Today I've been testing our Change Management conflict detection functionality.
This feature allows Change Managers, and Change Advisory Boards to spot potential issues, and be more aware of the risks involved in authorising change.
A Change Record might be conflicted for a couple of reasons:
- The change window occurs outside of a Maintenance Window. "Not in Maintenance Window"
- The change window overlaps with another Change Record against the same component of the Infrastructure (The same Configuration Item) "CI already scheduled"
- The change occurs during a defined Blackout Window, where no changes should occur to this CI "Blackout"
- A relationship exists with a parent/child CI and the Change occurs when that CI isn't available for Change. "Parent/Child CI already scheduled
The last conflict type in the table above shows that change conflict detection is also aware of relationships defined between CI's - for example, if a SAN provides storage for a server, does the change occur during a valid maintenance window for that server?
It's an incredibly powerful feature in ServiceNow, over the next couple of blog posts I want to show you how this is a great help making the right assessment of a Change.
"Not in Maintenance Window"
My demo organisation allows maintenance on servers on the 24th and 25th September.
My first example shows a Change record that has a window that falls outside of the maintenance window.
The first thing to do is define a period of time that you are happy for changes to be made.
These can be found in Change > Maintenance Windows
When creating a maintenance window you can define the type of CI that is included, as well as a schedule.
In my example I've specified that the CI type must be Server, and the Location attribute must be London for this CI to be included in the Maintenance Window.
The schedule entry interface is quite granular - you can easily specify recurring schedules, for example every 4th weekend is available for maintenance.
You can see in the image below that CHG0030013 - Install application X isn't valid as it's scheduled on Friday 23rd September, before my maintenance window opens.
The system will verify this for you when you click Check Conflicts
At the top of the form you are warned There ARE CONFLICTS - See "Conflicts" related list
To get more detail on the conflict you need to add the Conflicts related list to your form - it isn't there by default. Do this by right-clicking the bar and selecting Personalize > Related Lists Here you can add in the Conflict -> Change related list.
At the bottom of your Change Record you now have more information about the conflict including the reason why the change is in conflict. Not in maintenance window!
The first example is a simple one, but it shows you the power of being able to quickly, and repeatably assess whether a change is valid or not.
Lastly - you can see the conflict status in List form as well as using the status as a filter.
Next blog post I'll cover the CI already scheduled type of Conflict status.
Read more about Change Management Conflict Detection on the ServiceNow Wiki.
Have a great weekend!
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