Setting up approval process configuration records for your company
- From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration tab to set up approval process configuration records for your company.
Select Foundation > Advanced Options > Approval Process Configuration, and then click Open.
The Approval Process Configuration form appears in New mode.
Enter information in the following fields:
Field name
Action and description
Form Name
Select a form name.
This form generates requests. This form is also used to identify which form from the approval process the configuration applies to. For BMC Helix ITSM, you can use the CHG:Infrastructure Change and RMS:Release forms to set up approvals for change and release requests. The different forms displayed in the list depend on which BMC Helix ITSM applications are installed on your system.
Company
Select the company (designated as the Change Manager support company on the Assignment tab in the change request) that will be using this approval configuration record.
Use the Company field to control access within Change Management. You can create a process flow for Calbro Services and a completely different flow for XYZ Company. If you select Global, the approval process applies to all companies.
BMC Helix ITSM supports multitenancy; that is, you can configure different approval configuration records for different companies.
Status
Select a status for the approval configuration record (approval mapping record). Set the status to Enabled to execute the approval configuration record.
Select the appropriate status:
- Proposed,
- Offline (Select this option, if you want to temporarily disable the record.)
- Obsolete
- Archived
- Delete (Select this option, if you do not want the record to be available in BMC Helix ITSM).
Description
Enter a description of this approval configuration record.
Phase Name
Enter the value in this field to indicate at which phase of the request this approval configuration record should be executed. The phase name identifies the mapping of the approval process to the company and is associated with the company for which this approval is being defined. Out-of-the-box, there are five entries, one for each of the four process stages and one for no impact changes.
For more information, see Configuring-additional-No-Impact-processes.
Important: You can have multiple records for the same phase, as long as the Phase Name combined with the Form Name, Company, Process Name, Sort Order, and Status is unique.
Process Name
Select the process that should be used for this approval configuration record from the list of processes that you have configured. Selecting a process automatically fills the Process Type field.
This field represents the approval process as defined in the Approval Server. The approval processes, referenced in the Process Name field, are preconfigured out of the box within the Approval Server. For information about how these approval processes map to the approval phases, see Default global approval processes for Change Management.
Best practice: When creating custom approval process configuration entries, we recommend that you associate your custom phase to one of the out-of-the-box Approval Server approval processes.
For more information, see:
Process Type
When you select the process name, a preconfigured corresponding process type is automatically displayed. For more information, see Overview-of-Change-Management-approvals.
Impacts Approval Status
Select Yes or No to indicate whether this approval configuration record impacts the following statuses:
- The Approval Status area in the change or release request.
- The approval status displayed when you select a change record on the Change Management console or a release record on the Release Management console.
This legacy setting is used in the BMC Helix ITSM Classic view and specifies whether this approval mapping affects the overall approval status field on the change request and on the Change Management console. This setting is not used in the IT Service Management Change Best Practice view or in Smart IT.
Default Process Name
(Only applicable for Release Management) Select a fallback process from the menu list.
This setting is optional and is limited to out-of-the-box processes. You should not set it unless you specifically need it.
This field only applies if the Process Name field has a Release Level CI type of approval process selected, and no CIs are related to the release request. This feature provides a fallback mechanism to the basic approval process to look for criteria to establish approvers.
If no CIs are related to the release request, the fallback approval process is used to establish approvers.
For example, if you select Release Level CI - Review in the Process Name field, and Release Level - Review in the Default Process Name field, when a release reaches the Review phase and has no related CIs, it uses the Release Level - Review process instead of the Release Level CI - Review process.
By contrast, if you cleared the Default Process Name, when a release reaches the Review phase and there are no related Configuration Item records, the release would not have any fallback processes to use. The release would then move ahead to the No Approvers status, as configured for the Approval phase.
Auto Approve?
If you select Yes, no approvers can be mapped to this process on the Approval Mapping form. It defines an auto approval for this phase. By default, this field is empty. If an approver is mapped to the selected phase, you cannot save the value to Yes.
This option is only available for the Change Ad Hoc and Change Management Chain processes (selected within the Process Name selection menu).
For an example of how you can use this flag, see Setting-up-an-emergency-change-process-that-bypasses-the-approval-process.
In earlier releases, this field was labeled System Approval Flag.
Max Approval Levels
This field is displayed when you select the Change Management or Release Management Chain process. You can specify how deep you want to go in the management chain. For example, if you enter 1, the chain extends only to Joe's manager. If you enter 2, the manager of Joe's manager must approve the upgrade, and so on.
However, if you specify 3 but only two levels of approvers are available, the approval transition is done after the second level of approval is completed.
Sort Order
Change Management uses this field to determine which approval process definition record to select when there is more than one record that has been configured with the same Form Name, Company, and Begin status field values. The system does a best match search to find the appropriate record. However, depending on your database, null values may be sorted differently. For example, two of the configuration records start with the same criteria, but the Change Timing/Class values are different (one is set to Emergency and the other is set to Null). In an Oracle database, if you want to ensure that the record with the Emergency Change Timing/Class value is found, you would set the Sort Order to a lower value (for example 10) and the other record with the Null Change Timing/Class value to a higher value (for example 100).
The Sort Order field has a ascending order set for it. As a result, you can set a lower value for the sort order to guarantee that a specific record is found first.
Important: When you upgrade BMC Helix ITSM to the current version, the sort order field for existing approval processes are updated. If any qualifications were defined, the sort order is set to 10; otherwise, it is set to 100.
For example, two of the configuration records start with the same criteria, but the Change Timing/Class values are different.
Depending on your database, for example, on Oracle, to guarantee that the Business Approval - No Impact is found before the Business Approval, use the following values for the Sort Order:
- Set the Sort Order of the Business Approval - No Impact record to 10.
- Set the Sort Order of the Business Approval record to 20.
Click the Status Flow tab to set up the approval cycle for the specific change or release request.
You can use this tab to customize an alternative process flow. For BMC Helix ITSM applications, the states displayed in the Status menu depend on the Form Name selected. If you are configuring the approval cycle for a change request, the states that appear in the Status menu lists are derived from the Status field of the change request.
For Change Management, an additional Change Process Flow list is displayed because users can define custom process flows. This list displays the standard process and custom processes created for Change Management. The contents in the Begin, Approved, Rejected, and No approvers status fields for Change Management are displayed based on the Change process selected. This field is mandatory.For example, change requests start in the Draft status. The Begin field of the Status menu lists indicates the default state that starts the approval process; for change requests, this state is Request for Authorization. When the change request is submitted and moved to the next stage, the Status changes to Request For Authorization in the Begin field and the approval process starts.
- If the change request is approved, its Status changes to Request For Change in the Approved column of the Status menu lists.
- If the change request is rejected, its Status changes to Rejected in the Rejected column of the Status menu lists.
- If there are no approvers defined for the change, its Status changes to Request For Change in the No Approvers column of the Status menu lists.
- To create a status flow, follow these steps:
For more details about these approval process states, see Defining-the-status-of-change-requests-using-the-Status-Flow-tab.- Define a status and a status reason (optional) for the Begin state.
This field specifies which status starts the approval process. - Define a status and a status reason (optional) for the Approved state.
If the change request is approved, the Approval Server changes the status and status reason values on the relevant form to the values that you configure here. - Define a status and a status reason (optional) for the Rejected state.
If the change request is rejected, the Approval Server changes the status and status reason values on the relevant form to the values that you configure here. - Define a status and a status reason (optional) for the No Approvers state.
If the Approval Server does not find any approvers, the Approval Server changes the status and status reason values on the relevant form to the values that you configure here.
- Define a status and a status reason (optional) for the Begin state.
Click the Additional Qualifications tab.
To create additional qualifications in the approval process, select additional fields from the change request (or release request) to qualify the approval process for a particular approval phase.
For example, the default Business Approval - No Impact process is triggered by the No Impact setting in the Change Timing/Class field on the change request, as shown in the figure above.
You can include other fields to qualify which approval process to use for a particular request. For Change Management, you can select any combination of change type, change timing, and timing. For Release Management, you can select any combination of release type, deployment type, and business justification, as shown in the following figure.
- Click Save.
If this record is the first process configuration record you created for the company, the system responds that it created additional process configuration records for all your approval phases (if you created additional approval definition phases). These new configuration records are based on the global settings. You can modify these new records as needed.