Create Change Requests

You can create multiple custom change requests that Commander and Service Portal users can select when they want to request changes to:

• Cloud accounts.
• Deployed resources and virtual services.
• XaaS (Anything-as-a-Service) generic resources that belong to AWS stacks, GCP deployments, Azure Resource Groups, or Terraform resources. For more information, see Change Requests for XaaS Resources.

The ability to define a variety of custom change requests allows you to control what changes users may request and which users can make the changes.

When you edit an existing change request, you cannot change the target type.

1. Click the Change Requests tab.
2. At the bottom of the page, click Add Change Request.

   You can also select an existing change request and click Copy. This option can save you time because it copies an existing change request's configuration.

3. In the Change Request wizard, enter a Name for the change request.

   This is the name the change request will be saved with. By default, this will also be the name that's displayed to users in the list of available change requests and in request emails.

4. Optional: Enter a Display Name if you want to display a different change request name for users in the list of available change requests and in request emails.

   Using a different display name enables you to more accurately describe the change request for users.

5. Optional: If you want to provide additional information about this change request, enter comments in the Description field.

   Description information is only displayed for Admin Portal users on the Change Request and Change Request Details pages; it isn't displayed for users that are making a change request.

6. From Target Type, select what you want the change request to be available for:
• Inventory — The change request will be available for deployed inventory resources that Commander can manage, monitor, and report on. These may include: VMs, virtual services, databases, load balancers, auto scaling groups, and stacks.
• Cloud Account — The change request will be available for cloud accounts. These may include: AWS accounts, GCP service accounts, Azure subscriptions, Kubernetes clusters, Hype-V SCVMM cloud accounts, and VMware vCenter servers.
  • The requested changes will only apply to the selected cloud account (that is, the root object in the Inventory view), not the child inventory or infrastructure elements of the cloud account.
  • Change requests for cloud accounts are only available for Admin Portal users; Service Portal users don't have access to cloud account information and can't request changes for cloud accounts.
• XaaS Resource — The change request will be available for non-inventoried, generic XaaS resources that belong to AWS stacks, GCP deployments, Azure Resource Groups, or Terraform backends.

  Only generic resources (that is, resources other than VMs, databases, load balancers, and auto scaling groups) can be changed using an XaaS change request. For more information, see Generic resources.

  You can make changes to XaaS resources if you add appropriate completion workflows to the change request.

7. Optional: If you want the change request to be available only when specific conditions are met, from Display, select Display When Conditions are met, then click Edit.

   In the Conditions dialog, define an expression that will set the conditions for the change request to be available for users for a given resource. For example, you could enter #{target.context.type -eq "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup"} to limit the change request to be available only for AWS security groups.

   All of the available variables are provided in the Expression Picker. To insert a variable, position your cursor in your expression, select the variable, and click Insert Expression. For change requests, the #{target.context} variable is especially helpful because it returns identifying information about deployed resources.

   For information on how to design conditions for change requests and for examples, see Make Change Requests Conditional.

8. From Completion Workflow, select a completion workflow that you want to be run after the change request is fulfilled.

   You can only specify None when a default global completion workflow hasn't been set for change requests. For more information, see Create Completion Workflows

   You can also add a new workflow or edit an existing workflow. For more information, see Create Completion Workflows.

9. Optional: If you don't want to display a form to users when they select the change request, clear the Display form for this change request checkbox.
10. Click Next.
11. In the Visibility page, select a publish option to specify who should have access to this change request. Click Next when you're done.
    • Do not publish: The change request won't be available to users.

      This option is useful if you're in the process of defining a change request, but it's not ready for users. It's also useful to create a standard change request that you can copy, further configure, then publish for specific users.

    • Publish - Global: The change request will be available to all users.

      Multiple global change requests are permitted.

    • Publish - Specific organizations, users and groups: Specify which organizations or users the change request will be available to.
      • To add an organization, click the Organizations tab, select an available organization and click Add. Repeat for each organization you want to add.
      • To add users, click Users/Groups, enter a valid user name (either a local user, such as Manager, or a directory service user name, such as <username@domain>) and click Add. Repeat for each user you want to add.
12. In the Forms page, add and edit the elements to be used by the form.

    Do any of the following:

    • To add a new form element, click an element in the Toolbox on the right. See Change Request Form Elements for a list of available form elements.

      To make a field mandatory, enable Required. Mandatory fields will have an asterisk (*).

    • To modify an element, select it and click Edit. Customize the element as required, then click OK to save your changes.
    • To change the order of the form elements, drag-and-drop the elements or use the up and down arrows.
    • To delete an element, select it and click Delete.

    You can create relationships between form fields so the value selected for one element affects the selectable values for another. For more information, see Create Relationships Between Attributes Used on Forms.

    The designed form will only be displayed for users if you selected the Display form for this change request checkbox earlier on the Properties page and at least one element is added.

    The added elements that will comprise the form are displayed in the middle Service Form section.

13. To preview how the form will look, click Preview.

    The change request form is previewed with a sample service. If organizations and users are assigned, the preview will use the first (alphabetically) assigned organization and assigned user.

14. To save your form, click Save.

    To discard all changes and go back to the last-saved version of the form, click Revert.

15. Click Next.
16. In the Summary page, review the change request details, then click Finish.

Delete change requests

1. Click the Change Requests tab.
2. Select a change request and click Remove.
3. In the Confirm Change Request Deletion dialog, click OK.