Before you begin
- Atlas Flow on your plan (Atlas AVD) and turned on for the tenant
- To see changes and answer an approval: permission to view Atlas Flow tickets
- To create, edit and send changes for approval: permission to edit Atlas Flow tickets. Choosing an owner or team needs permission to assign tickets, and archiving needs permission to archive them
Step 1: Create a change
Open the Changes tab in Atlas Flow and select New change, or start from a ticket: on the ticket's page, find the Changes card and select New change for this ticket. Changes are numbered in their own sequence (CHG-1, CHG-2 and so on) and use the same statuses as tickets. Give the change a title, then choose its type:
- Standard: a routine, low-risk change your team has done many times, such as monthly patching. It is pre-approved and never goes to the CAB.
- Normal: needs every approver it is sent to before it can start.
- Emergency: an urgent change that can start as soon as one approver approves it.
A change started from a ticket takes the ticket's title and links the ticket to the change, so the technician working the ticket can see it.
Step 2: Write the plan
In the Plan card, set the risk and impact (low, medium or high), the planned start and end, the implementation plan (the steps to carry out the change) and the backout plan (how to undo it if it goes wrong). Select Save to keep the plan. A change needs both plans before it can be sent for approval.
The change's timeline and the audit log record which parts of the plan changed, never the text itself.
Step 3: Send it for approval
In the Approval card, select Send for approval, tick the approvers and select Send. Each approver gets a notification in Atlas and an email with a link to the change.
- Approvers review the change in Atlas, signed in as themselves, so a forwarded email can't approve anything.
- Approvers who can only view Atlas Flow tickets can still answer.
- Anyone waiting on you appears under Awaiting my approval in the Changes tab.
- Each approver selects Approve or Reject and can add a comment. Any rejection rejects the change.
- Sending a change again starts a new round. Earlier answers stay on the change as history.
What happens after approval
A change can't move to an in-progress or resolved status until it is approved. If someone edits the plan of a change that is waiting for approval or already approved, it goes back to Not sent for approval, because the CAB approved the plan as it was. Atlas says so before you save.
The change's owner and whoever created it are told each time an approver answers. Webhook channels, such as Teams or Slack, can follow "Atlas Flow change sent for approval" and "Atlas Flow change approved or rejected".
Step 4: Carry it out with Atlas Reach
When you start a Reach bulk action, script or fleet script run, enter the change's number (for example CHG-12) as its reference. The run is linked to the change and appears in the change's Atlas Reach card. When it finishes, its result is added to the change's timeline.
Finding and archiving changes
The Changes tab shows open changes by default, with each change's type, risk, approval state and planned start. Switch to Completed and closed, All changes or Awaiting my approval, search by title, or include archived changes. Archive a change to take it out of the list. An archived change is read-only until you restore it.