From time-to-time I'd like to tap into the ServiceNow community (i.e. you lot) to get feedback and crowdsource some information. This would really help as the AppDev team move between products.
It would be great to capture requirements, use cases and ideas in the comment threads - so please get involved. My last post on "Change Management conflict checking - Part 1" has had 145 reads overnight so... could we get a couple of discussions started here.
I'm trying to gather together use cases for the Blackout Window feature in our Change Management application. Blackout Windows are used to control when Changes can't be made .
Blackout Windows are:
- Associated with a class of CI. In the example below only Servers are affected by this Blackout Window, although you could choose Configuration Item for a total blackout
- Filtered. You can restrict the scope of the Blackout to a particular location, type of server - any attribute you want to filter on
- Can have multiple schedules associated. Perhaps a better example would have been a single Blackout Window for ACME servers with 4 end-of-quarter schedules associated.
In my last company we used the term "Change freeze" to denote when changes couldn't happen.
My examples are:
| Reason | Duration | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| End of Financial Quarter | 4 times a year for a week | All Financial systems, storage and network |
| End of Financial Year | Once a year for a week | All Financial systems, storage and network |
| Releasing a big industry report on the Internet | Ad-hoc | All web systems, database and network |
| In some European countries that shut down for summer | A month annually | All local office |
| Christmas! | A week annually | All systems |
I'd be interested in your experiences of the types of events or conditions that cause a Change Freeze or Blackout Window, I'm going to use your feedback as use cases to test the Blackout Window functionality before the next release.
Thanks!
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