Requesting assistance with quarterly patching or version upgrade changes

[Dawn Jurek]

Your organization is dynamic and things change, sometimes at the drop of a hat. What should you do if something unexpected comes up and you need to request a delay in the quarterly patch upgrade for one of your instances? Or maybe you want to cancel a quarterly patch upgrade, because your organization switched gears and decided to upgrade to a different version? ServiceNow makes it easy for you to let us know that you need a change of plans. The COM, or communication record—also referred to as an update record—is your key to requesting assistance with rescheduling, canceling, or postponing quarterly patching or version upgrade changes.

In this installment of our best practices series, we look at what COM records are, and how to access them on HI.

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What are COM records?

COM records are created as part of the Quarterly Patch Program, or QPP, as well as for version upgrade changes. Their express purpose is to provide a way for you to communicate with ServiceNow, and vice versa, about a specific patch or version upgrade.

You can access a COM record from the Manage Upgrades page or the change request (CHG) record, as described below.

Accessing the COM record from the Manage Upgrades page

You must have the customer_admin or partner_admin role (business_customer_admin in Express) to access COM records.

1. Navigate to https://hi.service-now.com/hisp and log in.

2. Click Manage Upgrades.

3. The Manage Upgrades page loads, displaying a list of all of your instances. In the Status column you'll see a blue link with one of the following:

• Click here to see your COMs: This opens a list of all the COM records for your organization. Click one of the records to open that record.

• [NAME_OF_THE_PROGRAM]: This opens the COM record of the respective program.

4. Enter your request in the Comments section of the record and then click Save. You must save the comment to update the record.

NOTE: Entering a comment within a change record marks the COM record with the Action Needed flag to notify the dedicated ServiceNow team that you updated the record. This flag is only raised on the patching/upgrade changes that are scheduled by ServiceNow as part of the Quarterly Patching Program or version upgrade change.

Accessing the COM record from the Change Request (CHG) record

You must have the customer_admin or partner_admin role (business_customer_admin in Express) to access COM records.

1. Navigate to https://hi.service-now.com/hisp and log in.

2. Click My Issues.

3. When the page loads, click the Change Requests tab.

4. Open the CHG record for the corresponding quarterly patching or version upgrade.

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page. In the bottom left section of the record, click For Questions and Comments, Click Here.

6. The COM record appears. In the Comments section of the record, enter your request to reschedule, cancel or postpone your quarterly patching or version upgrade changes and then click Save. You must save the comment to update the record.

NOTE: Entering a comment within a change record marks the COM record with the Action Needed flag to notify the dedicated ServiceNow team that you updated the record. This flag is only raised on the patching/upgrade changes that are scheduled by ServiceNow as part of the Quarterly Patching Program or version upgrade change.

For more information, see:

• Quarterly Patching Program - Customer FAQ (KB0549676)
• TechBytes Episode 30: Quarterly Patching Program
• Patches Best Practices (KB0550637)
• Upgrading and Patching Resources (KB0546812)
• Patching Program and EOL Upgrade Community
• Quarterly Patching Program Overview

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Behind the scenes here at ServiceNow, the Knowledge Management and Multimedia teams work closely with subject matter experts to disseminate critical information to our customers. We've found that certain topics come up frequently, in the form of best practices that can help you keep your ServiceNow instances running smoothly. This series aims to target those topics so that you and your organization can benefit from our collective expertise. If you have a best practices topic you'd like us to cover in this series, please let us know in the comments below.

To access all of the blog posts in this series, search for "nowsupport best practices series."