Managing change request collisions in Smart IT

Smart IT detects collisions between change requests and helps you to take actions to manage and resolve the potentially harmful conflicts between these change requests.

Collision detection is enabled by default and requires no configuration. You can disable this functionality for individual tenants (or for the default tenant, if multitenancy is not enabled). For more information, see Disabling collision management and impact analysis in Smart IT.

What is a collision?

A collision occurs when the same configuration item (CI) is related to two or more change requests, and the schedule dates for the change requests overlap.

Before you begin

To access collision management functionality, you must have the required permissions. See Smart IT Roles and Permissions.

Best practice
We recommend that you run an impact analysis to detect and relate additional CIs to a change request before you try to detect collisions. For more information, see Determining-the-impact-of-changes-in-Smart-IT.

How do I detect collisions and take action on them in Smart IT?

Smart IT detects collisions after CIs have been related to a change request and scheduled dates have been specified. Potential collisions are shown when you are creating or updating the change request, but you can take action on the collisions only after the change request has been saved in the system.

During the creation of a new change request, the list of collisions (if any) for related CIs appears in the Dates section after you enter values for Scheduled Start Date and Scheduled End Date. You can view a brief description of each collision, such as the type of change, risk level, summary, and change coordinator, or you can drill down to view full details. With the list of collisions, a link is also provided that allows you to contact the change coordinators by email, in case you need to discuss schedules and priorities.

In the universal client, collisions are also displayed in a flexible calendar that allows you to display collisions in the current day, week, or month, or in a book view that spans several days. You can also apply filters to show only the collisions you want, based on criteria such as the company, status, service CI, and so on. Detected (active) collisions are outlined in red. The calendar also includes an option to show related events, such as CI outages.

Before you save a new change request, you can change the scheduled start and end dates, and then run collision detection again. (In the universal client, you can also reschedule the change request by dragging and dropping it to a new position on the calendar.) When you save the change request, the system warns you again about potential collisions.

After the change request is saved in the system, you can take action on the collisions. Active collisions are displayed in the alert banner near the top of the change request details. From links in the banner, you can view details about the conflicting change requests or view the profile of the change coordinator. To manage collisions, click or tap Take Action.

From the list of collisions in the Dates section, you can select one or more change requests and associated CIs, and specify a collision status. The collision status indicates which collisions are active (Detected or Investigating) or not active (Ignored or Resolved). You can provide a rationale to explain the reason for the status you select. The collision status and rationale are recorded in the Activity feed of the current change request and the change request that is in collision. See How collision statuses are stored in Smart IT.

Notes

If you change the scheduled dates for a change request, Smart IT displays updated collision information based on the new dates, but you cannot manage the collisions until the new dates are saved.
Collision statuses and rationales for previously saved dates are maintained in the system and become visible if you save the change request with those dates again.

To manage collisions for an existing change request, whether the collisions are active or inactive, open the change request and click or tap Take Action from the alert banner.

For more information about using collision statuses as a change manager or change coordinator, see Collision Status.

How collision statuses are stored in Smart IT

In Smart IT, a single collision status record is shared by both the current change request and the change request that is in collision. If one person performs an action on the collision from either change request, the status and rationale (if any) are visible from both change requests.

Smart IT displays the individual collision status recorded for each change request until you update the collision status for one of the change requests in Smart IT. At that time, Smart IT stores a single collision status and rationale for both change requests. If you update the collision status in Smart IT, you can provide a rationale.