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This article describes the change approval features available in Serviceaide Intelligent Service Management. Read this article to understand how to view and manage the approvals or reviews pending from you.

Change Request and Change Calendar options are only available in the ISM Service Management edition. These features are not available in the ISM Service Desk edition.

Change Management and Approval

Change requests pass through a Change Approval process, where the proposed change is analyzed, its impact is assessed, and its requirement is validated and justified. Change approval is done to ensure that the proposed benefits of the change are valid. If approved, the change, if needed, can be implemented with minimal risk.

The application allows the administrator to set up a change approval process for requests that need an approval. An approval group can be set up to approve the change before a change progresses in the ticket lifecycle. Change approval groups can be configured for different types of changes, configuration items, and so on.

For minor changes, where elaborate approval process is not needed, contextual approvals can be sought. For more complex changes, a change can be moved through multiple approvals before it is considered approved.

A Self-Service user who is an Approver or Reviewer, can view a list of tickets pending approval or review through the Self-Service UI. The Self-Service user can click the ticket to see the details that are associated with the change. Users can use the link to approve or reject the change, seek more information, and add comments to the change.

After approval, a change is assigned to a competent group or individual for implementation. The administrator manages the change approval process and approval groups by using workflow actions. Administrators configure the permissions to add or remove approvers or reviewers from an approval group that gets associated with the ticket.

Approval Groups

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) mandates the formation of a Change Approval Board (CAB) and an Emergency Committee (EC). CABs deal with normal changes and ECs deal with emergency changes. CABs and ECs (also named E-CABs) are Approval Groups.

The application allows the creation and management of CABs to approve different types of changes in the organization. The application allows you to set up any number of different approval groups for different types of changes.

For example, the administrator could set up one CAB for network-related changes, another for database-related changes, a third for hardware-related changes. The administrator can further set up workflows, which based on the type of ticket (CCTI), automatically route a ticket to a particular CAB for approval.

For minor changes, an elaborate approval process is not needed, but approval is required. An approval group can have contextual approvers consisting of contacts such as the manager of the requestor, or lead. The actual contact who acts as approver or reviewer is picked from the context of the ticket. If no approval groups are related to the ticket, analysts can manually select approvers and can assign a ticket for approval or review.

The application also allows for identifying reviewers who could review a change. Reviewers have no direct say if a change is approved or rejected. They can provide comments that are related to the change. An approver can consider the comments.

View Change Requests Assigned to Me

Follow these steps:

Click WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK> Ticket Center.
Click Filter and select the Only Me and Change Request check boxes.
Click Apply.

The Ticket Center page now only displays the Change Requests that are assigned to you.

To view other tickets again, click Filter> Clear.

Add an Approver or Reviewer

You can add a contact as well as a group in the role of an approver.

Follow these steps:

Open the ticket which you want to modify.
Click Approval in the anchor links at the top of the page, or scroll down to the Approval section.
Click Add Approvers or Add Reviewers.
The Name Search window is displayed.
Select Contact or Group from the Show drop-down list.
Click View. The contact list or the group list is displayed accordingly.
Save the ticket.

The approver or reviewer is added and displayed in the Approval section.

To remove an approver or reviewer, click the arrow button corresponding to that contact. Select Unrelate Approver/Reviewer. This feature requires special privileges.

If an approver or reviewer adds comment to the ticket, you can view the comments in the corresponding row of the Approval section.

Your administrator creates workflows for different kinds of change requests. When you use the action Submit for Approval for a change request, an approval workflow gets applied to it based on certain predefined conditions. The workflow automatically adds the approvers and reviewers to change requests when you submit them for approval. You can also add approvers and reviewers manually. You can see all such reviewers and approvers in the Approval section of the ticket. Your administrator can also set the workflow for certain change requests as auto-approved, or as not requiring approvals. For such change requests, you do not see any approvers or reviewers in the Approval section.

Submit for Approval

When you use the Submit for Manager's Approval option for a change request, an approval workflow gets applied to it based on certain predefined conditions. The workflow automatically adds the approvers and reviewers to change requests when you submit them for approval. You can also add approvers and reviewers manually, as explained above.

Follow these steps:

Open the ticket which you want to modify.
On the Actions menu, click Submit for Manager's Approval after adding the approvers or reviewers. If you have specified the Approver as Group, the list of contacts added to the specified approver group is retrieved and displayed in the List of Approval Groups window.
Click Select to submit the change request for approval.

After the ticket is submitted, the application displays the message, This ticket is in the approval phase and attributes cannot be edited.

When a ticket is approved or rejected, a notification is sent to all the stakeholders related to the ticket. Stakeholders include the ticket owner, the requester of the ticket, other Approvers, Reviewers, and the Change Manager. Your administrator can add other recipients into the list.

View Pending Requests (Outstanding Items)

You can view your pending approval and review requests on the Outstanding Items page in the application. To see the requests in your queue navigate to WORKSPACES> Outstanding Items.
Click the expand icon to view the details of a request.

Notes: You can also view the custom attributes in the Additional Information section, in the Outstanding Items page. These are information fields which are displayed in the Approval and Review section.

Approve or Reject a Ticket

You can approve or reject a change, view approval comments or seek more information before approving a change. When an approver approves/review a ticket, the ticket will be removed from the outstanding items, both from the Approval and Review section. This helps the approver to focus only on the tickets which are yet to be approved or reviewed.

Follow these steps:

Click WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK> Outstanding Items.
The Home tab lists the pending approval, reviews, and feedback requests. You can click the link corresponding to the approval request to view the ticket.
Click the Expand button corresponding to the approval request and read the details of the ticket. You can enter your own comments in the Comments field. Click the Decisions tab to view the comments and decisions of other approvers.
Click Approve to approve the request, else click Reject. If you need more information, mention your requirements in the Comments field and click Need More Info.

When you request for more information, your comment is added to the comments log. The request stays in your Outstanding Items list until you approve or reject it.

Some tickets can have multiple approvers, but the approval of only one approver can be sufficient for processing them. If one of the approvers has approved the ticket, the approval request moves out of your Outstanding Items list. If the request is withdrawn, an approval request can move out of your Outstanding Items list before you approve it.
If you are out of office, you can still approve or reject. The ticket must be visible in your Outstanding Items list to approve or reject it. If the request is not visible in your list, it means that the delegate has already responded to the request. If your delegate submits a response, you can revoke it. You can, communicate your decision to revoke the response to the service desk, for action on their part.
Submit your approval twice, if you are:
- An approver for a ticket
- A Delegate for another approver of the same ticket

First you submit the approval for yourself, and then for the person who has assigned you as a delegate.
Every ticket is treated according to a predefined workflow and routed to the appropriate support groups. You cannot send a ticket for approval to your supervisor before submitting it to the support group. Your administrator can create a workflow to route tickets to your supervisor for approval, before routing to a support group. This routing is not visible to you from the Self-Service user interface.

Approve Tickets through Email

You can approve a ticket that seeks your approval or review through email.

Follow these steps:

Open the notification mail seeking your Approval or Review for a ticket.
Click Reply and respond to the mail. Do not alter the subject line. The subject line must start with the words Re: or RE: and the ticket number. For any emails that are forwarded from another mailbox; the subject line could contain FW: and ticket number.
As, the first word in the body of the Reply; enter Approved or Rejected.

Your approval comment is appended to the ticket. You can see that the ticket is no longer pending your approval. The first word in the message body must be approved or rejected. Otherwise, the action does not apply to the ticket. Your response is not applied to the ticket and the pending approval continues to show in your Outstanding Items list.

You can also click the direct URL Link to view the ticket details before you approve or reject the ticket.

Review a Ticket

If you are designated as a reviewer for a ticket, you can view the request in your Outstanding Items. You can also provide your feedback. When a reviewer adds a comment in a ticket and submit, the ticket will be removed from the outstanding items from the Review section.

Follow these steps:

Click WORKSPACES> SERVICE DESK> Outstanding Items.
The Home tab lists the pending approval, reviews, and feedback requests. You can click the link corresponding to the review request to view the ticket.
Click the Expand button corresponding to the review request and read the details of the ticket. Click the Decisions tab and view the comments of other reviewers.
Enter your review feedback in the Comments field and click Submit. If you need more information about the ticket, mention your requirements in the Comments field and click Need More Info.

When you submit the review comments for a request, it moves out of your Outstanding Items list. You can no longer view the request.

When you request for more information, your comment is added to the comments log. The request stays in your Outstanding Items list until you submit the review feedback.

As a reviewer you can only submit your feedback on a ticket. You cannot approve or reject it. A review request can move out of your Outstanding Items list before you complete the review. If the approval criteria for the ticket has already been met, the request moves out.

Create and View Change Requests Using Change Calendar

The change calendar provides you a comprehensive and consolidated view of the existing change requests. The Planned changes are viewed in a calendar format in day, week, and month wise. The change calendar also provides you an option to create the change request.

Follow these steps:

Click Workspace> SERVICE DESK> Change Calendar.
By default, Planned changes of the current month displays.
To create Planned changes: Click New Change Request and enter the information such as Name and Description. Click Save.
(Optional) To apply filters to view the Planned changes: Click Filter and enter the necessary information. Click Apply.
(Optional) To view the brief information of the Planned changes, mouse over the change request.
Note: The color of the tickets depends on the Change Type, such as green for standard change request.
(Optional) To get updated changes, modify any Planned changes and click the Refresh icon.
(Optional) To view the Planned changes in a new tab, double-click on a Planned changes.

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