Playbook: someone changed a setting and nobody noticed
The situation
The PO approval threshold was 10,000. One afternoon it became 50,000. The next week a 42,000 order went out without a second signature, and when finance asked why, nobody could say who changed the threshold, when, or for what reason.
Settings decide what the system lets through. A change to them is as consequential as the transactions they govern, so it needs the same evidence: who, when, from what, to what, and why.
Before you start
- Model Studio needs the *Model changes* permission. Approving needs *Model changes: approve*, and the author can never approve their own change.
- Risk and causal models, calibration, custom fields and field migrations always need a second person, whatever the switch says.
Step 1 — Turn on the second approver
Open Command → Model Studio.
What you see:
- The model version (13 in the demo) and the switch Changes need a second person's approval. When it is on, rule and matching changes are proposed here and take effect only after someone else approves them.
- A warning when nobody else can approve: give a second person the *Model changes: approve* permission in Team, or waiting requests stay waiting.
- Change requests, each with its reason and its trail. In the demo the field *Country of origin* on Product was proposed with the reason *“Customs asks for it on every export”*, waited for approval, was approved by Erik Andersson (*“Looks good”*) and became active, all on 18 October.
Step 2 — Read the settings history
Choose Settings history.
What you see: every change to the settings that steer the engines, filterable by area: integrity and predictive engine, detector thresholds, inventory, auto-assembly, PO, MO, quality, budget and transaction approvals, matching tolerances, and approval of model changes itself.
Each entry shows the field, the value before and after (for example *Terms → Payment terms (days)*, version 1 → 2), who changed it and when. Add reason records why, after the fact, if it was missing.
Use it when a result looks different from last month: filter by area and read what changed in between.
Why it matters
Transactions have an audit trail; settings usually do not. Otiox keeps both, so *the system allowed it* always comes with *because this setting said so, since this date, changed by this person*.
What you have at the end
- Rule and matching changes approved by a second person, never by their author.
- A reason on every change, and its impact seen before it applies.
- A complete history of every setting, with before and after values.
Screenshots come from the Otiox demo workspace. Choose Switch to demo in the sidebar to follow along; changes there never touch live data.