Ad Hoc Change Freezes

[ScottW136642927]

In the ServiceNow change process, we want to reduce the manual work of rescheduling changes in an unplanned change blackout.  Being that I work for a utility, we have to quickly respond to any weather-related change blackouts to avoid risking disruption of any systems that support our efforts to restore service.

Currently, we receive a notification from an internal storm team to blackout all Normal changes in an upcoming 24 hour period. Change managers will use the change blackout schedule to define the time period, but then we have to open each change that falls within that blackout period and update the planned start and planned end dates. The new dates can vary from 24 hours into the future to one week into the future. 

We also require a Director-level approval for any changes that should not be blacked out. Changes in Work in Progress require an email approval attachment, and changes moving to Approval Pending have an additional approval request specifically for the Director.  We'd like to automate or reduce manual efforts for getting the Director approval for changes already in Work in Progress.

There may be 20 or more changes to be updated, but it is a manual process. Often, we get get very little notice for the blackout, and we have a short window to update the changes. Is there a way to reduce the time and effort, and possibly automate parts of this?

Has anybody successfully done this or something similar?

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @ScottW136642927 

Greetings!!

This is something similar that I implemented for my client and I 100% agree — there is no OOTB solution where the Change gets updated or put on hold if there is a sudden rise in the Business Window schedule due to any unforeseen reason.
What we proposed to our client was:

Approach:

• Create a new UI Action → “Call Sudden Freeze”

• Select all Changes from the list view and click this UI Action

What this UI Action does:

• Moves all Changes that have reached any Scheduled state (except New Change requests) to On Hold

• We also created a Flow that runs for 12 hours – if the freeze is still in place and the planned state is passed, then it moves the Change to New state and cancels all approvals

This isn’t a simple approach — the Change process flow is quite complex, and it requires a thorough round of testing.

[ScottW136642927]

Thanks, Dr. Atul.

I consulted one of our developers and I had laid out what I wanted to do, and I was told it was too complex.  

The assumption I went with was that changes could be moved to their first contingency date, or options for +24hrs, +48hrs, or up to one week from the original planned start date.  Ultimately, this could happen automatically once the change freeze is saved or updated.

I am going to consult our ServiceNow rep about this.

Cheers,

Scott

[Dr Atul G- LNG · Accepted solution]

Thanks @ScottW136642927  for update. Please close the thread.