OverviewThis recipe will outline a very simplistic change management process. If you don't yet have a formal change management process, or are looking to track basic change requests in Zendesk Support and don't know what to do, this is a great place to start. In this recipe, we make some assumptions - specifically, we assume only the Change Approval Board has to approve changes, emergency changes do not need to be approved, and there is a limited amount of information to be collected for a given change. Skill Level: Basic Time Required: 30-60 minutes
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Ingredient List
- 2 custom fields
- 1 group
- 2 views
- 2 triggers
Instructions
Fields
Begin by creating your custom fields .
First, create a new drop-down field named "Change Type." Add the following options: N/A, Minor, Major, Emergency. This field will help identify the type of change being implemented.
Next, create a second drop-down named "Approval." Add the following options: Requested, Pending Approval, Approved, Rejected, Not Required. This field will help track the approval status of the change being requested.
Groups
Now it's time to create a new group . Name it "Change Advisory Board." You may have multiple groups that will need to approve a change, but for this recipe we are only including one.
Views
Your Change Advisory Board will want to have a list of change requests to work from. Create a view called "CAB Review" to facilitate the CAB process. Set up the conditions as follows:
Meet all of the following conditions:
Status [less than] Solved
Approval [is] Pending Approval
Group [is] Change Advisory Board
Before saving your view, modify Columns included in table . You'll likely want to include ID, Change Type, Approval, Subject. Group by Change Type, and Order by ID. Then make the view available for all agents in group "Change Advisory Board."
While you're in views, create a second view called "Emergency Changes." Set up the conditions as follows:
Meet all of the following conditions:
Status [less than] Closed
Change Type [is] Emergency
Approval [is] Not Required
You can set up similar columns as the first view, to taste.
Workflow
For the icing, we'll be creating a workflow to request approvals for minor and major changes, and automatically approve emergency changes. To begin, create a new trigger named "Auto-Approve Emergency Changes." Set up the conditions as follows:
Meet all of the following conditions:
Status [less than] Solved
Change Type [is] Emergency
Meet any of the following conditions:
Approval [is] Requested
Approval [is] - (blank)
Set up the actions for "Auto-Approve Emergency Changes" as follows:
Perform these actions:
[Approval] Approved
[Email group] Change Advisory Board
Subject:
CAB Approval Requested for #{{ticket.id}}: {{ticket.title}}
Body:
Change request (#{{ticket.id}}) has been submitted and is awaiting CAB approval
<br /><br />{{ticket.comments_formatted}}
The email step is totally optional, but it might be nice to notify members of CAB that an emergency change request came through. If you decide to email the group, enter an appropriate subject and body.
Now when an emergency change request is logged, it will be automatically approved, and will be visible in your "Emergency Changes" view until the change has been closed.
Let's move on to requesting approvals for non-emergency changes. Create a new trigger named "Request Change Approval." Set up the conditions as follows:
Meet all of the following conditions:
Status [less than] Solved
Change Type [is not] Emergency
Change Type [is not] - (blank)
Approval [is] Requested
Set up the actions for "Request Change Approval" as follows:
Perform these actions:
[Group] Change Advisory Board
[Approval] Pending Approval
After a change requester fills out a change request ticket, they can flip the "Approval" field to "Requested." The ticket will be automatically routed to CAB for review.
Voila! Simple change management.
Need something more advanced? Try out our Change Management Process Wizard .
7 Comments
Great article Erin. I've been looking at third party tools for this, but this helps us keep change management in our Zendesk environment. I went through and created this in our Zendesk environment....recipe was very easy to follow. Question though: How does an agent create a new change request ticket? When the agent tries to create a new ticket, he/she simply sees the regular ticket creation form (for general IT support). How does an agent specify the ticket type as change request?
Couldn't create a new ticket view because we don't have enterprise, but the new fields are visible in the general ticket form. Just didn't know where to look. All good.
Appreciate the follow-up Nick :)
If you ever have any questions regarding features available on your plan level feel free to take a look at our Plan Comparison Page.
Cheers!
If we would like to have 2 approvals. One by Peer Review and one by CAB Approval how would we set that up? So after it is approved by a Peer Review it will automatically go to the CAB Approval. Unless they are emergency then they will be auto approved.
Can you as a Requester still modify a change request after it was approved by the CAB?
Hi Angela Franklin,
I would suggest adding 2 additional custom fields - checkboxes. Peer Review and CAB Approval. Once both of those checkboxes are checked, I'd put a trigger in to flip the Change Request status to Approved.
Maxime Delclef,
Any Zendesk ticket can be modified by an Agent unless it is in a Closed state (this is managed in your Automations - Solved to Closed status). If you want to make Approved change request tickets go straight to Closed, you can add an action to your Triggers in this process to update the status to Closed rather than Solved. Note, this would mean that the ticket is uneditable altogether and cannot be modified so if there is any sort of correction or change in the change request (wow this might be confusing but stick with me), then I would suggest using the Create Followup to create a new ticket which then references the first.
Also, if either of you are concerned with people changing fields when they shouldn't (hopefully by accident), you can put in a series of triggers to check for that. Like, if the Approval field is changed from Approved to Pending, perhaps automatically have a trigger find that and set it back to approved and post a Private Comment with a message to the user.
Hope some of this is helpful!
There is a free app for Change Management process
https://sweethawk.co/zendesk/change-manager-app
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