How to trigger additional approvals for change request based on date

[robkat]

Hey there forum...

We are looking to add additional review for a change request that falls in a specific window or maintenance window. What would be the best way to process a "rule" to check upon submission of a change request if the Start Date and/ or End date fall within a specific date range? Would we have to set these value in a table within the Tool?

This blackout or window would be end of each month. If the change falls into that range we want to trigger additional approvals for the change prior to "Ready to Deploy". Thank for your help!

[TrevorK]

I might be missing something, but to me the obvious solution is to include this within your workflow for the Change Request. I am making the assumption that you are currently using a workflow for your Change Requests to determine when to open the appropriate tasks and approvals? If so, you would just include an IF statement in there to check based on the date criteria, and create the approval if the condition matches.

We do checks within our workflow for all sorts of things - such as opening tasks based on the data inserted in the Change Request (for example, when it comes to modifying security).

Using the workflow allows you to do all the sequencing to force tasks/approvals to occur in a particular order. We go one step further and prevent people from changing the state of Change Tasks, which forces them to abide by the workflow for it.

Again, my apologies if I am stating what you already know about workflow but it seems like the place for what you are asking. If you have any questions at all about what I am saying just let me know!

[robkat]

Hey Trevor...no your not missing it and I appreciate the thoroughness. Think that should work but our date criteria would be somewhat different each month and also depend on the Risk setting for the change. So Im guessing the workflow would check a date range for each month and if it falls into any of those date ranges it will kickoff a secondary action only for specific Risk value.

Our Dev team is offsite so sometimes reviewing the requirements can be a challenge and we have been putting alot of workflow check so there was possibility of performance during this workflow check. Ill review this with them and see if this is best path. Thank for the guideance!