impact - the impact to the (MIT) community which could be expected from this change; the impact level determines the required number of approvals
Manager Group - this will match the Coordinator Group most of the time
Change Manager - this will match the Change Coordinator most of the time
Phases of a Change
A change request in Remedy goes through 5 phases during its lifecycle. They are:
Initiate - this is the first phase of a change when the change coordinator (submitter) enters all of the initially required information, most notably, the Service, a Summary of the change, the Class, and the Impact. All other required fields should already be filled in with reasonable values, however, you may opt to change their values if it seems appropriate.
Review & Authorize - this is the phase where a change of class Normal would go to the appropriate approver for review. They would either approve the change, reject it, or place it on hold pending further discussion or evaluation. This phase is skipped for self-approving requests which are requests with an impact of level 4 (Minor/Localized). It is also skipped for Standard changes which don't require an approval until the Implementation phase.
Plan & Schedule - this is the phase where the change coordinator should plan the details of the change and schedule it within Remedy. Supporting documents can be attached to the record and notes can be added directly in the record to further explain the planned change.
Implement - this phase is activated when the scheduled time for the change has arrived and it is time to actually perform the planned change. For ad-hoc changes that don't require a strict schedule, it could be that changes are moved quickly from the Plan & Schedule to the Implement phase. Any additional info that comes to light as a result of the change could be entered during this phase.
Closed - this phase is reached when the change is completed to the satisfaction of the customer or approver.
Workflow
Prerequisites for using the Remedy OnDemand system include, either Firefox or Internet Explorer (though other browsers may work, they are not officially supported), pop-ups allowed (for onbmc.com), and a current version of the flash plugin installed for your browser. Also, if you are using a newer version of IE, you may need to turn on compatibility view mode in order for the Remedy site to fully function as expected.
First, using a browser with a valid MIT personal certificate, go to http://remedy-qa.mit.edu; This should authenticate you through Touchstone and forward you along to the MIT-QA onbmc.com site. You should see your home screen, which is configurable, but will default to showing any requests currently assigned to you. (Click on the images for a larger view.)
Next, open the "accordian" menu from the top left area of your browser window to expose the Change Management menu, and then select New Change.
This will bring you to a new screen where the change is initiated and you can start entering pertinent information. Some of the fields which are required are already prepopulated. Others which will need to be filled in are: Service and Summary. You should also check the Class and Impact fields to make sure those are selected appropriately. A class of normal means the change will need to be approved at the review and implementation phase, whereas a class of standard means the change will only need approval at the implementation phase. An impact level of 4-Minor/Localized will not require any approval (as it is self-approved), but other impact levels will require approval(s) as specified in the approval wiki page.
After entering all of the necessary information, the change can then be sent to the "next-stage", for either review, approval, or implementation, as is appropriate for that particular type of change. (Click the Next-Stage button in the lower left.) How the change proceeds through the system depends on the class of change and the impact level. See the approvals wiki page for more info about those aspects of a change request. Notice that this change has been populated with appropriate values for the following fields: Service, Summary, Notes, Class, Impact, and Urgency.
Once the change information has been entered, click the Next-Stage button in the lower left to proceed. Review the info, make any necessary changes, and then click the save button.
The change request should now be shown in the next phase.
Due to a refresh bug in Remedy, it is necessary to manually refresh the record (not the web page) in order to display the status correctly. To do this, click the "down arrow" icon which is next to the home icon in the upper left area of the screen. This will popup a list of recent requests and you can then double-click on the record which you were working on. That record should then refresh and will be shown in the proper phase.
In this example, I created a Normal change which requires approval at the review phase. You can see Garry's ID listed in the approval section in the lower right section of the screen. Garry will receive an email requesting approval for this change. Once he approves the record, I will receive a notification and can then proceed with the next phase of the record, which is plan and schedule. After refreshing the record, you can see that the request is currently in the review and authorize phase. Note that BMC is aware of this refresh bug and we are hoping to have a hotfix to resolve it soon.
Cancelling a Request
If you've created a change request and realize that it really needs to be cancelled, then you can do so. If you've just created a new request and haven't saved it or clicked next-stage yet, you can cancel it by just exiting or just closing that page, or by clicking the green plus sign in the upper left to open a new blank change request. Otherwise, to cancel a change, identify the current phase of the change above (in green), which will either be Initiate, Review & Authorize, Plan & Schedule or Implement. Then, click the downward arrow in that field and select "cancel". This will immediately close the request and soon thereafter change the status to "cancelled". The record will then effectively disappear from all views.
One suggested question to ask before opening a change request is:
- Is this a standalone change or will it be one part of a group of related changes? If the latter, if might make more sense to make a higher level change request and have 2 or more small tasks associated with that change. Note that there is little value in having a single task attached to a change. In that case, it is better to do everything within a single change without associated tasks.