Managing response plans
Response plans are used to automatically set values on a Change. For example, they can be used to select the correct job plans for your Changes. This capability is useful for defining how different types of Changes will be handled. The use of response plans results in predictable, repeatable behavior in the processing of Change requests, because the response plans ensure that similar Changes always behave the same way.
A response plan contains a set of conditions and a set of resulting actions. Examples of conditions include classification=move virtual machine or priority=high. Example actions include job plan=emergency or owner=Network_Admin_Group.
When the Apply Response Plan action is run on a Change, the values in the Change are used to evaluate the conditions that are specified in the Change response plans. If all of the conditions on a response plan evaluate as true, the actions specified in that response plan (for example, applying a job plan to the Change, or setting the owner on the Change) are executed.
When the Apply Response Plan action is run, it is possible that the values in the Change could match conditions in more than one response plan. For example, a Change might have the vmmove classification and a risk value of 1. This might match conditions in multiple response plans. For example, two of the built-in response plans, PMCHGSTANA and PMCHGHIRSK, both match this Change. If this occurs, the response plan with the lesser rank value is used. Since the PMCHGHIRSK response plan has a lesser rank (15 vs 90), it will be selected, and the built-in PMCHGNORML job plan is selected for this Change. Therefore, when you build response plans, you use the Rank field to indicate your preference for which response plan to use when more than one match values in a Change.
As a service provider, you can associate one or more customers with a response plan. Associate customers with a response plan if you want the response plan to apply only to Changes that you process for these customers. If you do not associate a customer with a response plan, it can be applied to Changes for any customer.
For more information about response plans, click to open the Response Plans application, and consult the online help that is provided for this application.
The Response Plans application includes customer-related fields and actions that are available for use only with the Service Provider version of this product. You must have the Service Provider version to use these fields and actions; they cannot be used if you have the non-Service Provider version.
This product ships with a built-in set of response plans that can be used for a wide variety of Changes in the data center. For a list of these built-in response plans, see the Response plans topic in the Content section. You can also click , type PMCHG in the Response Plan field, and click Enter to display a list of the built-in plans. Click the name of any of these individual plans to view details about that plan.