Upgrading BMC Digital Workplace
The BMC Digital Workplace installer supports direct upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05.00 from BMC Digital Workplace 3.3.02, 3.4, 3.5, or 18.02.
Note
With this release of
BMC Digital Workplace
, the installer will only upgrade
BMC Digital Workplace
. If you are using
BMC Digital Workplace
and Smart IT, you must upgrade
BMC Digital Workplace
before upgrading Smart IT. For information on upgrading Smart IT (after you upgrade
BMC Digital Workplace
), see
Performing the Smart IT upgrade
.
Considerations prior to upgrading
The following table provides information about specific scenarios that you should consider prior to upgrading to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05:
Scenario | Consideration or action required | Additional information |
---|---|---|
You are using BMC Remedy ITSM 9.1.x or later. | Upgrading to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05 restarts the BMC Remedy AR plug-in server process. | The server restart causes a downtime of a few seconds. This allows you to schedule a planned downtime. |
You are using BMC MyIT 2.6, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 or
BMC Digital Workplace
3.3. You plan to upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05. |
| The AppZone integration is removed when you upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05. |
For more information, watch the following BMC webinar. (Go to 29:07 in the video to learn about the upgrade process.)
Upgrade recovery
The installer provides the option to recover from an upgrade failure. If the upgrade fails, the installer rolls back all the changes made to the database and configuration files. Rerunning the installer resumes the upgrade process from the point where the upgrade failed in the previous attempt.
Notes
- Do not exit the installer while the upgrade is in progress.
- It is recommended that you take a back up of the BMC Remedy AR server database, the BMC Digital Workplace database, and the MongoDB database indicated as a step in the upgrade process.
Upgrade process
Use the following flowchart to make high-level decisions about the upgrade:

This topic describes the general upgrade process.
Best practice
BMC Digital Workplace upgrade comprises the following stages:
Stage 1: Prepare to upgrade BMC Digital Workplace
Task | Action | Additional information |
---|---|---|
1 | Review the system requirements | Make sure that you meet the system requirements for this release. |
2 | Review the known and corrected issues | Review the Release notes and notices. |
3 | Complete the upgrade worksheets | Before you start installing the products, you must gather information about the parameters that the installer requires for each product. The planning spreadsheet provided in this section helps you gather these parameter values. To avoid installation errors, refer to this spreadsheet when you run the installation. |
4 | Downloading the BMC Digital Workplace installation files | This topic explains how to obtain the files that you need for the upgrade from the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) site. |
5 | This patch enables cognitive service management. | |
6 | Prepare your relational database by estimating the space (and time) required to copy the social and notification data stored in the MongoDB database to your RDBMS. Tip Run the upgrade on at least one environment to get the social data migration utility. | Before migrating your social data, you must estimate the space you will need on your relational database. The space required on your relational database, and time needed for the upgrade can vary according to how much notification data you keep, determined by the setting described below. Note The MongoDB database contains a lot of data that will not be moved to your relational database. In some cases the vast majority will not need to be copied over because it is redundant or not needed for . So, the current size of your MongoDB database does not indicate the space you will need in the relational database after the migration.
|
7 | (optional) Estimate the size of the attachments on your existing BMC Digital Workplace installation and decide if you want to only move attachments larger than 5 MB. | Before migrating your BMC Digital Workplace data, you may check for and move attachments that are larger than 5 MB, and choose to not migrate these attachments. Tip This step is optional. You must use the utility provided with your current version of BMC Digital Workplace to identify large attachments. The utility provided with version 18.05 will not work with older versions of BMC Digital Workplace . |
8 | If you are upgrading from the versions 3.3.02-3.5 or 18.05, you must Install the ITSM integration patch. | Before you upgrade BMC Digital Workplace , you must install the ITSM integration patch. This patch enables BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) to work with BMC Digital Workplace . Without this patch, timelines, email notifications, and social features do not work in BMC Digital Workplace . The installation applies required BMC Remedy ITSM patches. Note This patch replaces the User Experience patch that was provided with previous releases of BMC Digital Workplace . |
9 | Upgrade to 64-bit Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 8. | Upgrade to JRE 8 on all the servers where you have BMC Digital Workplace installed. |
10 | Take a backup of BMC Remedy AR server database, MongoDB database, and BMC Digital Workplace database. | To recover from any unexpected upgrade failure and resume upgrade from the last executed stage, take a back up of the following databases:
|
For more information, watch the following BMC webinar. (Go to 22:39 in the video to learn about data migration.)
Stage 2: Upgrade BMC Digital Workplace
Note
If you are on BMC Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) 9.1.x and later, upgrading to BMC Digital Workplace 18.05.00 restarts the AR System plug-in server process. The server restart causes a downtime of a few seconds.This allows you to schedule a planned downtime.
Task | Action | Additional information |
---|---|---|
1 | Resolve issues indicated by the installer, if any | Ensure that all the following pre-install checks run by the installer are successful before proceeding with the installation:
Installation does not proceed if the pre-install check detects inconsistencies in the required components. |
2 | Do not use Xming to install the BMC Digital Workplace server, because it might not perform reliably during installation. Instead, use VNC, MobaXterm, or any other client. | |
3 | Verifying the BMC Digital Workplace installation | Verify whether the upgrade is successful. |
Stage 3: Review BMC Digital Workplace configurations
Task | Action | Additional information |
---|---|---|
1 | Configuring SSL for the Tomcat server | To provide communication security among applications, configure SSL for the Apache Tomcat server. If you enabled SSL as part of the installation , SSL is already configured. |
2 | Modifying ports for BMC Digital Workplace | Post-upgrade, you might need to change the ports if you did not specify an open port during installation, or if these ports are in use. These ports are used to connect the web and mobile clients to the BMC Digital Workplace server. |
3 | This topic describes how to configure the integration of Remedy Single Sign-On with BMC Digital Workplace . BMC Remedy Single Sign-On authentication applies to both the universal client and to mobile applications. When a user logs in to a mobile device, the user is prompted to enter the hostname and port. If the server has SSO enabled, the mobile client opens a browser to the SSO login page. The SSO server sets the SSO cookies after authentication on to the device browser. When the user relaunches the application, if the cookies are not expired, the mobile client displays the application. If the cookies are expired, the user is shown the login page again for authentication. | |
4 | The BMC Digital Workplace server supports both user and administrator logons. Both types of logons are authenticated using BMC Remedy Action Request AR System (BMC Remedy AR System). To assign BMC Digital Workplace administration permissions to BMC Remedy AR System users, you add the users to the MyIT Admin group in BMC Remedy AR System. The system creates this group automatically during installation. | |
5 | Administrators can grant or restrict access to the areas of the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console for other administrator. | |
6 | Setting up service requests through BMC Service Request Management | If you use BMC Service Request Management to process requests and incidents submitted by BMC Digital Workplace users, you must create a series of service request definitions (SRDs) specifically for use with BMC Digital Workplace . You configure SRDs in the BMC Service Request Management Console. |
7 |
| |
8 | BMC Digital Workplace enables you to customize the names of items that appear on your users' desktop browsers and mobile devices. For example, you can update the name of the service desk to My Company Service Desk. | |
9 | Within BMC Digital Workplace , you can enable and disable features that you might not want to use immediately in your deployment. For example, if you are not set up to support location services, you can disable that functionality. You can also configure the settings for features such as the Contact IT button and Virtual Chat cross-launch. | |
10 | You can change the settings that BMC Digital Workplace uses to connect to the following applications:
| |
11 | Configuring multitenancy | The multitenancy feature of BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) provides the ability to segregate data by operating company and customer company. |
12 | Configuring email notifications | To allow BMC Digital Workplace users to accept email notifications for services, you must configure your company's mail server information and verify that users have valid email accounts with the specified server. Users can then select email notifications for specific services. |
13 | Setting up VM requests through BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management | After integrating BMC Digital Workplace with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, BMC Digital Workplace users can view and request available VM offerings as part of the Unified Catalog. Create sections and then add BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management offerings to the section. |
14 | Setting up service requests through BMC Service Request Management | To create a service catalog, BMC Digital Workplace pulls in services, apps, VMs, and other resources available to employees from different sources, including BMC Service Request Management. |
15 | Integrating Digital Workplace with BMC HR Case Management | Self-service users use BMC Digital Workplace to open HR cases and to search HR knowledge articles. BMC HR Case Management can be installed either on the same server with BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) or on a separate server. Note: The BMC HR Case Management server requires BMC Remedy Action Request System 9.1. |
Also review the following configurations:
Task | Action | Additional information |
---|---|---|
16 | Enabling a maps license. | Review the configuration. The desktop universal client, Admin console, and Android mobile client will show location maps only if the maps license is enabled. |
17 | Integrating with BMC TrueSight Operations Management | If you enable the integration of BMC TrueSight Operations Management, services monitored by TrueSight Operations Management are listed in BMC Digital Workplace and the availability status is updated by BMC TrueSight Operations Management. |
18 | Enabling and configuring the enhanced catalog for BMC Digital Workplace | BMC Digital Workplace Catalog enables you to collaborate with others within your organization or external third parties, to on board, manage, deliver, and analyze the use of IT and business services from multiple sources. |
Stage 4: Deploy BMC Digital Workplace to users
Task | Action | Additional information |
---|---|---|
1 | IT users access BMC Digital Workplace through Apple iOS and Google Android mobile clients, as well as through the universal client. The universal client provides access through a web browser. |
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