Getting started with release management

Changes are implemented to add, move, configure, or remove a configuration item. A change can originate from an incident, problem, or service request.

You can implement both planned and emergency change requests by using BMC Remedyforce.

Roles

Roles enable you to configure hierarchy in your organization. You can control the level of visibility that users have on the data by using roles.

For example, by configuring and assigning roles, you can enable users to initiate change requests as a change coordinator. The following main roles are involved in change management:

Change Advisory Board (CAB) member: Approves or rejects changes and their implementation timings. A CAB contains a group of people responsible for keeping the functionality and service levels of a specific service aligned with the ever-changing business needs of its customers.
Change Coordinator: Assesses, creates, and coordinates changes that originate from Service Request Management, Incident Management, or Problem Management.
Change Manager: Reviews the risk and impact of a change and ensures the approvals and timing of the delivered changes.

There can also be users who play the role of a specialist (who answers risk and impact work orders) and customer representatives (who ensures customer’s requirements are clearly understood and delivered).

For more information about configuring roles, see Managing roles.

Queues

Create the queues to which change requests will be assigned. Also, the tasks linked to a change request can also be assigned to a queue. Create the queues to which your change requests or the linked tasks will be assigned.

For more information about adding queues, see Configuring queues.

Status

Status of a record helps you to track the record through its life cycle. The following status values are provided for change requests:

Approval requested
Approved
In Progress
Opened
Pending Approval
Registered
Risk & Impact
To be Approved
Closed
Completed
Rejected

For more information about adding status, see Creating status records.

Impact-urgency-priority

Impact and urgency values of a record determine the priority assigned to the record. By default, some urgency, impact, and priority values are provided. You can modify them based on your requirements. The following figure shows how priority is calculated depending on the impact and urgency values:

Determine if you need additional impact, urgency, or priority values. If yes, also determine how the urgency and impact values will determine the priority.

Templates

Using templates, you can prepopulate fields on a form, which reduces the need to enter commonly used data, or create records to provide an automated workflow process. Templates help you to configure commonly used workflows, ensure consistency in the way information is captured, increase productivity and efficiency, and reduce errors.

Prepare a list of commonly occurring change requests in your environment, the tasks that are related to such change requests. Based on your requirements, add the templates.

You can also link tasks to your templates. For example, for a commonly occurring change requests you know that some tasks must be done. You can create such task templates and link those templates to the change request template.

To create a template, see Managing templates.

CMDB

Configuration items (CIs) are the items in your IT environment that you want to track. The Configuration management database (CMDB) stores the CIs and relationships among CIs. These CIs are categorized in different classes. View all the classes in the CMDB Manager by clicking the Remedyforce CMDB tab. Read about the implementation of CMDB in BMC Remedyforce in the CMDB 2.0 architecture section.

Change requests are created to add, move, configure, or remove a configuration item or service in an organization. Prepare a list of CIs or services in your environment and add the CIs in Remedyforce CMDB. Services are saved as CIs of the Business Service class in the Remedyforce CMDB. For more information, see Creating a configuration item and Creating a service.

You might have your CIs available in another application. BMC Remedyforce enables you to import CIs from any of the following applications:

Knowledge articles

Staff members can use knowledge articles to implement a change request.

You can add the following types of knowledge articles in BMC Remedyforce:

FAQ
How to
Known Error
Problem Solution

All your staff members can add, update, and retire knowledge articles.

To enable staff members to publish knowledge articles, prepare a list of those staff members. Select the Remedyforce Knowledge User check box for these users on the User Details page. For more information, see Enabling users to publish, retire, or check out a knowledge article.

Workflows

Workflows help you in automating frequently occurring actions in your Service Desk. For example, you can create a workflow to send an email message to change initiators whenever the status of a change request raised by them is updated. BMC Remedyforce provides you some workflows in the package. All these workflows are inactive by default. You must activate the required workflows.

The Notify change request owner when final task linked to change request is closed workflow is provided for change requests.

For more information about activating a workflow, see Configuring workflows.

Prepare a list of workflows that you will need in your Service Desk. Create the workflows that are not provided out-of-the-box. For more information, see Salesforce Help.

Approvals

You can configure automatic approval process that users can use to submit change requests for approval and approvers can approve or reject a change request. For more information, see Managing approvals.

Users can approve or reject a record from any of the following locations:

Record
Email
Items to Approve list

To add the Items to Approve list to the Salesforce Home page, see Adding the Items to Approve list on the Salesforce Home page.

Email templates

You can associate email templates with workflows or approval processes. Whenever a workflow is triggered, an email message is sent to the required users. By default, email templates that are associated with the out-of-the-box workflows are provided with the package.

If required, you can customize these email templates or create new email templates and associate them with the required workflows. For more information, see Creating an email template and Customizing an email template. For example, if a change request is approved.

Administrator settings

The Remedyforce Administration tab is one-stop location for all the configurations that are available in BMC Remedyforce. It also contains links to the Salesforce Setup area. All the settings are categorized in various tiles. The following settings are related to set up incidents, tasks, problems, and Self Service:

Tile	Options
Configure Application	Action (optional), Category, Category Types (optional), Impact, Priority, Standard Description (Optional), Status, Suggested Owners, Templates, and Urgency
Manage Users	All the options in the tile
Application Settings	Consoles, Form Assignment (optional), General Application Settings, Global Search, Lookup Filters, Record Assignment
Configure emails	All the options in the tile
Manage Workflows and Other Processes	Workflow Rules
Manage Objects	Create and Edit Objects

Reports

Staff members and system administrators can use the Reports tab to view predefined reports. You can also create reports based on your requirements. However, only the system administrators can create additional report types.

For system administrators, data is also available in the form of charts and tables in the Dashboards tab. To enable staff members with Salesforce or Salesforce Platform license access the Dashboards tab, assign the Manage Dashboard profile-level permission.

Examples of ootb change reports

Testing your environment

Ensure that you are able to create a change request in the Remedyforce Console tab.
Ensure that you are able to create templates and attach task templates to the template. Ensure that you can create change requests by using these templates.
If you have activated workflows, ensure that the workflows are triggered at the configured condition.
Ensure that approvers can approve or reject a change request.
Ensure that priority is calculated when you assign impact and urgency to a change request.
SLAs (to be confirmed)

FAQs

How to add or delete a field on a Change Request form?	Customizing forms for the Remedyforce Console tab
How to add or delete a field on the Instance Editor?	Adding or removing fields on the Instance Editor in CMDB 2.0
How to create a workflow, such as assigning a record to a queue based on category?	Configuring workflows and Salesforce help
How to make the Urgency and Impact field mandatory?	Click the Remedyforce Administration tab. On the Home page, click the Manage Objects tile, and from the menu, select Create and Edit Objects. On the Create and Edit Objects, from the Objects list, select Incident and then select Field Sets. Click Edit for the Console - Status and Priority field set. In the In the Field Set list, for Impact or Urgency, click . In the Field Set Item Properties window, select Required and click OK. Click Save.