1. Customization Guidelines for BMC Remedy IT Service Management 7.5
Jeff DesRoches
September 22, 2018

2. © Copyright September 22, 2018 BMC Software, Inc.
Topics Covered
Types of Customizations
Extending BMC Remedy IT Service Management 7.5 (BMC Remedy ITSM)
Technical Guidelines
Adding/modifying workflow objects
Working with form views
Coding for the Future
What to consider when making changes to the BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 solution
What happens to customizations when an upgrade or patch occurs
Customization Considerations
Common pitfalls, and recommendations for best practices
extending
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3. About BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 and Customizations
Although BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 has more functionality than previous versions, the underlying platform is still the same
With BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5, there are core areas that need to be looked at when planning for workflow changes
An alternative to customization is to investigate if BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 can fulfill your requirements by configuring the application
Many parts of the BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 solution are data driven and can be configured
Core Areas will be discussed further in the presentation.
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4. Configuration and Customization
This represents changes made to the application through the Application Administration Console and is performed in the User Tool or Web Interface
About Configuration:
Can be performed by end user
Approvals, Notifications, Assignments
Application specific
Templates, Rules, Impact and urgency
Customizations:
Can only be done by an administrator, not end user
Customization:
Changes made to form and workflow objects through the Administrator tool
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5. Types of Customizations
Extending the BMC Remedy ITSM solution
Low impact on the system, easy to keep functionality during an upgrade
Loosely coupled with BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5
Adding, modifying, and disabling workflow functionality
More planning is needed to preserve objects during upgrades and patches
Tightly coupled with BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5
** Extending: “This is covered more in the integration with ITSM 7 track”.
** Workflow: “As we’ll see in the guidelines later”
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6. Extending BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5
Creating interface forms to manage incoming and outgoing data to and from the BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 solution. Benefits include:
SOA Enablement – Cleanly defined interfaces. Backward/forward compatibility.
Performance – Using simple filter pushes has minimal impact on system performance as all of the work is being done on the server, thus reducing network traffic.
Scalability – The new forms and workflow created will not be overwritten when an upgrade to the system occurs.
Elaborate on:
Interface forms
They are most commonly used in conjunction with Web Services.
It allows for a seamless way to integrate
A set of interface forms are packaged with the BMC Remedy ITSM solution
Interface forms provide staging area where incoming data is validated before it is pushed to the main forms (some forms included are Incident, Change, and Problem).
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7. Extending BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 cont’d…
Adding to the Quick Actions menu:
On the main forms (Incident, Change, Problem, etc…) the Relationships tab contains a Quick Action menu. A menu item can be added to trigger any workflow functionality to perform an action.
Adding functionality through data will not affect the user interface.
Elaborate on the relationships tab:
This tab is to display interdependencies of the current record to other records (other Incidents , Configuration Items, Problem Investigations, Infrastructure Changes).
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8. Extending BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 cont’d…
Scenario
A customer planned to integrate their in-house Incident Management application with BMC Remedy Change Management 7.5
Customer Scenario Elaboration:
1) They are using web services for Change Management as a means to move data from their own application into the Change Management solution.
2) They also wanted to be able to push data from BMC Change Management to their Incident Management application.
They Added a menu item in the quick actions on the Change form;
created custom workflow on the Change form that pushes field data through a set fields action to a web service they have defined in their in house application to sync the information.
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9. Extending BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 cont’d…
This resulted in a successful integration!
There is no need to track user interface changes because all of the customizations were done through workflow and data.
There were minimal workflow and data records that had to be tracked.
Performance was not an issue as all of the work was done on the server side.
Even after a patch was applied to the system, no changes to customized workflow needed to be made.
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Guidelines: Workflow
For customizations to be easily identified, a standard naming convention should be defined when creating and modifying workflow
Modifying BMC Remedy ITSM workflow:
Modifying BMC Remedy Workflow
Create a copy of the original workflow
Rename the newly copied object following your naming convention
Disable the original workflow object(s)
By disabling the object, it will not fire twice
The code will also be preserved when an upgrade is done to the system
After upgrade/patch, code may have to be re-disabled
Creating BMC Remedy Workflow
New workflow objects will not be overwritten when an upgrade occurs
Creating new workflow:
Create new workflow objects with a well defined naming standard
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Guidelines: Forms
Most customizations will involve adding field objects to form views. Building to protect these changes can be challenging.
Below is a sample process for modifying forms with fields in a view:
Before making form view changes:
Backup the original form.
Create a reference copy of the original view.
2) Perform customizations on the active view.
After form view has been customized:
Backup the form to preserve the changes made.
Create a reference copy of the customized view.
Continue to use the active view that has been customized.
Because BMC Remedy AR System uses the View Name as a unique identifier, the original view name must be used to ensure workflow is not broken.
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12. Guidelines: Forms cont’d…
1) Before making form view changes:
Backup the original form.
Create a reference copy of the original view.
2) Perform customizations on the active view.
After form view has been customized:
Backup the form to preserve the changes made.
Create a reference copy of the customized view.
Continue to use the active view that has been customized.
Because BMC Remedy AR System uses the View Name as a unique identifier, the original view name must be used to ensure workflow is not broken
Notes:
After the changes are made, a reference of the original and customized views are preserved and can be used at any time.
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13. Guidelines: Forms cont’d…
To revert back to the original form view:
Change the name of the customized active view, and rename the original reference view to the original view name.
Any modifications to form views may be overwritten during an upgrade.
After performing any upgrade, a GAP analysis should be done to determine if the customization is to be kept.
It is best to customize using data and workflow (as described in the previous scenario).
This avoids any issues of customized form views being overwritten.
During future upgrade processes, modifications may be made to the form that was customized.
These changes will overwrite the customizations you have made in the active view.
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Guidelines: Fields
When adding fields to forms, using the correct field ID range will protect the fields from being overwritten
BMC Remedy AR System Reserved Ranges:
1 – 536,870,911 reserved for registered fields
BMC Remedy ITSM Field ID Ranges:
1,700,000 – 2,000,000 (Global Fields)
300,000,000 – 399,989,899
1,000,000,000 – 2,000,000,000
Ranges for Custom Fields:
536,870,912 – 999,999,999
2,000,000,001 – 2,147,483,647
When creating fields in BMC Remedy ITSM 7, explicitly check that field IDs are not created in the reserved ranges.
*Table columns and page fields may generate fields IDs in the ITSM reserved ranges.
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15. Guidelines: Fields cont’d…
Two types of Selection Fields are used in BMC Remedy ITSM:
1) Linear enumerated selection field
Enumeration values are 1,2,3,4, etc…
It’s recommended that they not be modified.
If there is a need to make a change, append the values to the end of the list
2) Custom enumerated selection field
Enumeration values are incremented with room to be customized (1000, 2000, 3000, etc…)
Values can be added anywhere in the list.
Odd numbers must be used as even enumeration values are Reserved for BMC.
If you must, add selection items to the end of the field values, and not in between values
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Guidelines: Data
There are default data records that the BMC Remedy ITSM core is dependent on.
“Global” Company Records are an example of core data
Global records are part of base configuration data that is used by all parts of the application.
This screenshot displays configuration data that is used in the ITSM Incident Management Application.
Data in the SYS forms is treated like workflow
It is not recommended to modify data in the System forms, as data-driven parts of the application rely on these data records.
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Coding for the Future
When building customizations, it is important to know how upgrades will affect changes made to the system
What happens to BMC Remedy AR System objects when an upgrade or patch occurs:
Object Names:
Object names are used as unique identifiers, therefore when coding for the future it is best to have a naming standard for new and modified objects.
Form Views and Fields
When a form view is imported, newly added fields will not be deleted from the form, but they will also not exist in the view as the customized view will be replaced.
If not built correctly, customizations can be overwritten
Taking backups throughout your customization process is recommended
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Considerations
Common Pitfalls
Not documenting or planning changes to the system
Without planning, changes are most likely to be broken when an upgrade occurs
Recommendations
Analysis to determine if the BMC Remedy ITSM solution can fulfill your needs
Use of Change Management process to track/approve customizations
Some areas to stay away from
Common areas to stay away from customizing in BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 are the areas where there are data driven configurations. Some of these areas include:
Visual process flows, approval/assignment processes and rules
Some common pitfalls:
Not tracking customizations. This can lead to broken workflow when an upgrade occurs.
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19. Considerations cont’d…
What if you have a heavily customized BMC Remedy ITSM application?
Check whether any existing BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 features could be leveraged to provide something similar enough to meet your needs.
BMC Remedy ITSM 7.5 has been restructured to focus on the ITIL processes in more detail, and to provide greater functionality across the Service Support and Service Delivery areas.
Can the existing 7.5 functionality be extended cleanly to provide the feature?
If you can extend the 7.5 functionality cleanly, it will be easier to upgrade in the future.
Replacing functionality should be a last resort, as it will cause the most issues when upgrading functionality in the future.
All this should be done prior to implementing the new IT Service Management 7.0 Solution
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Conclusion
Thanks for listening
Q&A
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