Change Request Form Elements

When Commander and Service Portal users want to request changes to their deployed resources or virtual services, they must submit their requests through customized change requests that you have created.

When you configure a change request for users, you can add the form elements listed in the table below. The elements that you add will determine the appearance and content of the form that's presented to users when they make a change request.

You can access request form values through workflow variables. See Example: Map Request Form Fields to Variables.

Form Elements Available for Change Requests

Standard

Header

Adds heading text to the form.

Text

Adds explanatory text to the form.

Input Text Field

Allows the requester to enter a value, such as a note or a password.

Important: If users will enter a password on the request form, enable Hide User Input. When Hide User Input is enabled:

  • Asterisks (*) are displayed for this field value in the Request Details dialog, emails, and landing pages.
  • The password is stored, encrypted, in the Commander database.
  • The plain-text password can be accessed through the approval workflow variable #{request.services[x].settings.inputField['field name']}. For example, if you set the Display Label for the Input Text Field to "Password", you would access the password in an approval workflow script with the variable #{request.services[1].settings.inputField['Password']}.
  • If a request containing a password is copied, the password is blanked out.

Dynamic List

Allows the requester to select options from lists that are updated in real time from an external source. If the lists can depend on other form elements, the selection of one form element can dictate the available choices for another list. For more information, see Add Dynamic Lists to Forms.

Required By

The date the requester requires the change.

In the Default Lead Time (in days) field, you can enter a number if you want a default Required By date to be displayed on the form. Users can adjust this date.

File Upload

Allows the requester to upload files during the change request process. Uploaded files are added to the VM's local directory as configured in the completion workflow using the Copy Uploaded File workflow step.

Service / Component Properties

Primary Owner

Allows the requester to specify a primary owner for the service / component, or, if you enable the Display Only option, displays the primary owner on the form. Not available for forms targeting cloud accounts. For more information, see Resource and Service Ownership

Select one of the following allowed actions:

  • Add as new Primary Owner
  • Replace existing Primary Owner
  • Replace all existing owners

Organization

Allows the requester to assign the component to another organization. This could be used to free up quota, or to transfer a VM from a testing organization to a development organization. Not available for forms targeting cloud accounts.

From Visibility, select one of the following to control which organizations the requester can select:

  • All Organizations
  • Requester's Organizations
  • Custom list — Select one or more organizations from the list.
  • To ensure that the resource or virtual service is visible to the primary owner, the primary owner must be a member of the selected organization. If the primary owner isn't a member of the selected organization, the error "Primary owner isn't a member of the organization" error appears in approval emails, approval landing pages, and the Request Details dialog.
  • When manually approving requests, approvers can use the $ORGANIZATION deployment parameter to assign an organization. Form more information, see Specify Deployment Parameters for Services.
  • If multiple organizations are available, approvers can also use the Organization list on the approval landing page. Administrators can also change the target organization in the Fulfill Request dialog.

Custom/Placement Attribute

Allows the requester to specify a value for a custom attribute or placement attribute. Select an attribute from the list. The (Placement) suffix distinguishes placement attributes from custom attributes.

You can click Create New Attribute to configure a new custom attribute or placement attribute. See Work with Custom Attributes or Configure Placement Attributes.

You can create relationships between custom attributes, so that the value selected for one attribute affects the selectable values for other attributes. See Create Relationships Between Attributes Used on Forms.

Expiry Date

Allows the requester to extend the expiry date of a service. Not available for forms targeting cloud accounts.

Another way to allow an expiry extension is through the Expiry Extension setting in the Expiry policy. For more information, see Manage Expired Services Through Policies.

Allow "Never Expires": Display the Never Expires checkbox on the service request form.

Component Name

Allows the requester to change the display name of a VM component. See also Customize Naming Conventions. Not available for forms targeting cloud accounts.

Schedule

Allows the requester to specify when a change request will be fulfilled. All parts of a change request are fulfilled at the same time. The Schedule form element takes precedence over the automation options in the approval workflow. For more information, see Create Approval Workflows for Change Requests.

Select one or more allowed options to display for users:

  • Immediately: Changes are fulfilled immediately after approval.
  • In Maintenance Window: Changes are fulfilled during the next maintenance window.

    If the approval process isn't complete before the next maintenance window begins, the changes are automatically rescheduled for the next maintenance window.

  • Specific Time: Changes are fulfilled at the specified time.

    After the request is approved, a scheduled task is created. The requester will be able to see and delete this scheduled task if necessary. For more information, see Schedule Tasks.

    If the approval process isn't complete before the specified time, the changes won't be fulfilled. The request state will be "Failed", and a comment will appear in the Request Details in red, indicating that the request was not fulfilled. An administrator must manually fulfill the request in this case.

Resources (not available for forms targeting cloud accounts)

Instance Type

Allows the requester to change the resources for a public cloud instance. The requester can select only instance types that are compatible with the current instance type.

For EC2 instances, the requester can also set the EBS Optimized option on the form if the selected instance type supports it.

If you're managing GCP instances, the option Allow Custom CPU/Memory for GCP Instances is displayed for this form element. GCP allows users to choose both predefined and custom instance types. When you enable this option, you can use the CPU Count and Max Memory Size options to limit the number of CPUs and the amount of memory users can request. Note that Commander doesn't validate the values you enter for CPU Count or Max Memory Size. The maximum number of CPUs allowed for GCP custom machine types is 96. The memory for a GCP custom machine type must be a multiple of 256 MB, and must be between 0.9 and 6.5 GB per vCPU (unless Extended Memory is enabled; note that Extended Memory incurs additional charges). If you don't enable Allow Custom CPU/Memory for GCP Instances, users can only request a predefined instance type, even for instances that currently have a custom machine type. Therefore, if you allow custom machine types in your environment, you should enable this option to prevent confusion.

CPU Count

Allows the requester to specify CPU requirements for a VM component. You can limit the number of CPUs that users can request by entering a comma-separated list of values (for example, 1,2,4).

This element is only displayed for private cloud VM component forms.

Memory

Allows the requester to specify memory requirements for a VM component. You can limit the amount of memory that users can request.

This element is only displayed for private cloud VM component forms.

Storage

Allows the requester to specify storage requirements for a VM or virtual service component on vCenter or SCVMM. The selectable storage tier values can be customized. For more information, see Cost Models - Storage page.

You must ensure that datastores are available to back all storage tiers in use.

It's not possible to resize IDE disks, independent disks, or disks involved in a snapshot or linked clone chain.

Display Storage Tier: Enable this option to display in the change request form the storage tiers that a user can select from. Note that this option is only available for some cloud account types.

Allowed Actions: Specify whether the requester can Add disks, Change disks, and Remove disks.

  • If you specify that the user can change existing disks, specify the Maximum Disk Size.
  • If you specify that the user can both add and change disks, specify the Maximum Disk Size and Maximum Extra Disks.

Storage - AWS

Allows a user to request storage changes for an Amazon EC2 instance.

Selectable Disk Types:

  • General Purpose (SSD): General purpose Solid-State Drive volume that balances price and performance for a wide variety of transactional workloads. Recommended for system boot volumes, virtual desktops, low-latency interactive apps, development, and test environments.
  • Provisioned IOPS (SSD): Highest-performance SSD volume designed for mission-critical applications. Best for critical business applications that require sustained IOPS performance, or more than 10,000 IOPS or 160 MiB/s of throughput per volume, such as large database workloads and EBS-optimized instances. The ratio of IOPS provisioned and the volume size requested can be a maximum of 50.
  • Magnetic: Previous-generation Hard Disk Drive volumes for workloads where data is infrequently accessed. Not recommended for new applications.
  • Throughput Optimized (HDD): Low-cost Hard Disk Drive volume designed for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads. Best for streaming workloads requiring consistent, fast throughput at a low price, such as big data, data warehouses, and log processing. The minimum disk size for this type is 500 GB. It can't be a boot volume.
  • Cold (HDD): Lowest-cost Hard Disk Drive volume designed for less frequently accessed workloads. Best for throughput-oriented storage for large amounts of data that's infrequently accessed. The minimum disk size for this type is 500 GB. It can't be a boot volume.

Allowed Actions: Specify whether the requester can Add disks, Change disks, and Remove disks.

  • If you specify that the user can add disks:
    • Specify the Maximum Disk Size and Maximum Extra Disks.
    • Specify whether new disks will be encrypted by default with the Encryption option.
    • Specify whether new disks will be deleted on termination by default with the Delete on Termination option.
  • If you specify that the user can change disks:
    • Specify the Maximum Disk Size.
    • Specify whether new disks will be encrypted by default with the Encryption option.
    • Specify whether new disks will be deleted on termination by default with the Delete on Termination option.

Storage - Azure

Allows a user to request storage changes for an Azure VM.

Storage Types: Select Managed and/or Unmanaged as required.

Selectable Disk Types: If you selected Managed in the Storage Types list, you can select one or both of the following disk types:

  • SSD: Premium disks (SSD) are backed by solid-state drives and offer consistent, low-latency performance. They provide the best balance between price and performance, and are ideal for I/O-intensive applications and production workloads. Premium disks are not supported for all instance types.
  • HDD: Standard disks (HDD) are backed by magnetic drives and are preferable for applications where data is accessed infrequently.

Display Storage Tier: If you selected Unmanaged in the Storage Types list, you can specify whether the user can select a storage tier.

Selectable Tiers: If you selected Unmanaged in the Storage Types list, and you enabled Display Storage Tier, select storage tiers to make them available on the form.

Allowed Actions: Specify whether the requester can Add disks, Change disks, and Remove disks.

  • If you specify that the user can add disks, specify the Maximum Disk Size and Maximum Extra Disks.
  • If you specify that the user can change disks, specify the Maximum Disk Size.

Commander chooses the datastore for new unmanaged disks using the following order of precedence:

  • All disks in the target region with the requested storage tier are sorted alphabetically. If there are no matches, the task fails.
  • Next, for any of the deployment destinations that target the VM's resource group, Commander searches for datastores targeted by those deployment destinations, and chooses the first alphabetically.
  • Next, for any of the deployment destinations that are assigned to the user and/or the user's organization, Commander searches for datastores targeted by those deployment destinations, and chooses the first alphabetically.
  • Next, Commander searches for datastores belonging to the VM's resource group, and chooses the first alphabetically.
  • If none of these criteria generates a match, the task fails.

Estimated Cost

Displays the estimated annual or monthly cost for a service. Users will see costs in their preferred currency.