Detecting and resolving task schedule conflicts

As you create and schedule implementation tasks during the Change process, conflicts among the scheduled tasks will almost invariably occur. All of the task conflicts for all of your Changes are automatically detected periodically; you can change the interval by which they are detected. You can examine and resolve the detected conflicts, and you can run conflict detection manually for a particular Change that you are working with.

Before you begin

Before you can detect implementation task conflicts, you must have done the following:
  • Created Change Windows for your configuration items (CIs) using the Change Window Calendars application.
  • Associated target CIs with the implementation tasks, and identified impacted CIs using impact analysis.
  • Created blackout periods in the Blackout Periods application, and associated one or more CIs with the blackout periods.
Conflict detection identifies only those conflicts that involve CIs. Conflicts that involve assets or locations are not detected. You can view detected conflicts in the Changes application or the Change Schedule application.

About this task

When conflicts are detected, one or more schedule approvers are added to the Schedule Approvers section of the Authorizations tab. For example, if a blackout period conflict is detected, the approver or approvers for the blackout period are added as conflict approvers. The Conflict Approver box is checked to indicate that an approver was added because of a detected conflict. After the schedule is updated and the conflicts resolved, these schedule approvers are cleared from the Schedule Approvers table.
  • The three types of detected conflicts
    Three types of conflicts are detected: Change Window conflicts, configuration item (CI) conflicts, and Blackout Period conflicts.
  • Automatic conflict detection
    Conflicts are detected automatically across all of your changes on a regularly scheduled basis. By default, conflict detection is set to run daily at 1:00 AM. When conflict detection runs, the results are saved to a database, and you can view the detected conflicts. Newly detected conflicts overwrite the conflicts that were detected during the previous conflict detection.
  • Viewing conflicts for an individual Change
    In the Changes application, conflict detection information is presented for the Change that you are working with. You can view a summary of all of the implementation tasks that have detected conflicts. You can also view the tasks that have change window conflicts, CI conflicts, and blackout period conflicts. You are presented with the information that you need to resolve the conflicts.
  • Viewing conflicts across all of your Changes
    In the Change Schedule application, you can view detected conflicts for all of the Changes that are in scheduled in your environment. Conflict information is not detected for assets or locations; conflict detection is available only for implementation tasks that have target CIs.
  • Resolving detected conflicts
    After you detect a conflict that involves an implementation task, you can resolve the conflict by selecting a conflict-free time window for the task. You do so in the Graphical Scheduling application.
Parent topic: Scheduling a Change

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