Working with projected service outages

A projected service outage prevents unwanted and unplanned change requests during certain date and time ranges, which minimizes downtime in your organization. BMC Remedyforce enables you to configure the projected service outage as a blackout period to prevent change requests from being created or modified during the projected service outage.

The Change Manager must be aware of all change requests taking place and can coordinate change requests appropriately, thereby minimizing any conflicting change requests. The Change Manager must have the details of services or configuration items involved with various change requests, and records the relevant details on the Projected Service Outage form for this data to be displayed on the change schedule. In the change schedule, the start and end dates of blackout periods are represented by black vertical bars and the start and end dates of projected service outages are represented by gray vertical bars.

The following topics are provided:

To create a projected service outage

The Change Manager should create and manage projected service outages and inform change coordinators and other users of periods during which they cannot create or modify change requests.

1. Click the Remedyforce Administration tab.
2. On the Home page, click the Manage Workflows and Other Processes tile, and from the menu select Projected Service Outage.
   Alternatively, you can also navigate to Remedyforce Workspaces > Change Management > Projected Service Outage.
3. In the Projected Service Outages list view, click New.
4. In the Name field, type the name of the projected service outage.
5. From the Start Date field, select the date when the projected service outage starts.
6. From the End Date field, select the date when the projected service outage ends.
7. Click the Affected Service list.
8. From the Select from Configuration Items window, select the services or configuration items that are affected by the projected service outage.
   The Select from Configuration Items window displays configuration items of the Business Service class only.
9. In the Description field, type a description, such as the reasons for creating the blackout period.
   For example, you might be conducting an audit of how many approved change requests have been implemented in the current financial year. If new change requests are approved and implemented during the audit period, it might affect the results of your audit.
10. Select the Blackout period.
    Do not allow any changes to be scheduled during this period check box to mark the projected service outage as a blackout period and to prevent change requests from being created during the blackout period.
    If any open change requests exist for the blackout period specified by the Start Date and End Date fields, you cannot save the blackout period.
11. Click Save.

To copy a projected service outage

To prevent change requests from being created on weekends to allow you to consolidate your audit data over the weekends, you can create a projected service outage, mark it as a blackout period, and make copies of it for the required weekends.

1. Click the Remedyforce Administration tab.
2. On the Home page, click the Manage Workflows and Other Processes tile, and from the menu select Projected Service Outage.
   Alternatively, you can also navigate to Remedyforce Workspaces > Change Management > Projected Service Outage.
3. In the Projected Service Outages list view, select the projected service outage that you want to copy.
4. Click .
   A copy of the projected service outage is opened in a new Projected Service Outage form.
5. In the new Projected Service Outage form, make the required modifications.
6. Click Save.

To delete a projected service outage

If you have projected service outages that are no longer applicable, you must delete them to allow change mangers to create change requests for the affected configuration items. When you create a projected service outage for a configuration item, change managers avoid scheduling change requests for the configuration item during a projected service outage.

1. Click the Remedyforce Administration tab.
2. On the Home page, click the Manage Workflows and Other Processes tile, and from the menu select Projected Service Outage.
   Alternatively, you can also navigate to Remedyforce Workspaces > Change Management > Projected Service Outage.
3. In the Projected Service Outages list view, select the projected service outage that you want to delete.
4. Click .
5. In the confirmation dialog box, click Yes.
   The projected service outage is deleted and the Projected Service Outage form is closed.