19.11 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in version  19.11  of BMC Digital Workplace.

The following enhancements are added to BMC Digital Workplace.

Portal for external users 

As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can create an external BMC Digital Workplace portal for users who are not internal to your organization. For example, you can create an external portal for employees of an external contractor. This capability enables you to manage internal and external business processes separately, as well as configure and customize regular and external BMC Digital Workplace tenants separately. With an external portal, you can offer a limited set of features for external users and provide a customized service catalog.

For more information about the External Users feature, see Portal for external users. 

For more information about administering an external portal, see Administering an external BMC Digital Workplace portal.

Enhanced global search for end users

The global search no longer shows results in a single list. End users see search results sorted in pill style tabs that the BMC Helix Digital Workplace administrator can configure. The first tab, Top Hits, displays the result highlights based on the user's search query. Below Top Hits, three results of each section are displayed. Each summary section provides a See more option for an end user to go to the results of the category. Requests and Approvals appear on the bottom of the page in the More search options section. 

The following image demonstrates the updated search results layout in BMC Helix Digital Workplace:

To understand the search logic of BMC Helix Digital Workplace, see How search works in BMC Digital Workplace.

To configure tabs, see Enabling end user features. 

Natural language processing to improve search results for end users

End users can benefit from the qualitative search enhanced by natural language processing. The search engine is now trained to understand the intent of the end user by a phrase or a sentence.

For example, end users can type conversational phrases such as I need a new printer or What requests were approved. The natural language processing search engine understands human language and shows more accurate results. If natural language processing is enabled, the supplementary search results may follow the main search results in the Related items section, which is available only if the search engine finds related items. This feature is supported by mobile devices. 

The following image demonstrates the improvement in search results with natural language processing.

For more information about how the natural language processing search works, see Configuring search results.

To find out the logic of the search engine in BMC Helix Digital Workplace, see How search works in BMC Digital Workplace.

Localized email and push notifications for end users 

The language of email and push notifications is no longer restricted to the default English. The language depends on the end user's last login.

Here is an example of how it works: the Language feature is disabled, and the browser's locale is English. An end user logs in and receives emails in English. The administrator enables the Language feature and selects French. The end user still receives email notifications in English. The changes of the BMC Helix Digital Workplace administrator are applied only if the user logs in again.

The following screenshot displays an email notification about the initiated service request in French:

For further information about email notifications, see Configuring status updates and notifications.

For more information about language settings in BMC Helix Digital Workplace, see Setting a language for your end users.

Additional feature setting in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console

As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can enable or disable natural language searching in Configuration > Search.

For information about how to enable natural language searching, see Configuring search results. 

Additional label customization

Starting with the 19.11 release, BMC Digital Workplace introduces new capabilities to customize the labels displayed in the end user console. As an administrator, you can change the names of the labels on the My Activity page by using new branding options in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console. You can customize the following labels:

• My Activity
• Active events
• Past events
• Filtered events

The following illustration shows an example of a customized Active events label. The label name is changed to Requests in progress:

For more information about applying new branding options, see Customizing the labels used in BMC Digital Workplace.

The following enhancements are added to BMC Digital Workplace Catalog.

Install and upgrade enhancements

The BMC Digital Workplace Catalog install and upgrade uses a new process that allows you to quickly set up your system/application database using a database dump file. The golden database contains a preset schema required for your application database, and can be downloaded for supported versions of Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. For more information, see Creating Oracle tablespaces and Creating Microsoft SQL Server databases.

Complex surveys in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog

In previous releases, the default simple survey was sent to end users for all completed enhanced services if the Surveys feature was enabled in Application Settings in the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog console.BMC Digital Workplace Catalog administrators can create complex custom surveys for enhanced services, assign a custom survey as the default survey, and map custom surveys to services. For information about how to enable this functionality, see Setting up satisfaction surveys for enhanced services.

The custom survey always includes the default Rating along with other custom questions.

You can enable surveys for enhanced services and configure the default survey in Application Settings:

For information about how to configure the Surveys settings, see Configuring the default survey for enhanced services.

You can manage and create complex custom surveys in Services > Surveys.

For information about how to add and configure a custom survey, see Creating and managing complex satisfaction surveys for enhanced services.

You can design a survey in Survey Designer, which is similar to Questions Designer:

For information about how to design a survey, see Designing custom surveys for enhanced services.

In addition to the new custom surveys functionality, reports are enhanced to collect and analyze surveys that the end users submit. The Satisfaction Survey report is added to the Reports navigation menu.

For more information about this report, see Reports and analysis of the enhanced service catalog.

Questions with a table of response selections

Starting with this release, administrators who create questionnaires in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog can create questions with a table of response selections. Questions Designer supports the following new form element types:

• Table (single select) 
• Table (multi select)

The Table (single select) form element type is displayed to end users as a question with a table of response selections that enables users to select a single option.

The Table (multi select) form element type is displayed to end users as a question with a table of response selections that enables users to select multiple rows.

Questions with a table of response selections provide an additional context to end users, and they can be more sure about making a choice in a service questionnaire.

For more information about these questions, see  Adding questions to a questionnaire.

For information about how to configure questions with a table of response selections , see Creating questions with a table for response selection.

Option to reopen completed requests 

As a BMC Digital Workplace Catalog administrator, you can configure the option for the end users to reopen their service requests. However, the option is available only for those service requests that are still in the Completed status. Requests that are moved to the Closed status cannot be reopened. For more information about reopening requests, see Reopening requests.

Granular access to subcatalogs

With this release, BMC Digital Workplace Catalog users cannot modify workflows and questionnaires belonging to another subcatalog. However, internal service suppliers and internal service supplier administrators can access and modify the workflows and the related questionnaires created in another subcatalog. In Workflow Library, the workflows not belonging to a subcatalog of a user are displayed with the lock icon next to the name of the workflows, as shown in the following image.

When BMC Digital Workplace Catalog users associate workflows not belonging to their subcatalog with services that they create, they can use only the questionnaires created for these workflows by users from another subcatalog. They cannot create new questionnaires or preview the available ones.

For more information about associating questionnaires with workflows, see Adding a questionnaire to a service.

Starting with this release, catalog administrators can perform the following actions:

• Add existing workflows to subcatalogs on the Sub-catalogs page:
  
  For details about how to add workflows to a subcatalog, see Granting access to subcatalogs in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog.

• Assign a workflow to a subcatalog while creating new workflow:
  
  For more information about how to associate a subcatalog with a workflow, see Attaching a workflow to a service.