Getting started with change 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 Helix Remedyforce

.

To enable your change managers to create change requests, configure the following:

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

Records assigned to a queue are handled by its members. For more information about queues, see Salesforce help

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.

Categories

Categories help you to classify data for reporting purposes. While creating a change request, assign a category to the change request, such as Hardware and you can create a workflow that assigns all the Hardware category change requests to the Hardware and Maintenance queue.

You can also create parent-child relationship between categories by defining category types. Some categories are provided to you out-of-the-box, such as Account Administration, Network, and so on.

For information about adding categories, see Managing-categories.

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:

impact-urgency- priority-matrix.gif

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 Helix 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 Helix 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 Helix Remedyforce

:

  • FAQ
  • How to
  • Known Error
  • Problem Solution

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

Prepare a list of staff members whom you want to enable to publish knowledge articles. 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 Helix 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 Helix 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:


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.

The following table lists the out-of-the-box reports provided for change management.


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.

FAQs