Collecting business metrics for BMC Service Desk Automation run book

When you create a service request definition for a service offering, you can define the time and money variables to collect business metrics for each time the service is requested. When you specify the business metrics, you get the time and money saved each time the service is requested and fulfilled by using the BMC Service Desk Automation run book. 

The following topic describes the steps to collect business metrics for the service requests.

Adding business metrics to the SRD

To generate time and money value achieved by a service request, you must add the variables to the SRD. When you add the variables and map them to appropriate questions, the variables appear as key=value pairs in the Description field for the service request, which is then provided as details in the form of an event to BMC Atrium Orchestrator. 

To add variables to the SRD:

  1. Open the IT Home Page, and select Service Request Management > Service Catalog Manager Console.
  2. From the list of available SRDs, select the SRD for which you want to add the business metrics and click Take Offline to make changes to the SRD. 
  3. From the Definition tab, click Questions & Mappings.
  4. On the Question Management form, click Add Question.
    1. To add the time question, in the Question Text field, enter VD_TIME.
    2. Select the Question Format as Text.
    3. In the Default Response field, specify 10.
      By default, the unit of measurement is in hours.  
    4. To add the money question, in the Question Text field, enter VD_FINANCIAL.
    5. Select the Question Format as Text.
    6. In the Default Response field, specify 100. 
      The unit of measurement for money is based on the default currency selected for the SRD. For example, USD.  
  5. Click the Variable Mapping tab.
  6. Click Advanced Mappings.
    You select this option if you want to map multiple questions to the same variable. For example, for the Unlock Account use case, you need to provide information in a format that BAO receives via a notification. You must map the Description variable to the comma-separated key=value pairs.  
  7. To add time and financial details to the Description variable, perform the following steps:
    1. On the Advanced mapping dialog box, click Text and enter VD_TIME= and click Add to Mapping.
      The text variable is added to the Mapping table.  
    2. Click Question and select VD_Time 
    3. Click Add to Mapping.
      The response for the time variable is mapped to the VD_TIME question.  
    4. Click Text and enter VD_FINANCIAL= and click Add to Mapping.
      The text variable is added to the Mapping table.  
    5. Click Question and select VD_Financial.
    6. Click Add to Mapping
  8. Save the SRD.
  9. Click Turn Online to make the updated service offering available.

Adding metrics to BMC Service Desk Automation run book processes

After you add the time and money variables to the SRD, you can now add a metrics activity to the run book process to generate the business metrics every time the process is triggered by a BMC Remedy event and fulfillment use case is executed. 

To add business metrics to the workflow processes:

  1. Open the BMC Atrium Orchestrator Development Studio and go to the workflow process for which you want to collect business metrics.
  2. Right-click and select Properties. 
  3. In the Properties dialog box, mark the Record Metrics flag as true.
  4. From the SA-BMC_Service_Desk_Automation > Utilities folder, drag and drop the Save Metrics utility to your workflow. 
    For the sample Unlock Account use case, a Save Metrics process is added to the workflow process, which contains the metrics activity and retrieves the values from the Time and Financial variables defined in the SRD. 

    The Metrics activity has the Category field set to Unlock_Account_Metric as required and both metric names are used as follows:
    1. VD_TIME gets the time savings metrics value from the VD_TIME_VALUE context item.
    2. VD_FINANCIAL gets the financial savings metrics value from the VD_FINANCIAL_VALUE context item.
  5. Save changes to the workflow. 

For more information, see Metrics activity in BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform online documentation.

Viewing business metrics in the BMC Atrium Orchestrator Value Dashboard

The Value Dashboard displays Value reports associated with BMC Atrium Orchestrator processes (also called workflows). Value reports indicate the time or monetary savings for the process runs that happened over the reported period. From the Dashboard page, you can access all available Value reports.

For more information, about using the Value Dashboard, see Using the Value Dashboard section in BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform documentation. 

Related topics

Creating a service request definition in BMC Service Request Management

Setting up the Value Dashboard and reports

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