Lock Schedule should not obscure schedule in Change Requests

[Berto2002]

My Change Request workflow locks the Change Schedule once the CR is Authorised; so no-one can mess with it. In the build phase, we let Change Management Users input the Schedule.

One of my team pointed-out that makes it really difficult to see at a glance when the CR is Scheduled for because they see this:

My view as Admins is this and I find it very useful to be able to see the Schedule at the top all the time:

My requirement: for my all users to be able to see the schedule at any time but only to be able to input the dates before the CR is Authorised.

It seems like we need an enhancement here for the "Lock Schedule" action to be altered from obscuring the field contents to simply making them read-only. I cannot see a business case for the existing functionality: why would we ever want to have the schedule completely hidden from users? My workaround is that I am now going to have to post a Notice on the top to show the start and end dates and times; but that is problematic because it doesn't translate for GMT/BST...

Alternatively, I am missing-out on the use of a less-drastic action somewhere which allows me to set that schedule to read-only instead of locked or to use permissions differently to achieve the outcome.

Comments?

 

PS the Schedule Change and Remove from Schedule buttons are not equal sizes and the GUI changes last year made that happen. Maybe now is a good time to highlight a minor fix is needed there!

[Steve Giller]

52 minutes ago, Berto2002 said:

It seems like we need an enhancement here for the "Lock Schedule" action to be altered

I think this is the explanation - it's an Action, not a View.
You don't go to the Update Action to view updates, or the Attach Action to view Attachments.

There may be a case for having the Schedule visible in it's own panel or on the Info Pane on the right, of course, but I can't see that the Action Bar is the correct place for this.

[Berto2002]

My users made the following suggestions:

1. would be perfect if the schedule showed say below change description
2. or in right hand part below your name where the authorised status is

I get your point about Action not View; so it does open-up the question of how it would be best to conspicuously show the Schedule which is a crucial part of the Change.

[Steve Giller]

Personally I'd also favour the Info Pane top right alongside the other details like Status, Priority, and Category which would have the information available at all times.

If there's more information than can be cleanly displayed there, or additional information is available for a Change it may warrant it's own Panel under the Description Panel.
In the meantime you may be able to display Change Info by adding fields to the Description Panel itself, but I've not tested that option.

[Berto2002]

Are you going to make this suggestion to Development for us @Steve Giller?

[Steve Giller]

Bluntly, no - an internal request cannot gain traction from Customer support which is why we ask that an Enhancement is posted on the forum.

[Guest Ehsan]

@Berto2002,

The timeline section of a request can be filtered by the Schedule type where the activities relating to schedule can be seen. This is open to all users with access to the request.

[Berto2002]

This is a nice-to-know point, thank you; just feels a bit hard work for people to have to do that when schedule is such a fundamental part of a change.

[Guest Ehsan]

@Berto2002,

My suggestion aimed to provide you with a short term solution today. Service Manager is currently under review and we will be refining the services portfolio, request management and FAQs - in the shorter, we will not be able to commit to this enhancement but we will consider this when we have completed our current commitments.

Ehsan

[Guest Ehsan]

@Berto2002,

We have had a look and we will display the change schedule in the Information sidebar. This will be implemented this week, please do expect to see this enhancement rolled out as an update in the next couple of weeks.

Ehsan

[Berto2002]

Wow; you guys are pulling one out of the bag there; thank you. I am sure this will be very welcome for everyone!

[Guest Ehsan]

@Berto2002,

Just wanted to confirm that this change was released to live today.

• Change schedule is now displayed in the Information sidebar when viewing a Change Request or Release.

Ehsan

[Berto2002]

This is super exciting and I've pushed the news out to the whole team straight away. Thank you! It's a great leap forward in the visibility of changes for the average agent

[Guest Ehsan]

@Berto2002,

I am glad to hear