Permanent focus on Scheduled Date/Time in Change Requests

[Berto2002]

After our Change Requests are authorised, I want everyone who opens the record to see the focus is on the Scheduled Date and Time fields. Else the default is the Update/Comment field. This keeps the Change Window front of mind.

How do I do this please? I can see how this is done with the Suspend option but I don't want it to be in suspense during this period.

[Steven Boardman]

@Berto2002 i am not sure this option is possible (without the suspend options)

As a different approach have you considered expanding on what you are currently doing with the Change Banners?

You can keep the Change Schedule front and centre for everyone, irrespective of which action tab they land or are using?

The actual dates of the change can both be added:

* Manually by adding a notice via the information section on the request

* Automated via the BPM - once the change is scheduled and authorised, you can use a Get Request Info node, and then Add Notice node and use the variable picker to inject the actual start and end details into the Banner

Steve

 

[Berto2002]

Steve, that is a great option and I've put that into our test flow.

Do you know if there is a way to LOCK the fields for Scheduling Change so that beyond a certain point they cannot be edited (such as after authorisation)?

[Steven Boardman]

@Berto2002 great.

Yep there is an option to both lock and unlock any of the action items (and the request details section) at any point in a workflow - so you can have full control over which actions are available and when

There is a section on the wiki which covers this - https://wiki.hornbill.com/index.php?title=Service_Manager_Business_Process_Workflow

It also explains, how users with specific roles can still have the rights to amend locked actions

Steve

 

[Berto2002]

Hi @Steven Boardman. A little issuette here. I would have hoped our timezone was congruent but something in that config is posting the Notice time different from the Actual time; like a zone mismatch.

[Berto2002]

Hello @Steven Boardman, I have seen this topic which helps me understand how I must do a Cloud automation to get a properly formatted date: 

The principle works but I cannot see how to get two dates through this feature.

I tried to use one Cloud Automation for each date:

But they both output the SAME OUTCOME and I cannot edit it to be different for each case:

So the latter over-writes the former and thus, my Notice looks like this where both of the times are the same:

Can you please clarify how I go about getting the TWO dates as you did in your example above on this post ()?

Many thanks in advance,

Berto2002

 

[Steve Giller]

@Berto2002 If I've understood you correctly I think the Result Reference is what you need in order to distinguish between the different Node outputs.

[Steven Boardman]

@Berto2002 as @Steve Giller suggest is looks like you need to have Different resultreference field names for each of the nodes

Set scheduled start date time format

Set scheduled end date time format 

Then in the variable picker in the notice node, you will need to pick the output param from each of the two nodes -

You will notice that the output name for the Date will inherit the Result Reference you changed it too.

if you have the same Result Reference name in each of the nodes, you will get the same value in the notice.

[Berto2002]

Hi both. Thank you, this is indeed what I was missing. I can now differentiate the dates and the Notice works. What I am not sure about yet - but will test - is, if I alter the Scheduled Dates, what I have to do to have the Notice pick-up the new dates in case of Scheduling alterations.

However, this issue has thrown-up that I think our timezone was incorrectly implemented on our system. The times shown in the Notice are in GMT which means they are displaying one hour behind the real time in the UK!

I have raised a Premier Support ticket for this since messing with timezones might have unintended consequences.