Browse documentation
Raising a change
Select Changes (under Operations), then New change.
What to fill in
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Title and description | What you intend to do. |
| Type | Chosen from the change types your organisation has defined — some skip approval entirely. See Change advisory boards and change types. |
| Risk, impact, priority | Your own assessment. These feed the risk score but are not the whole of it. |
| Assignee | Who is doing the work. Approval cannot start without one. |
| Affected items | The sites, devices, servers and services this touches. |
| Scheduled window | Start and end. Leave it out and the change is unscheduled. |
| Causes an outage | Whether the work takes something down. |
| Implementation plan | How you'll do it. |
| Rollback plan | How you'll undo it. Required before approval on high-risk changes and anything taking an outage. |
Affected items do more than describe
It's tempting to skip affected items on a small change. Don't — they drive three things that only work if the list is filled in:
- Blast radius — what this change can take down.
- Collision detection — whether another change is already booked against the same things in the same window.
- Impacted contacts — who to tell, drawn from the ownership and stakeholder records of the items you named.
A change with no affected items has no blast radius, so nothing can warn you about it.
The changes page
The left rail holds saved views:
- Active changes — everything in flight
- Awaiting approval — blocked, waiting on a decision
- Running now — currently inside its implementation window
- Causing outage — flagged as taking something down
- Unscheduled — no window booked
- Window collisions — overlapping another change on shared items
Above the list, a KPI strip summarises the same picture, and a next seven days calendar shows what's booked, marking overlaps.
Working from an existing change
- Duplicate copies a change you've run before — useful for recurring work.
- Similar past changes surfaces comparable changes and how they went. A change like one that succeeded before scores slightly lower risk.
Notes & tips
- Fill in the rollback plan early. It lowers the risk score immediately, and on a high-risk change it's required before approval can start.
- Unscheduled changes don't appear on the calendar, so nobody can see them coming. Book a window as soon as you know it.