Legacy: State model and transitions

Change Management offers a state model to move and track change requests through several states.

Note:

The change states functionality has been replaced with change models since the Quebec release. For more information, see Create a Change model.

Figure 1. Example of state transitions for a normal change request

The following table provides a list of all the states that a change request can progress through. Email notifications can be sent to the user who requested the change when it progresses to the following states: Scheduled, Implement, Review, and Canceled.

Table 1. Change states

State	Description	State value
New	Change request is not yet submitted for review and authorization. A change requester can save a change request as many times as necessary while building out the details of the change prior to submission.	-5
Assess	Peer review and technical approval of the change details are performed during this state.	-4
Authorize	Change Management and the CAB schedule the change and provide final authorization to proceed.	-3
Scheduled	The change is fully scheduled and authorized, and is waiting for the planned start date. An email notification is sent to the user who requested the change.	-2
Implement	The planned start date has approached and the actual work to implement the change is being conducted. An email notification is sent to the user, who requested the change.	-1
Review	The work has been completed. The change requester determines whether the change was successful. A post-implementation review can be conducted during this state. An email notification is sent to the user who requested the change. Note: You cannot cancel the change request if it is in the Review state.	0
Closed	All review work is complete. The change is closed with no further action required.	3
Canceled	A change can be canceled at any point when it is no longer required. However, a change cannot be canceled from a Closed state. An email notification is sent to the user who requested the change.	4

Normal, standard, and emergency changes progress through states in different ways.

State progress for different changes

• Normal changes progress through all states.
• Standard changes are considered to be pre-authorized, so they bypass the Assess and Authorize states that trigger approval records. Approving these changes progress the change to the next appropriate state. Rejecting these changes send them back to New state.
• Emergency changes are similar to standard changes, except that they must be authorized.

Revert a change request to a New change

Change Management allows the Emergency and Normal change types to be reverted to the new state which is the first approval state using the Revert to New action from the Context Menu. This action is performed if the approval was requested and the submitter recognizes that not all configuration item in the scope of the change is included before submitting for approval.

• To modify the Normal change request to the New state, modify the state of a change request from Assess state to New state by clicking Revert to New from the Context menu.
• To modify the Emergency change request to the New state, modify the state of a change request from Authorized state to New state by clicking Revert to New from the Context menu.
  Note:

  When you revert to New from the Assess state or the Authorized state, the workflow is restarted and all pending approvals are cancelled.

Modify change request type

• A new ACL for change_request.type has been added that allows modification of the Type field in change request when the change request is in a New state and no approvals have been generated yet for it.
• In case of Standard change request, you can modify the type of the change request from Standard to Normal or Emergency, if the state of a change request is New.
• In case of Normal or Emergency change request, you can modify the type of the change request from Normal to Emergency or vice versa if the state of a change request is New.
• If a Normal or Emergency change request is rejected, the state of the change request is set to New. As the state of the change request is New, you can modify the type of the change request again. For example, if your Emergency change request is rejected on the grounds that the change request is Normal, you can modify the Type of the change request to Normal and resubmit the change request.

Disabled Cancel change action

The Cancel option for a change request in the Review state is disabled. This restricts cancelling the request when the work is complete and is waiting for review.

Change model attributes

The Change Manager has the option to mandate specific actions when a Change Request is moved to a specific state. Attributes assigned to that state determine what actions can take place.

By default, there are two attributes to manage a change request:

• allow_ci_modification – Allows to modify the CI. Attributes are only considered if they are included in a model. If the allow_ci_modification attribute is not added to a model, it defaults to its initial state.
• allow_implementation – Indicates that the change will be implemented. By enabling allow_implementation, this feature replaces the implementation states field currently present on the Change model. Both the states listed in the implementation states field and the attribute will be respected.

• Legacy: Add a state to the state model
  You can add a new state to the existing state model for different change types based on the requirements of your organization.
• Configure state model transitions
  You can use script includes or UI policies to configure state models and the criteria for moving change requests from one state to another.