For organizations that deploy multiple changes every week, most change agents, change managers and requesters neither have the visibility on the changes being deployed for an asset nor the ability to enforce policies to not deploy changes for a particular asset for a certain period of time.
With Maintenance Window, they can now schedule multiples changes, view the changes implemented on an asset, group relevant changes and even include ad-hoc changes to the window.
With Blackout Window, they can schedule code freezes including enforcing policies to not deploy changes for an asset (for eg. payroll service at the end of the month).
This way they can now view the maintenance and blackout windows schedule in their calendars.
How to schedule a maintenance window?
- Log in to your Freshservice account and click the below icon :
and select Work calendar from there and choose Changes from the drop-down.
You could also go to your change requests, click the View Change Calendar.
Next, click on + Schedule -> Maintenance Window.
You could add the name, description and duration for the particular maintenance window.
If you wish to repeat the following event, you could click the checkbox Repeat every day/week and ends after/on.
After that add conditions under Available for changes that match the following conditions and click Create. This will ensure that the maintenance window will be available for all changes that match these conditions.
Once the maintenance window is created, you could click Edit to make further changes to the window or click Delete to delete the maintenance window.
You could enable Freeze Window in case you don’t want users making further changes or add changes to the maintenance window.
You could also click on +Associate Changes under Changes associated with this maintenance window, either search for the change or select from the Created in the drop-down and click Associate.
How to add a maintenance window while creating a new change request
You could add a maintenance window while creating a new change request.
Note: This will automatically change the planning start and end date for that particular change request.
How to add a maintenance window to an existing change request
Once the maintenance window is scheduled, you could go to a particular change request and click Add.
This will populate a list of maintenance windows that match the change request conditions, select the maintenance window and click Done. This will automatically change the planning start and end date for that particular change request.
You could also associate a particular changes request directly to the maintenance window.
Note: If the associated change request doesn’t match the conditions of the maintenance window, a mismatch error will be thrown.
How to schedule a blackout window?
- Log in to your Freshservice account and click the
icon and select Change Calendar from the drop-down.
You could also go to your change requests, click the View Change Calendar.
Next, click on + Schedule -> Blackout Window
You could add the name, description and duration for the particular blackout window.
If you wish to repeat the following event, you could click the checkbox Repeat every day/week and ends after/on.
After that add conditions under Apply to changes that match the following conditions and click Create. This will ensure that the blackout window will be available for changes that match these conditions.
Once the blackout window is created, you could click Edit to make further changes to the window or click Delete to delete the maintenance window.
Change Calendar
Once a change, maintenance/blackout window is created, it will automatically be visible in your change calendar, this way users can view details such as duration and the number of changes added to a window.
You could filter the calendar based on changes, maintenance windows, blackout windows and on a timely basis (day/week/month).
Heads Up!
Only account admins and agents with the “Manage Change Lifecycle & Calendar Windows” permission can create or make changes to maintenance and blackout window.
