Many organizations have a change management process in place to control, assess, and manage both planned and unplanned changes. A critical early step in the process is determining how users can create change requests. You have a lot of control and options when establishing how you want to receive change requests and what information is required. Getting complete details from the start can make the change process faster, more efficient, and less chaotic. This post describes four methods for creating a change request.
Note that in a base system (out of box) instance, there are three types of changes and each type has an associated change management workflow:
- Routine: a low-impact, common change
- Comprehensive: a medium-impact change with more associated risk than a routine change
- Emergency: a high-impact change created for an urgent situation
Requesting a change from an incident:
In the base system, there are three UI actions available to create a record on one table based on information from a record on another table. One of those UI actions is creating a change request from an incident record. When you create the change request, key information from the incident record, such as Configuration item and Priority, is automatically copied into the new request.
- Navigate to Incident > Open.
- Click an incident Number.
- Right-click in the header bar and select Create Change.
- Fill in the fields with as many details as possible.
Edit the the information that was copied in from the incident record as necessary. - Click Update.
Requesting a change from a problem:
Another one of the three UI actions available in the base system enables you to create a change request from a problem record. Again, key information such as Configuration item, Short Description, and Description are copied from the problem record and added to the new change request automatically.
- Navigate to Problem > Open.
- Click an problem Number.
- Right-click in the header bar and select Create Change.
- Fill in the fields with as many details as possible.
Edit the the information that was copied in from the problem record as necessary. - Click Update.
Requesting a change from the service catalog
Users with the itil role can request a change through the Service Catalog. Users should follow the steps below when the specific type of change they are requesting is listed in the service catalog. For example, Server Reboot or DNS Change. Users are asked specific questions and a change request is created automatically.
Adding common change request types to the service catalog makes it easier for users to request those changes, standardizes how the information is received, and helps ensure that complete information is obtained. For more information, see Creating a Record Producer to Request a Change.
- Navigate to Self-Service > Service Catalog.
- Select an Emergency or Routine Change.
For example, select DNS Change. - Answer the questions for the specific change.
For example, in this DNS change request, the user is requesting that proxy.mycompany.com be removed because it is being retired. (The New IP Address field should be left blank when requesting removal.) - Click Submit.
Manually creating a change:
Users with the itil role can create a change request directly in a change record. This method is useful when no related incident or problem exists, the change type is not listed in the service catalog, and the user wants or needs to add a lot of detailed information to the change request.
- Do one of the following:
- Navigate to Change > Create New.
- Navigate to Change > All and click New.
- Fill in the fields with as many details as possible.
The Configuration item, Priority, Short Description, and Description fields are especially important. - Click Submit to save the change request or click Request Approval to obtain approval for the change.
Additional tips and information:
- When a change request is created, an assignment rule may assign the change to a user or group. If a no assignment rule is in place, the change can be assigned manually on the change record.
- JanetDonovan asked for help with adding the change number to the Change Requests related list. laurens.brand was there to help with info about modifying a UI action.
- jasonstephens had a situation where a newly created variable editor on a change request and change task was not showing. Several other community members had similar troubles until gait7b shared a solution he obtained from mark.stanger.
- There is a known error on the Change Request form in early versions of Eureka. For more information, see Lindsey Schwaberow's question in the community at Issues with label/checkboxes in Change Request form and the known error article.
- For general information about change management in ServiceNow, see Change Management in the product documentation.
- For an introductory video, see Getting Started with ServiceNow Change Management.
