Hi Marie,

It might be worth looking through the following documentation to help getting started with change.

Change Management - Service Management (microfocus.com)

In regards to Change Templates and Change Models. Here is some detail about both take from the Doc's portal:

Change Template

A Service Management template is a group of pre-populated fields that you can use as a quick start to create a new record or apply to an existing record. You can use a template to achieve consistency when you process records that have the same workflow.

You can create a template with either of these methods:

• Save an existing record (such as an incident, problem, or change) as a template. For example, you can save a change record as a change template.
• Create a new template, where you decide which fields should have pre-populated values.

Change Model

Change models can help you standardize the end-to-end process of change management, and maximize efficiency.

You'd normally go in for creating Change Models first. Then create a relevant model for a certain type of change, say a Standard change like a server reboot. A change template is something that can be created from a previous record or created a fresh but would only populate certain fields within the Change record. Compared to what you can define within a Change Model like Business Rules, Approvals and Task Plans.

Thank you so much for your reply. I have access to all the documentation including the Support Engineer training guide.

So they are different entities and are not based on one another?

Hi Marie,

Yes they are separate entities that you can use to create a Change record. For instance if a Change record already exists, for instance Reboot Server. Then you could use that existing record to create a template for Reboot Server. That template record then has default values that you can use to fill in any new Record that is created from the template. Then when you create a new Change record you can then use the Apply Template button to use the newly created Reboot Server template and pre-populate certain fields.

If you create a Reboot Server Change Model, you can define if the Change should have an Approval plan, a Task plan, any business rules you'd like to apply to that change. Along with any Default Values that need to be used as part of the change record.

So it really comes down to what level you need to define the Change. Which is why I'd say you'd start at the beginning by defining your Change Models. These are what you are going to require most of the time.

I have created several Models based on our Change Request types. The Models have minimal configuration for now, just the basics. We are working in the DEV environment. When I create a new change request, I get an error message when trying to save. "Expression Evaluation Failed". Have I missed something when configuring the Model?

You have to turn on the workflow debugger and check which rule fails.