20.08 enhancements

Review the BMC Helix Business Workflows 20.08 enhancements for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users.

Knowledge article versioning

You can track changes that are made to a published knowledge article through versions of the knowledge article. When users with appropriate permissions want to update published knowledge articles, they can edit the existing version for minor edits, or create a major version for adding or deleting information.

At any given time, only one version of a knowledge article is published. You can view the version number of a knowledge article in the Knowledge Console and also when you open the article. The version number is displayed with the version creation date. When the newer version is published, it becomes the active version, and the older version becomes inactive and moves to the Closed status.

Learn more about knowledge article versioning in Knowledge article versioning.

Knowledge article approvals

Users with the Knowledge Coach role can configure approvals for knowledge articles. Users with appropriate permissions can approve knowledge articles that are to be published, retired, or canceled. Knowledge Coaches can define approval mappings and flows for knowledge articles.

Based on the approval, the article moves to the Published, Canceled, or Retired status respectively. When the approval is rejected, the article moves back to the previous status in the lifecycle.

Learn more about approvals in Knowledge article approvals.

Task approvals

Case business analysts can configure approvals for manual, automated, and adhoc tasks by defining self-approvals, approval flows, and approval mappings. Approval mappings define the task status that will trigger the approval process, and the status to which the tasks move to when approvers accept or reject the tasks.

Learn more about approvals in Task approvals.

Apply approval mappings to case and task templates

Case business analysts can apply approval mappings to only specific case and task templates so that the approval process is triggered only when a case or task is created by using those templates. When the status of a case or task changes to the status that is defined in the approval mapping, the system checks if a self-approval or approval flow is defined, the case or task is then sent to an approver for an action.

Case business analysts can also choose to trigger the approval process for cases and tasks that are created without using templates.

Learn about how to create apply approval mappings to templates in Mapping case status to approvals and Mapping task status to approvals.

New Approval Rejected status for cases and tasks in approvals

Approvers can reject cases and tasks and change the status to Approval Rejected. If a case or task is moved to the Approval Rejected status, case agents can decide to continue working on the case or task, or close it.

Learn more about the different statuses in Case lifecycle and Task lifecycle.

Email enhancements

Case business analysts can perform the following actions while setting up an email configuration:

Configure domain address in a blocked list

While setting up email IDs to enable automatic case creation from emails, you can restrict automatic case creation for specific domains. You can add the domains to the blocked email list so that cases are not created for emails that are received from the blocked domains.

Learn more about configuring domain addresses in Setting up email IDs for automatic case creation.

Option for adding domain address in a blocked list

Configure a process to override default email parameters

Alternate Email ID and Email Custom Process options

You can now add email IDs in addition to the default email ID and can set them up as alternate email IDs. BMC Helix Business Workflows provides a configurable process that you can use to override the default email parameters and set up different email parameters for different email IDs.

Learn more about configuring a process to override default email parameters in Setting up email IDs for automatic case creation.

Configure secondary email as a trusted ID

While setting up email IDs to enable automatic case creation from emails, you can configure the user's secondary email which is automatically considered as a trusted ID. This helps users to raise requests by using their secondary email IDs.  

Learn more about configuring secondary email as a trusted ID in Setting up email IDs for automatic case creation and Adding users in BMC Helix Business Workflows.

Share service request ID details through acknowledgement emails

The Case Create Ack Template now includes the service request ID in the email message. If BMC Helix Business Workflows is enabled to create a corresponding service request in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced for a case, the service request ID is shared in the acknowledgement email. Otherwise, the case ID is shared in the acknowledgement email.

Learn more about sharing the service request ID in Creating email and acknowledgement templates.

New notification templates

You can use the following new out-of-the-box notification templates to send notifications to a case requester:

• Case Submitted - Requester Notification⁠—Use this template to notify that a case is created for a request.
• Case Resolved - Requester Notification⁠—Use this template to notify that a case is resolved.
• Case Pending - Customer Response- Requester Notification⁠—Use this template to notify that a case is pending response from the requester.
• Case Cancelled - Requester Notification⁠—Use this template to notify that a case is cancelled.

You can use the following new out-of-the-box notification templates to send notifications to a case agent:

• Case Access Change - Add—Use this template to notify that access to a case is granted.
• Task Access Change - Add—Use this template to notify that access to a task is granted.

Learn more about notifications in Notification events and templates.

Enable users to digitally sign documents by using DocuSign

Users can digitally sign documents related to a case by using DocuSign.

Administrators can integrate BMC Helix Business Workflows with DocuSign. Case business analysts can define an automated task to send notifications to users to digitally sign the documents attached to a case and store the digitally signed documents. Case agents can then add the automated task to a case that requires documents to be digitally signed, upload the document to the case, and provide the required values such as email IDs of users who need to sign the document.

Learn more about digitally signing documents in Enabling users to digitally sign documents.

Live Chat enhancements

The following enhancements boost a case agent’s capabilities to assist users by using Live Chat:

Share service request ID with a user

In a chat session, if a case agent creates a case for a user and BMC Helix Business Workflows is configured to create a corresponding service request in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced for the case, the service request ID is shared automatically with the user. Users can view the service request ID in the chat session. Users can use the service request ID to track their request in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced.

If BMC Helix Business Workflows is not configured to create a corresponding service request in  for a case, case ID is shared with the users.

 For more information, see Assisting users by using Live Chat.

Send and receive attachments

Case agents can send and receive files from the users during a chat session. You can send and receive attachments only if the user interacts with you by using the Self Service Portal in BMC Live Chat.

 For more information, see Assisting users by using Live Chat.

Receive browser notifications for a new request or chat

Case agents receive browser notifications for new chat requests and chats in an active session when they are not active on the Live Chat tab.

 For more information, see Assisting users by using Live Chat.

Anonymize an agent’s name in a chat session

As a case business analyst, you can anonymize case agent's name so that the agent's name is not displayed to users in a chat session. When you anonymize agent's name, a predefined alias for agent's name is used. You can overwrite the predefined alias and provide a new alias for the agent's name.

 For more information, see Anonymizing agent names to ensure agents privacy.

Ability to add images, tables, and hyperlinks in emails, notification templates, case description, and activity notes

Case agents and requesters can add images, tables, and hyperlinks in the emails. Case agents can also add images, tables, and hyperlinks in case description and activity notes.

To enable case agents and requesters to add images, tables, and hyperlinks, by default, certain default HTML tags are whitelisted in BMC Helix Business Workflows. Tags that are not whitelisted are suppressed from the emails and activity feeds. If tenant administrators want to add or modify attributes of the existing HTML tags for images, tables, and hyperlinks, they must whitelist the tags.

Learn more about whitelisting tags in Adding HTML tags and domains to the allowlist.

Track activity updates

Case business analysts can configure the Modified Date and Modified By fields to be updated for certain activities in cases and knowledge articles. They can also track the activities by enabling the UPDATE_PARENT_ON_NEW_ACTIVITY setting from Application Configuration > Common Configurations.

The Modified Date and Modified By fields are updated when any of the following changes are done:

Anonymize agent names in public comments in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced service requests

Case business analysts can protect the privacy of agents by anonymizing agent names that are seen in public comments in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced service requests. Case business analysts can hide the agent names by enabling the HIDE_AGENT_NAME_FROM_REQUESTER setting in BMC Helix Business Workflows from Settings > Application Configuration > Common Configurations. Case business analysts can then define an agent name alias by defining the AGENT_NAME_ALIAS from Settings > Application Configuration > Common Configurations. Agent names can be anonymized at a global level or at company level.

Learn more about anonymizing agent names in Anonymizing agent names to ensure agents privacy.

Protect privacy by hiding case view counts from activity notes

To adhere to privacy laws, case business analysts can hide case view counts in the activity notes at a global or company level by disabling the ADD_VIEW_COUNT_TO_CASE_ACTIVITY setting. By default, case view counts are shown in the activity notes.

Learn more about disabling the tracking and displaying of case view counts in Hiding case view counts from activity notes for privacy.

View customization enhancements

As a case business analyst, you can add custom fields by using extension container to tasks such as Task Create, Task Edit, and Task Preview. Extension containers help you to customize and extend a view so that after an upgrade the customization is retained. Based on the view in which you want to add custom fields, BMC Helix Business Workflows provides you options to select an extension container to display the view.

Learn more about custom fields in Adding custom fields to views.

Extension containers available for the Task Create view

Usability improvements

The following table lists the usability improvements:

For more information, see Automating assignment and status change of a record and Creating and publishing knowledge articles.

Email templates support attachments from Document Library

Case agents and case business analysts can attach and remove documents from the Document Library to email templates while creating the templates. Only published files from the Document Library can be attached to the email templates.

Learn more about attaching documents in Creating email and acknowledgement templates.

Set up the time zone, and date and time formats in PDF file generation

Case business analysts can set the time zone, and the date and time formats to be used for PDF file generation. By default, when a case agent creates a case, the time zone of the primary site is considered for generating PDF files. A case business analyst can use the ZONE_ID parameter to set a specific time zone for PDF file generation when the primary site of the case is changed. When no primary site is set for a case, and no time zone is set in the ZONE_ID parameter, the default UTC time zone is used to generate PDF files.

A case business analyst can also set the format in which date and time are to be displayed in the PDF files. Case business analysts can set the formats at a global level or for specific companies by using the DATE_FORMAT and DATE_TIME_FORMAT parameters.

Learn more about configuring the parameters in Setting up time zone, and date and time format for PDF files.

Support for special characters in PDF file generation

Customers can enable support for special characters of certain fonts, such as Thai fonts in PDF file generation. To enable the display of special characters, contact BMC Customer Support who will set the PDF_FONT parameter to Arial Unicode MS for com.bmc.dsm.shared-services-lib library.

Learn more about support for special characters in Defining document templates and generation of PDFs.