Need help understanding standard change templates vs standard change record producers

[Kiran_25]

I need help understanding standard change templates [std_change_template] VS standard change record producers [std_change_record_producer]

1.What is the difference between the 2 tables and records that they contain? It looks the same to me.

2.How are the 2 linked together, what is the connection. Is there something that sits in the middle?

3. Where is the best place to add fields for governance (eg, date of last completed change, template owner etc)

4.I want templates that haven't been used for 6 months to be automatically deactivated - would I have to deactivate in both tables or doing in 1 and it also impacts the 2nd one?

Thanks.

[GlideFather]

Hi @Kiran_25,

record producer is just a possibility to submit new records into ANY table (custom or existing ones, change request included). The only table that cannot be used by record producers are REQ, RITM, SCTASKs as these are catalog items with different (work)flow.

So the Change Request producer is a form on your portal that will inserts data to the particular table, one form submission is one table record. And it depends on how it is configured the values might be predefined (e.g. Requested by, Location, etc), some of the fields might be mapped Field A on the Portal will be Field B in the database level, etc.

While the template is to save your time and efforts with defining repeated values, instead of inserting the same values again and again, template will populate the fields for you. Having more templates, you can reduce the efforts and can help to manage the process better.

[Kiran_25]

@GlideFather thank you for explaining. It sounds like new fields for the governenace of templates should be added to the standard change templates table [std_change_template] rather than standard change record producers [std_change_record_producer]? 
Our standard change template record producer records already have a statistics tab which shows basic stats for the record producer, eg how many times it's been used to do so the business would like to add another form section with ownership information for each template.