Change scheduling

Service Manager provides a Forward Schedule of Change. This calendar is accessible to anyone with view rights for Changes. Users with only view rights will have a read-only view and users with update rights have read/write access.

Service Manager provides two options for a Forward Schedule of Change:

  • An embedded Change Calendar (also referred to as Service Manager Calendar), which is based on a Calendar widget. This calendar can display time period records and associated business records in a graphic and intuitive user interface. It enables users in different locations and departments of your organization to optimize their task planning accordingly.

    Service Manager Calendar has a huge benefit of being a part of Service Manager. Its time period rules engine more effectively integrates time period policy into the change process, with notifications of time period violations and the capability to require additional approvals if time periods rules are violated. It is easier to initially configure and maintain.

  • The Release Control change calendar (also referred to as Release Control Calendar), in which the Change Requests - Calendar View pane in Release Control displays change requests that have been processed by Micro Focus Release Control for each calendar day in calendar format. Release Control Calendar requires an integration with Micro Focus Release Control.

    Release Control is better at change impact assessment, conflict detection, and leveraging CMDB data to reveal how multiple changes interact. While it offers time period rules, they do not interface with the change process. The Release Control interface still handles a very large system with a huge change workload better than the Service Manager Calendar view.

    For Release Control customers that are not leveraging the change assessment functionality (it depends on service and application mapping to be effective) and are primarily using it to provide a forward schedule of change, Service Manager Calendar may be a good replacement for Release Control Calendar and its time period capabilities can provide a nice enhancement to the change process.

Projected service outage

Service Manager has fields to capture the Scheduled Downtime Start and Scheduled Downtime End, as well as the Actual Downtime Start and Actual Downtime End that is the result of the Change.

This information is visible in the Configuration Item or Business Service fields to show the Projected Service Outages for that CI or Service.

 

Related topics

Calendar Administration
Release Control Calendar
Notifying Service Subscribers of a Planned Outage