Was that change agreed? Change Control in CRMBix
A form looks different, a flow has stopped, a column has gone. Somebody changed something, and now you are working out what, when, and whether anyone signed it off. Change Control gives you Dynamics 365 change control on one record: the request, the approval and the deployment. It also tells you about the changes that skipped all three.
Sample dataChange Control in about a minute, narrated.
- Sound familiar?
- How it helps
- Raise a request
- Approve or reject
- Record the deployment
- Unapproved changes
- Good to know
Sound familiar?
- Change requests live in emails, chats and somebody's memory.
- "Quick fixes" go straight into production.
- You hear about a change when a user reports a problem.
- When someone asks who approved a change, you can't show them.
How Change Control helps
A change starts as a change request, is approved, is built, and is closed by a deployment: Draft, Submitted, Approved, Ready to Deploy, Deployed. Alongside that, the daily inventory compares what really changed with what was approved.
| Button | Works when the status is | Sets the status to |
|---|---|---|
| Submit | Draft or Rejected | Submitted |
| Approve | Submitted | Approved |
| Reject | Submitted | Rejected |
| Ready to deploy | Approved | Ready to Deploy |
Recording a deployment then moves the request to Deployed. A button used out of order explains why and changes nothing.
How to raise a change request
- On the Home page, choose New change request.
- Enter a Name. In Component, pick what will change. For something that does not exist yet, leave Component blank, set New Component to Yes and pick the Solution.
- Fill in User Story, Proposed Change, Proposed Date and Risk, then save.
- Choose Submit at the top of the form.
How to approve or reject
Approvers get a notification under the bell at the top of the app. They open the request and choose Approve or Reject. CRMBix records the date and who decided, and tells the requester.
Only someone with the CRMBix Approver or CRMBix Administrator role can decide. If anyone else tries, CRMBix puts the request back to Submitted and notes why.
How to record the deployment
- When the work is finished, open the request and choose Ready to deploy.
- Move your solution to production the way you normally do.
- Open Deployments and choose New. Enter a Name, the Solution and the Target Environment, set Outcome to Succeeded, and save.
Every Ready to Deploy request whose component is in the deployed solution becomes Deployed, with the date and a link to the deployment. If you use Power Platform Pipelines, enter the address of your Pipelines host in Settings and CRMBix records each finished deployment for you.
How to review the changes nobody approved
After each inventory, CRMBix writes a change log entry for every component that was added, modified or removed.
| Change status | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Explained | An approved request covers this change | Nothing. The entry links to the request |
| Unexplained | Nobody approved this change | Open Change Logs and the Unexplained Changes view. Find out who made the change, then link a request and set it to Explained, or set it to Ignored |
| Ignored | You have decided it does not need a request | Nothing |
The Home page counts the unexplained changes under Needs attention, so they are hard to miss.
Good to know
- CRMBix records and reports. It does not block or roll back a deployment.
- Changes are found at each daily inventory, or when you refresh it. It is not real time.
- The change log shows what changed and when, not who changed it.
- An edit to an existing column is not picked up yet.
- A deployment to an environment that is not Production, such as UAT, is recorded but does not close requests.
- Recording a deployment needs the CRMBix Administrator role.
Change Control builds on Inventory, and the tour shows how the parts fit together.
