3.5 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in version 3.5 of BMC Service Resolution.

The following video (5.47) presentation provides an overview of the enhancements:

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Service Resolution.

Tip

For information about issues corrected in this release, see Known and corrected issues.

The following interactive graphic summarizes the BMC Service Resolution 3.5 enhancements. (The graphic may take a few seconds to load.)

Support for automatic generation of outage records

The outages detected by the Event Management system can be configured to automatically generate unplanned outage records in BMC Asset Management. You can configure the Event Management system to automatically create an event as soon as a CI goes down due to an unplanned downtime. This event is then sent to asset management to create an outage record.

When an outage record is created automatically, the relationship between the outage record and the CIs that are impacted due to this unavailability is established. This provides the context around the outage record and helps identify the affected business services. This information further help organizations to calculate the business disruption cost associated with the affected business services.

For more information, see Automatic outage records.

New outage policy console

A new outage policy console is provided in Event Management to manage outage policy configurations. These policies govern how the outage record gets created in BMC Asset Management.

For more information, see Managing outage policies.

New web service to create outage records

A new web service called AST_CI_Unavailability_Interface is introduced from this release. This web service enables you to create a CI unavailability record in BMC Asset Management.

For more information, see Using AST_CI_Unavailability_Interface web service.

Relating an incident and an outage record through the causal event

With BMC Service Resolution 3.5, the relationship between an incident and the outage record through the causal event is established. This capability enables you to identify the root cause that resulted in the business service disruption. This capability also helps you to identify the time the outage is resolved. This information is used by a consuming application to perform additional metric calculations such as Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time Between Service Incidents (MTBSi).

For more information, see Viewing Relationships.

Comprehensive single-click validation test

The end to end single-click validation feature is enhanced with more options and checks. This enhancement provides you the ability to execute just the unit test and/or execute a complete end to end test where both incident and an outage record is created.

The following new options are added to the single-click validation test:

Quick check - To perform an end to end check of the integration without creating a test incident or an outage record. It is recommended that you perform this unit test immediately after you install and configure BMC Service Resolution.
Complete check - To perform an end to end check of the integration and also create a test incident and a test outage record. It is recommended that you perform this end to end test to check customizations on the forms.

The following new tests are added to the single-click validation test to validate incident and outage record creation.

Test	Description
Check Configurations	Checks whether the AR System server host port, username, password, Remedy Mid Tier host port, username, and password are populated correctly in the configuration file.
Midtier Accessibilty	Checks whether the Remedy Mid Tier is accessible.
SSL Certificates Validation	Checks whether valid SSL certificates are imported on the Event Management server.
AR Login Credential Check	Validates the connection to the AR System server.
Accessible	Confirms whether there are no exceptions preventing access to the targeted service desk.
Check Create Incident Operation	Checks whether the HPD_IncidentServiceInterface web service is accessible so that an incident can be created in Incident Management.
Check Create Outage Operation	Checks whether the AST_CIUnavailabilityInterface form is accessible so that an outage record can be created in Incident Management.
Check Service Desk Updates to BPPM Operation	Checks whether the HPD_IncidentOutboundEvent form is accessible so that incident updates can be sent to Event Management.
End to End Incident Generation Test	Validates the end to end incident creation and incident info creation workflow through the integration gateway.
End to End Outage Generation Test	Validates the end to end outage record creation workflow through the integration gateway.

For more information about resolving errors if these tests fail, see Validating integrations.

Consolidating incidents

In versions prior to BMC Service Resolution 3.5, if event propagation and incident policies (Impacted and Causal Component-Optimized policy or Causal Only Optimized policy) are enabled in BMC TrueSight Event Management, two incidents are created for the Causal CI: one for the causal event and second for the event status change. Because the actual causal event is only one that has resulted in the status change of the Causal CI, ideally only one incident should be created.

Starting with BMC Service Resolution 3.5, the new Consolidate Incidents option is used to consolidate two events (status change and actual causal event) in a single incident. This will reduce the number of redundant incidents in your system.

The Consolidate Incidents option is available on the Incident Rules form.

If you are using Level 1 of Service Resolution and if you select the Consolidate Incidents option; the following incidents are created:

Causal incident
Impacted incident

If you do not select the Consolidate Incidents option, the following incidents are created:

BEM incident
Causal incident
Impacted incident

For more information, see Consolidating incidents.

Enhanced support for integration mappings

The following enhancements are made in this release of BMC Service Resolution to support integration mappings:

To display Assignee group details in Event Management

In versions prior to BMC Service Resolution 3.5, you had to manually add and configure the incident_assignee_group parameter to enable display of Assignee group details in Event Management. For information about how this customization is done, see Displaying Assignee Group in the BMC ProactiveNet console.

With BMC Service Resolution 3.5, the incident_assignee_group parameter is available out of the box in the ibrsd_event_incidentinfo.baroc and ibrsd_ci_incidentinfo.baroc files.

To send assignment information from Event Management to Incident Management

The following new parameters are added in the defaultmapping.map file to enable sending the assignment information to incident management. Incident management uses this information for incident assignment.

Incident_assignee
Incident_assignee_group
Assigned_Support_Company
Assigned_Support_Organization

Populate these new parameters with the assignment information. As an example, add the following dynamic values to these parameters:

Incident_assignee = slot.assignee.name
Incident_assignee_group = slot.assignee.group
Assigned_Support_Company = slot.assignee.company
Assigned_Support_Organization = slot.assignee.organization

To map information from event slots in Event Management to incident fields in Incident Management

In versions prior to BMC Service Resolution 3.5, you had to manually add and configure Temp fields to enable passing of event slots information to incident fields in Incident Management.

Starting with BMC Service Resolution 3.5, the 10 generic Temp fields are available out of the box in the defaultmapping.map file. You need to set values of these Temp fields based on your requirements.

For more information about how this customization is done, see Mapping information from ProactiveNet event slots to the HPD:ServiceInterface form fields.

To return custom mappings from Incident Management back to Event Management

You can now populate fields on the HPD:IncidentOutboundEvent form to return custom mappings from Incident Management back to Event Management. You need to customize the 10 Temp fields available on the outbound interface form. For more information, see Customizing field mappings from Incident Management to Event Management.

Additional fields added in Incident Management

Additional fields are added in Incident Management to provide relevant, valuable information to consuming applications. The incident is enriched with these additional values so that the consuming application can derive metrics such as Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time Between Service Incidents (MTBSi), Availability, Detectability, Number of reroutes, and so on.

The following fields are added to the HPD:ServiceInterface form:

Field	Description
Issue Occurred Time	Represents the time when the issue occurred
Event Created Time (Incident Detection Time)	Represents the time when the event was created
Incident Ticket First Acknowledgement Time	Represents the time when the incident was first acknowledged
Incident Ticket Last Acknowledgement Time	Represents the time when the incident was last acknowledged
Total Transfers	Represents the number of times the incident is re-assigned
Last Resolve Date	Represents the incident resolution date
First WIP	Represents the time when the incident was first moved to Work In Progress status
Last WIP	Represents the time when the incident was last moved to Work In Progress status

Extended support for integrating with BMC Control-M Workload Automation

The following enhancements are available for effective integration with BMC Control-M Workload Automation:

Enhanced integration between BMC Control-M Workload Automation and Incident Management

Additional support is available for BMC Control-M Workload Automation to integrate directly with Incident Management.

You can now configure Control-M alarm field attributes as operational categories in Incident Management. This ability enriches the incident and facilitates routing of the incident to the correct support group. This enables faster incident resolution thereby reducing your organization's MTTR.
Note

The operational categories that you select must be a valid set of operational categories in Incident Management.
For more information, see Configuring Control-M alarm field attributes as operational categories.

You can also configure which alarm field attributes are reflected in the incident. This enhancement facilitates incident enrichment. For more information, see Configuring Control-M alarm field attributes.

This integration support is available from BMC Control-M Workload Automation version 8.0.00 and later. For more information about this integration, see Integrating BMC Control-M Workload Automation with BMC Service Desk: Incident Management.

Support for integrating BMC Control-M Workload Automation with BMC ProactiveNet

Starting with BMC Service Resolution 3.5, you can integrate BMC Control-M Workload Automation and Event Management and leverage the benefits of service resolution capabilities.

Provides support for Level 1 of service resolution.
Enables creation of incident for alarm events in BMC Remedyforce, if Event Management is integrated with BMC Remedyforce.
Due to integration with Event Management, the alarm events can be made more context-aware by event filtering, enrichment, and custom mapping.
Using an event management policy of Event Management, you can create incidents for major or minor alarm events.

For information about this integration, see Integrating BMC Control-M Workload Automation with BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management.

Support for Mainframe integration with Incident Management

You can now integrate Mainframe and Incident Management to facilitate incident creation for Mainframe events. This integration supports Level 1 and Level 2 of service resolution.

You can integrate MainView AutoOPERATOR V7.4.00 (with PTFs) and later with Remedy IT Service Management 8.1 and later.

For more information about enabling this integration, see the relevant Technical Bulletin of the MainView AutoOperator 7.4.00 version from the Products A-Z list available at https://webapps.bmc.com/support/faces/az/supportlisting.jsp.