20.20.01 enhancements

This section provides information about the following enhancements that are provided in the BMC Helix Remedyforce product in this release:

Remedyforce Benchmarking is generally available

Remedyforce Benchmarking is generally available now. Remedyforce Benchmarking lets you view the key performance indicators (KPIs) for Incident Management for your organization against global benchmarks derived from all Remedyforce customers. For more information about Remedyforce Benchmarking, see Assessing your organization performance against benchmarks.

Import configuration sets to a production organization from its sandbox - BETA

You can import configuration sets from a sandbox organization to its production organization. Configuration sets comprise service requests and their underlying elements such as business services, templates, and categories. The following figure shows the Configuration Sets option on the Remedyforce Administration tab.

For more information about importing configuration sets, see Importing configuration sets to a production organization from its sandbox - BETA.

Import the parent of a mapped service through SmartSync

When you run SmartSync, the mapped service and its parent are imported for Base Element. For more information, see Configuring SmartSync - BETA.

CMDB class security using permission sets

Administrators can provide a granular control of class level access (Create, Read, Edit, Delete) using permission sets as a basis, and without altering Salesforce permission sets. Thus, the Class Permissions page provides a consolidated view of all the class permissions and facilitates granular permission control.

For more information about CMDB class permissions, see Managing CMDB class permissions for permission sets and Managing CMDB class permissions for object and user level.

Primary Client field mapping during Remedyforce Discovery imports

While importing instances of the Computer System class through Remedyforce Discovery, you can populate the Primary Client field by including the primary client mapping of certain instances based on primary capabilities. Thus, the feature includes the following enhancements: 

• Mapping of the Primary Client field for instances of Computer System class.
• Provision to set the Primary Client Mapping Inclusion field to identify records of the class to be included based on primary capabilities.
  
  

For more information about primary client mapping and custom settings, see Enabling and configuring agentless discovery.

CMDB Remote Control actions by using BMC Client Management web console

You can use the BCM web console to perform Remote Control CMDB actions and connect to BCM devices.  With this enhancement, client users need not download a file to perform the remote control action. 

For more information about Remote Control CMDB actions, see Overview of the BMC Helix Remedyforce integration with BMC Client Management, Managing BMC Client Management devices from the CMDB Actions window, and Accessing the BCM Actions menu.

Hyperlinks in service request inputs

Administrators can add hyperlinks in the Request Input section of service request definitions to share policy guidelines, documents, and external links. To add hyperlinks in request inputs, select the Hyperlink option from the Response Type list.

All areas of BMC Helix Remedyforce except for Self Service 2.0 support this feature. 

For adding hyperlinks in the Request Input section, see Creating input fields.

Rich text instructions in service request definitions

Administrators can add images and hyperlinks, and use rich text formatting such as different font sizes, bold, and italics in service request definitions. Click the Rich Text Instructions button to add instructions. Client users can see rich text instructions on a service request form in Self Service 3.0.

If you enter instructions in the User Instructions and Rich Text Instructions fields, instructions added in the Rich Text Instructions field take precedence.

All areas of BMC Helix Remedyforce except for Self Service 2.0 support this feature. 

For adding rich text instructions, see Creating and configuring an SRD.

VPAT and WCAG accessibility for Self Service 3.0

Self Service 3.0 supports 508 compliance with respect to Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines. If the accessibility mode is enabled, the screens of Self Service are presented in accessibility mode to client users. For more information about 508 compliance for Self Service 3.0, see VPAT and WCAG accessibility for Self Service 3.0.

Relative ordering of request inputs in a two column layout 

As an administrator, you can render request inputs according to the order configured in a service request definition (SRD). Request inputs on the right side of a two column layout service request form in Self Service 3.0 are aligned with their previous fields as shown in the following figure: 

• To enable relative ordering of request inputs, select the new Enable relative ordering of fields check box in Remedyforce Administration > Configure Self Service > Service Requests. 
  

• The Enable relative ordering of fields check box is displayed if you select 2 Column from the Select Column Layout list on the Service Requests tab. 

  • If you are upgrading to BMC Helix Remedyforce, you can select 2 Column and the new check box. 

  • For fresh installation of BMC Helix Remedyforce, the 2 Column option is selected by default and the Enable relative ordering of fields setting is enabled automatically. You cannot see the Enable relative ordering of fields check box.

• The relative ordering of request inputs setting is applied while submitting, editing, and copying service requests in Self Service 3.0. Additionally, this setting is applied while submitting a service request from a draft.

For more information, see Configuring the settings for service requests in Self Service.

Salesforce knowledge articles in Self Service 3.0

Administrators can enable the display of Salesforce knowledge articles on the Self Service 3.0 Home page and the Superbox Search tab. This feature is available in both Classic and Lightning environments. Earlier, the Salesforce knowledge articles were displayed only in Self Service 2.0. 

Consider the following highlights with respect to Classic and Lightning environments:

• In Salesforce Classic environment, the knowledge article opens in a pop-up window and in the Standard layout.
• In Lightning Experience environment, the knowledge article opens in a new window and in the Standard Lightning layout. Additionally, clients can leverage certain functionalities introduced by Salesforce in the Lightning Knowledge. For example, in Salesforce Lightning environment, you can add attachments in the Related tab and file section.

For more information about displaying Salesforce knowledge articles, see Enabling Salesforce knowledge articles to be viewed in Self Service and Configuring search settings for Self Service.

Self Service log on with site credentials

In organizations with communities and portals, you can now successfully log on to Self Service by using site credentials even if certain fields in user records are blocked.

Auto assignment of staff when you update a record

Administrators can enable the Staff Auto Assignment functionality for an updated incident or a service request record. The enhancement is applicable when a record is updated, and the Staff field is kept blank. Earlier the auto assignment worked only for created records.

For more information about auto assignment of staff members, see Record assignment settings and Configuring automated assignment of records to staff members.

Enhancements for mass update of multiple tasks 

The following action items were completed as a part of task mass update enhancement and fixes:

• When you close multiple tasks (multiple modules) by performing mass update, you can create the next level task.
• When you update, close, or perform actions on multiple tasks (multiple modules), you will not see the SOQL exception.

Activity Feed summarization in Remedyforce Console (BETA)

In Activity Feed, you can use the Summarization feature to view a summary of a note or an email that is large and runs over three lines. This can help users to quickly understand email messages or action notes by reading the summary instead of reading the entire content. This feature is available only for incidents and service requests.

To use this feature, Auto Categorization must be enabled as this feature uses the Cognitive Summarization service provided by BMC Helix Platform. The Summarization service uses the extractive summarization with unsupervised learning. Summarization service attempts to summarize user notes and emails in Activity Feed based on artificial intelligence (AI). As it is an AI based feature, the quality of summarization may vary depending on the nature of text, punctuations, paragraphing, and context. Also, the summarization of an email that has nested mail threads in its body may produce response from AI which might vary from the expected summarization.  

You can enable this feature through the general setting Enable Activity Feed summarization in Remedyforce Console (BETA) as shown in the following image. For more information about enabling this setting, see the General Settings section in General settings for Remedyforce.

When you enable this feature, the Summarize link is displayed for notes and emails that has Show More / Show Less links in Activity Feed and Smart View. The following images shows the Summarize link in Activity Feed.

Icons are displayed even when tracking protection is enabled in the Firefox browser 

The following modules of BMC Helix Remedyforce work as expected even if the tracking protection in the Firefox browser is enabled:

• Remedyforce Administration
• Remedyforce CMDB
• Remedyforce Console
• Self Service 3.0

In BMC Helix Remedyforce 20.19.02 and older versions, icons in these modules appeared broken if the tracking protection is enabled in the Firefox browser. 

Pentaho packages

Login credentials are entered just once. These have been parameterized and are used wherever necessary. Also, several Pentaho packages are no longer relevant and are deprecated.

For more information about Pentaho packages, see Importing data by using Pentaho packages.

Sorting on Suggestion pages 

The pop-up window of Suggestion pages such as Suggested owner, Owner, Queue, Staff, and Suggested template have the sort option enabled for the first column.

Microsoft Teams support in the BMC Helix Remedyforce chatbot

Support for Microsoft Teams is added for BMC Helix Remedyforce chatbot. For more information about Omni channels support , see Omni channels support in the BMC Helix Remedyforce chatbot.

BMC Native classification support for Auto Categorization

Support for BMC Native classification is added for Auto Categorization. For more information about Auto Categorization of incidents, see Auto categorization of incidents.

Resume Utility Service

If the context user for Remedyforce Utility Service job is no longer active in your organization or Utility Service job is not running in your organization, there may be failures in certain processes.

After upgrading, when the Remedyforce administrator of your organization clicks the Remedyforce Administration tab:

• The context user for Utility Service will be corrected automatically and it will start running in the context of the administrator. All processes which were active in your organization will start executing correctly. If your organization has the following features activated, those will remain activated even after the utility is restarted with the new context user:
  • Staff Auto-assignment
  • Service Health Updates
  • Service Target Report
  • Clear CMDB Logs for Reconciliation
• If the Utility Service was not running and Staff Auto-assignment was not activated, the service will start in the context of the administrator. Here Staff Auto-assignment will not be activated and other features which were activated will run correctly.

Disable Data Integrity report emails

The Remedyforce Utility Service runs a scan job daily to identify data inconsistency issues. If the scan finds impacted records, an email with the scan report is sent to Remedyforce administrators. You can now disable the emails by creating the EnableDataIntegrityReportEmail custom setting under Custom Settings > Remedyforce Settings. For more information about disabling the Data Integrity report emails, see Verifying configuration data integrity.

Even if the emails are disabled, the scan job will continue to execute daily and you can still view the impacted records found using the Remedyforce Configuration Data Integrity report.