Creating a Change

The information that you supply when you define a new Change depends on whether you are creating an express or an advanced Change. Many of the fields available for an advanced Change are not displayed in the express Change GUI.

About this task

Information you supply also depends on whether you use response plans; which workflow you use to direct your Changes; whether you want to specify assessors, approvers, or implementation tasks in addition to those in the job plan; and so on.

Before you begin to create Changes in your data center, it is recommended that you review the Planning for Changes section of the information center. This section introduces workflows, response plans, and job plans, and describes how these aids make processing Changes easier and more efficient. Your administrator will have consulted the Planning section to set up response plans, workflows, and job plans that can be used for your Changes.

In addition, it is recommended that you review the “Change process overview” topics, along with the topics in the Process overview section that describe the Change types, the automatic selection of Change type, and fully automated Changes. When you create a Change, the workflow performs a number of calculations based on values that you have specified in the Change for risk, priority, impact, urgency, and probability of failure. The Process overview section describes these calculations.

After the workflow makes its calculations, a response plan is found that has conditions that match the Change values. The response plan locates the appropriate job plan for the change, and the job plan brings in a Change type that is used to determine the process steps that are followed. For more information, see “Process variations based on type”.

The date and time at which you opened a new Change are displayed in the Reported Date field. After you save the new Change, its status is WAPPR.

Following is a set of guidelines for creating a Change. As these guidelines show, the interactions among the workflow, the response plan (if one is used), the job plan (if one is used), and your own specifications determine how the Change occurs and how it is processed.

Some of the information categories described in this topic do not apply if you are creating an express Change.