>>One of the features in Web Help Desk
is the ability to regulate change management requests
using automated approval processes.
In this video, we'll be looking at
how to set up change requests using approval processes.
To illustrate this feature,
we'll use the server upgrade process as an example.
Let's say you want to upgrade your Windows file server.
After consulting with your team,
you came up with the following steps.
Set up a back up server
that acts as a fail over should things go bad.
Test the method for mounting the server San volume
on the backup.
Export the file share configuration from the primary server.
Set the primary server DNS record time-to-live
for five minutes, just in case I have to
bring up the back up server.
Document the entire failover procedure in detail
for the rest of the team.
And schedule down time in your monitoring system.
The IT director needs to approve this
and you'll want this documented in a ticket
for future reference.
You'd also like everyone to follow this process
each time you embark on a similar IT project.
To begin, let's click set up in the tool bar.
Click processes in the left menu
and then click approver roles.
You can set up approver roles
and assign multiple people to a role
based on department or location.
That way your assigning a role and not a person.
The assignment is based on who is assigned to that role
listed in the department approvers
or location approvers tabs,
who have authority to approve requests
based on specific locations or departments respectively.
Approvers will always be a client
because they're chosen from a list of client accounts.
You don't need to create roles at the approver
as a static person or client.
In this case, you can specify that client
in the approver type section of approval steps
by selecting client in the client approver box.
We'll talk about this option later.
Let's click the department approval roles tab
and then click new.
We'll name this new role department director and click save.
I'm sure there's other processes tied to departments
that need director approval
so adding one here is a good idea.
Next, we'll need to identify the IT department director.
So in the left menu under processes,
we'll click department approvers
and then click IT enterprise from the list of departments.
Under approver role we'll click add role
and then click the approval role drop down menu.
Here we can select the department director role
we created earlier and use client look up
to find out director's account.
After we search and click his name in the name column,
we'll click save, to save our changes.
After we define an approver,
the client will see an approvals tab in the web client login
where they can cast their vote if they choose.
Our last step is to define the actual approval process.
This includes defining the process,
adding the necessary steps
and adding the supported request types
for each approval process.
To begin, let's go back to the processes menu
and click approval process.
Next we'll click new to create a new process.
In the process name field let's name this process
Department Director Approval.
We can add a short description here if the name seems vague
but I think the name's descriptive enough.
You can have Web Help Desk send the approver an email
when a ticket hasn't been approved or denied.
Just click the email reminder interval drop down menus
and select the appropriate time interval
when you want the approver to receive the email.
The email client on options,
let you decide if the client receives an email
when a ticket is approved, denied or both.
You can also select the same options for the tech
in the email tech on row.
After you click save, two additional tabs appear
where you can add the approval steps
and supported request types.
Let's click the approval steps tab
and then click new to add the first approval step.
You can have more than one step
in a ticket approval process.
For example, if you have an approval process
that requires approvals from you department manager,
director and the chief financial officer,
you'll need to create separate steps for each approver.
For this example, let's just
require the director's approval.
Each step in an approval requires a name.
So we'll enter directors approval as a description
for this demonstration.
For the approver type, you have four options.
Remember earlier when we talked about
having the same individual as an approver
regardless of location or department?
This is where you need to decide.
A client can be a tech
who is involved in the approval process.
Since all clients are available as approvers,
using clients provides a high degree of flexibility
when you configure your approval process.
A CAB, or Customer Advisory Board,
is a group of approvers that all review
and then together vote on requests.
It can require unanimous approval
or a minimum number of approvers to vote yes
before the request is approved.
The minimum number of approvers can vary
from one member to all members.
If the minimum number is not met,
the request is automatically denied.
A location approver acts as an approver
for a specific location.
A location can only have one approver.
So if this assigned approver
leaves your organization for any reason
and that person is involved in multiple approval processes,
you can update the location approver once in your system
and that change propagates
to all of your approval processes.
A department approver approves all requests
for a specific department.
Similar to a location approver,
you can update the department approver once in your system
if they leave your organization
and that change propagates throughout all
approval processes as well.
For this demonstration, let's select department approver.
Now we have the option to select the department approver
from the drop down menu.
If you want to create your own greeting
that appears at the tope of the approval request,
you can enter it here.
Whatever you enter here will override the default greeting.
Let's leave this field blank so the approval request
uses the default greeting and click save.
Next, let's click to request type supported tab
and click edit.
Here we can choose a request type
that links to our approval process.
For this demonstration let's select IT request, IT project.
This means that when a ticket
is created with this request type,
an approval request is sent to your defined approver.
Once you create an approval, you can't alter the status
until the request is approved or denied.
So it might be a good idea to create status types
specifically for the approval process.
This will be a good visual cue
to help you identify ticket status
if you're looking in the my tickets and group tickets views.
You can also search for tickets
in a specific approval status.
To begin, we'll go to the left menu, click tickets
and then click status types.
We'll click new to create a new status type.
Here we'll create three new status types.
For approval, request approved and request denied.
Status types tied to an approval process
waiting to be approved or denied
will never appear as an available status type on a ticket.
That's because Web Help Desk
automatically hides them for you.
In the name field we'll enter
for approval for the status type,
leave the remaining option set to default, then click save.
We'll repeat this process for the request approved
and request denied status types.
When we're done, we'll click the options tab
and tie them to the approval process.
In the tab window,
we'll click the need approval status type drop down menu
and select for approval.
For the approved status stype,
we'll select request approved
and for the approval denied status type,
we'll select request denied.
Next we'll click save to save our changes.
So to recap, when a ticket is opened with
or changed, should the IT request, IT project request type,
Web Help Desk sends an approval email request
to the IT director
and changes the ticket status to for approval.
The IT director has the option to vote
using the links in the email
or can log into his or her client account
and vote in the approvals tab.
After Web Help Desk receives the vote,
the ticket status changes to either request approved
or request denied, depending on the vote.
When this occurs, the tech can change the ticket status
to another status, such as closed.