In most organizations, the management of change is, without doubt, critical and important in determining the success of the IT department, and the most visible part of this process is the CAB meeting. Yet in most cases, stakeholders and change managers have less visibility into the changes deployed and the risks that might impact the business or the CI(s).


With CAB Huddle, change managers can now send out CAB meeting invites with the agenda and then list changes that need to be discussed with all the attendees prior to the meeting.


Attendees can further add comments to individual changes and later the change manager can run the CAB meeting and have the respective stakeholders approve/reject or add comments to a particular change.


How to schedule a CAB meeting?

  • 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 -> CAB Meeting


  • Now add the name, description and duration for the particular CAB meeting.

  • If you wish to repeat the following event, you could click the checkbox Repeat every day/week and end after/on.


Note: In case of a recurring CAB meeting, users can manually add changes after the event has been created.


  • Click on +Add Changes, then choose the conditions from the drop-down and click on Filter to have the changes populated below based on the conditions set.

  • Check the box for the changes that will be reviewed for the CAB meeting and click Add.



  • Once the changes are added, attendees can add comments next to the changes or delete the particular change by clicking “-”. Attendees can also reorder the changes by clicking the Reorder button on the right.

  • Make the required changes to the email summary and click Create.

  • You can also make further changes to the CAB meeting after creation by clicking Update.

  • Click on Run Meeting so the change manager can walk through the changes finalized before the CAB meeting.

  • The stakeholders can approve/reject the change or click on Comments to add their comments to the respective change screens during the meeting.



  • Finally, click End meeting, make the required changes to the summary, and click Send to send the email summary to all the meeting attendees.



How to schedule CAB meetings in Office 365 Calendar & Google Calendar


  • Once you’ve installed Office 365 for your Freshservice via Admin > Automation & Productivity > Extensibility > Office 365


  • Click the settings icon and check the Allow agents to schedule a meeting with ticket requesters checkbox and click Update. 



  • This will ensure requesters can view the CAB meeting details in their Office 365 calendar

  • Once you’ve installed Google Calendar for your Freshservice via  Admin > Automation & Productivity > Extensibility > Google Calendar

  • You will need to go the CAB meetings page and check the Add to google calendar checkbox 



  • This will ensure requesters can view the CAB meeting details in their Google calendar


Note:  Users will not receive email notifications from Freshservice if they have enabled google or outlook calendars for CAB.


Change Calendar

 

  • Once a CAB meeting is created, it will automatically be visible in your change calendar, this way users can view details of the CAB meeting.

  • You could filter the calendar based on changes/ maintenance window/ blackout window/CAB meeting and on a timely basis (day/week/month).



Heads Up!


  • Only admins and agents with the Manage Change Lifecycle & Calendar Windows permission can view changes, and edit and schedule CAB meetings.


  • Agents without the Manage Change Lifecycle & Calendar Windows permission can only view CAB meeting details via email, Office 365 calendar, and Google calendar but they cannot view changes or access the change calendar.