Change Approval - depends on services

Question

Hi

I've just about figured out how to use the approvals for change requests on a service.  Where the group listed in the services Approvals group gets the email for approve/deny.

What I can't get to work is the depends on change for approvals.  Maybe it doesn't do what I'm expecting it reasonably to do.

Example 1

Service A has approver group 'bobs group'

A change request is raised for Service A that bobs group needs to know about

Bobs group gets the approve/deny email - so far so good!

Example 2

Service A has approvers group 'Bob's group'

Service B has approvers group 'Harry's group'

Service C doesn't have an approvers group specified BUT Service A and B depends on Service C.

A change request is raised for Service C.

Now because Service A and B depends on Service C, if a Change request is raised for Service C, then it is a reasonable expectation that both Bob's group and Harry's group should get the Approval/Deny email because their services both rely on Service C.  Otherwise for what purpose does the 'Depends on' exist?

That doesn't seem to happen though.  No approval email turns up for ether Bob or Harry.

The change goes ahead because Service C doesn't have its own Approval group, server C gets switched off, and takes out all of Bobs and Harrys services with no notice and without them knowing anything about it even though the Services dependencies listed Service A and B as Dependants.

Have I missed something basic or am I not understanding how depends on within services work?

paul_creedy · Answer

Thanks for replying so promptly. I'm not understanding something though.

Currently the Services - Approvers group, is working fine when the actual service is the one selected in the change request.  That process works.  Those in the approvers group directly mentioned in the service do get the approval email because I've changed the workflow to look at the Services approvers group.

What's not working is the dependency chain for approvals.

It's a reasonable expectation that if service A depends on B, then if B gets changed it should notify those in service A because of the dependency between them, otherwise what's the purpose of the dependency chain in Services.

Thanks

Paul

Alex Koxaras -Relational- · Answer

Hi @paul_creedy and welcome to the community,

Services relationship are made to know about their relationship. These, when made, are not implemented across your JSM project. You can't use them out of the box with approvals.

What you could do though is to setup a post function within the workflow and change the approvers' group based on the service field.