Dear Users,

Next release for ServiceDesk Plus Cloud will include "Release Management and Change Enhancements" and below are the details: 

Release Management

ServiceDesk Plus Cloud now supports Release Management in the IT help desk. Release management allows you to plan, build, test, and deploy releases to the production environment. A release can be defined as the process of delivering a set of authorized changes to IT services in a controlled environment. You can use release management to deploy hardware, software, documentation, processes, guidelines, policies, and other components to service operations.

You can initiate the release process for an authorized change request. Throughout its life cycle, the release process is closely associated with the change management process.

ServiceDesk Plus Cloud supports the following 9 stages that are essential to any release process:

• Submission
  
• Planning
  
• Development
  
• Testing
  
• UAT
  
• Deployment
  
• Training
  
• Review
  
• Closure
  

A stage is a significant event or a milestone that involves a major deliverable in a release life cycle. Each stage contains statuses that indicate the progress of a release within the stage. Besides statuses, each stage has its planning and schedule, roles and approvals, and tasks and downtimes. To learn more, click here. 

You can create a release request easily by using pre-configured templates. Associate workflows with release requests to define the direction of the flow of the release process. Using workflows, you can include statuses in each stage, set up approvals, allocate stagewise permissions to users, and configure notifications to be sent to stakeholders and other users.

The following screenshot captures a workflow configured for major releases:

UI Implementations

With the introduction of release management, a new module called Releases has been implemented in ServiceDesk Plus Cloud.

Release configurations have been introduced under the highlighted tabs in Setup and can be configured only by the SDAdmin.

Changes

Enhancements

New Stages

• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): The UAT stage is placed after Implementation in which users perform functionality tasks and approve the implemented change. To know more, click here.
  
• Release: On receiving approval from UAT stage, deployment of the change can be tracked in this stage. To know more, click here.
  

Stage-Based Tasks in Change and Change Template

You can now add tasks to any change stage. You can also predefine tasks in the change template which will be imported immediately on the change request creation. To know more, click here.

Overwrite Field Support while Modifying Change Template

Changing the template of an existing change request gives you options to overwrite fields and delete tasks and their dependencies, as follows:

• Overwrite all field values
  
• Overwrite only empty field values
  
• Not overwrite any fields
  
• Delete the tasks and their dependencies configured from the existing template
  

Copy Change

Create a customized copy of any change request using the Copy Change option under Details >> Actions >> Copy Change. To know more, click here.

Change History

• You can now search through Change History for specific items. Narrow down your search by operations and fields. 
  
• You can filter the Change History by time and also sort it. 
  

Change Dashboards 

• Time filter is now available for the Open Changes widget.
  
• View workflow execution of pending change requests in the dashboard by using URL widgets.
  
• Detailed view of a pie chart is now available for all Change widgets.
  
• New widgets called Closed Changes by Closure Code and Open Changes by Workflow Status have been added.
  

Change Conversations

You can now forward and reply to emails and system notifications from within the change conversations page. Also, emails and system notifications are available as separate filters.

Setup

• Under Automation >> Custom Actions, you can configure Request and Change notifications for organization roles in addition to users.
  
• Under Users & Permissions >> Roles, permissions for system roles now include the following options for Changes: All in group & assigned to technician, Assigned to technician.
  

• Field Updates through Change Workflow now includes more fields.
  
• Default notification content for change stage statuses are now enhanced.
  
• Change Closure Rules now include Checklist from Planning.
  
• Change Closure Rules now include Associated tasks should be completed in all stages.
  
• Attachments from Impact, Backout, Rollout, and Review will now be considered under Change Closure Rules.
  

Reports

Change custom reports now include the following columns: Impact Details, Rollout Plan, Backout Plan, CheckList, Next Review On, Review Description, and Close Description.

Behavior Changes

• Downtime data is now moved from Implementation stage to Release stage.
  
• You can now add your work logs under Tasks in each change stage. Work Logs as a separate tab is no more available under the Implementation stage. 
  

• The Downtime tab under Planning is now renamed as Schedule. This tab captures Release Schedule besides downtime.
  
• The Change Approver role can no longer be deleted.
  
• Change ID display format will now be CH-<numerical value>. This modified format will ensure clear identification of the module during email parsing.