20.02 enhancements

Portal for external users

In previous release, the ability to create and use an external BMC Digital Workplace portal was introduced as a Beta feature that could be enabled on request. With version 20.02, this feature is generally available. With an external portal, you can offer a limited set of features for users who are not internal to your organization and provide a customized service catalog.

The configuration and management capabilities are enhanced to provide a better user experience. The 20.02 enhancements include the following options for administrators:

• The ability to configure the reCAPTCHA to protect an external BMC Digital Workplace portal against spam and other types of automated abuse. In addition, the security of the portal has been strengthened by restricting the number of unsuccessful attempts to log in. 
• The ability to configure the advanced password settings for external users.
• The ability to configure the whitelists or blacklists to permit or restrict the registration access for certain domains.
• The ability to configure the email notifications about new user registrations.
• User management enhancements and the ability to approve external user manually or automatically.

The 20.02 enhancements include the following options for external users:

• External users receive new types of notifications as follows:
  • Newly registered external users receive email notifications when their accounts are approved.
  • Inactive external users receive email notifications when an external administrator reactivates their accounts.
  • External users who were previously blocked and are unblocked by an external administrator, receive email notifications with the confirmation code to reactivate their accounts.
  • External users receive email and bell notifications about the requirement to reset their passwords if an external administrator configures this option. 
• External users can change the passwords to their accounts in an external portal. 

For more information about the External Users feature, see Portal for external users. For more information about configuring and external portal and managing external users, see Administering an external BMC Helix Digital Workplace portal.

Improved search of knowledge articles

In this release, BMC Digital Workplace exposes two improvements in knowledge-article searches you can turn on in the RKM pluggable provider settings:

• A BMC Digital Workplace administrator can enable partial search without using wildcards. The feature is disabled by default. The following table compares the results returned by the standard search of knowledge articles related to printer and the results displayed when the new parameter is turned on. The first screenshot shows that the standard search does not return any results if an end user inserts a partial title of the knowledge article without a wildcard. The second screenshot shows that the search with the new RKM setting enabled returns all results if the end user inserts a partial title without a wildcard. For more accurate search with the new feature turned on, the end user should know the exact word/phrase to search by, which eliminates unneeded articles in results.

• A BMC Digital Workplace administrator can enable locale-based search of knowledge articles. Thus, end users can see only those knowledge articles that are in the locale of their preference or browser and those without a locale. The feature is disabled by default. Assume that as an end user with French as a preferred language, you want to search for the knowledge article related to cache. The following table displays the difference between search results when the feature is disabled and enabled. In the first screenshot, knowledge articles in the French locale appear along with the articles in English. In the second screenshot, only knowledge articles in the French locale are displayed.

An RKM administrator can add custom locales that are mapped to BMC Digital Workplace. An ITSM administrator must ensure that language codes of newly added locales correlate with those in BMC Digital Workplace.

To learn more about the RKM provider settings, see List of providers.

For details about BMC Digital Workplace integration with BMC Knowledge Management, see Setting up self-help resources.

For more information about search logic, see Search in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.

To view the list of languages that BMC Digital Workplace supports, see Supported languages and locales.

To observe the list of languages that RKM supports, see  Supported languages and locales .

Additional fields in the change approval request details 

With this release, service request approvers can see additional fields in the change approval request: Summary and Notes. With this feature, the approver can get more details about the reason for the request. As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can turn these fields on in the SRM pluggable provider settings through a new property. This feature is disabled by default. The following screenshots show the layout of the change approval ticket details available to the approver:

To learn about the change request approval process, see Configuring approvals.

For more information about the SRM pluggable provider, see Setting up service requests through BMC Service Request Management.

To learn more about the providers, see List of providers.

Provide feedback to BMC from the Admin Console

This feature is available only to BMC Helix subscribers, and is enabled by BMC. When the feature is enabled, the Provide feedback option is displayed in a drop-down menu under the user settings in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console. 

BMC Digital Workplace administrators can provide their feedback by completing a customer satisfaction survey. 

The survey results are recorded and available to BMC analysts in the Qualtrix third-party tool. No personally identifiable information is submitted to Qualtrics unless a user types something explicitly in the text box.

Enhancement to the Approvals configuration in BMC Digital Workplace Admin console

Approval configuration options have been redesigned in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console. The BMC Digital Workplace administrators

set up the approvals from the Configuration > Approvals page, and not from the Configuration > Application Features page as it was in earlier releases.

For more information about how to configure approvals, see Setting up approvals.

Launching approval requests in SmartIT console

As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can enable the launching of change request approvals from the BMC Digital Workplace end user console in the SmartIT console. The new settings for approval requests have been added to the Configuration > Application Features page in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console. See Configuring how approval requests are displayed in BMC Digital Workplace end user console.

When you enable the cross launch functionality, end users can see the View in  SmartIT  link displayed in the details of a change request approval request. If BMC Digital Workplace is not integrated with Remedy Single Sign-On, the login page will be displayed to end users before the approval request is launched.

Managing BMC Digital Workplace subtenants by a BMC Digital Workplace super administrator 

Starting with this release, a BMC Digital Workplace super administrator user who has MyIT Admin and MyIT Super Admin permissions in Remedy AR System can manage the subtenants of the super administrator's tenant in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console.  This functionality is available if a master tenant and at least one subtenant are on the BMC Digital Workplace server. For information about the concept of subtenant access to BMC Digital Workplace,  see Company-level access to subtenants in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.

When a super administrator logs into the BMC Digital Workplace Admin Console, and clicks the user drop down list  in the top-right corner, the Company access button is displayed:

The Company picker list displays company names:

Companies represent  the subtenants available on the BMC Digital Workplace server. The super administrator can select a company from the list, and then click Switch company. In the company mode, the super administrator can manage subtenants.  For more information about how to manage subtenants, see Configuring subtenants.

Updating the attachment settings for service requests

In earlier releases, all attachment settings were stored in the appConfig.json file, and after upgrading BMC Digital Workplace or applying hot fixes, there was a need to manually update the appConfig.json file.

You can now update attachment types and sizes by using the tenant configuration utility. For more information, see Updating the attachment settings for service requests.

Category-based navigation in BMC Digital Workplace

As a BMC Digital Workplace administrator, you can now enable the category-based navigation in the catalog for end users by configuring the category page layout in the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console.

The category view shows category tiles at the top of the page and replaces the category list. You can set the tiles to carousel or list view. Additionally, you can set the background of the tiles to use variants of the primary brand color. The following images show the examples of the carousel tile layout:

The following images show the examples of the list tile layout:

For more information, see Setting up sections in the Catalog.In BMC Digital Workplace Catalog, you can link promotional banners to categories. If configured, a banner directs to the page of the selected category in the BMC Digital Workplace catalog. Additionally, you can set an external link in a banner to be opened in the same browser window. For more information, see Adding and configuring banner items.

Support for SameSite Cookie attribute in Remedy Single Sign-On

Install and upgrade enhancements

You can now use a command line interface configuration wizard to create a new options configuration file for installing or upgrading BMC Digital Workplace. The existing procedure that uses the options configuration file from the command line interface now also allows you to validate your options file. For more information, Running the BMC Digital Workplace Catalog installer and Upgrading a BMC Digital Workplace Catalog server.

Questions with a table of response selections

Questions with a table of response selections released in version 19.11 as a beta feature, had the following usage limitations:

• Although multiple languages were supported, some alignment issues existed for right to left (RTL) languages.
• Mobile support was limited. Content in wide tables with multiple columns might have been truncated.

In version 20.02 these limitations have been fixed, and the feature has no usage limitations. In addition, the known defects have been fixed.

In version 20.02, questions with a table with a multiple-responses selection provide an option for end users to see all the selections in a single page. By clicking the Show all button, end users can review the selected options.

People groups as collaborators on business requests

Collaboration on service requests is useful when an end user creates a request that impacts other users or if the user will not be available when the request is fulfilled. The existing functionality allowed end users to add individual users as collaborators and create one default group.

In this release, administrators can configure multiple groups of users that end users can add as collaborators to a service request in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog. Administrators can also set any one group as a default group, and all users in the group can review the request details, add comments, or cancel the request. For more information, see Collaborating with users on service requests and People groups.

Custom surveys integration with BMC Helix Business Workflows

Starting from this release, in the BMC Helix Business Workflows console, agents can view responses from custom surveys that end users submit in BMC Digital Workplace for service requests based on BMC Helix Business Workflows services.

Dependent services in bundles

The existing functionality allowed administrators to add dependencies to new or existing services in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog. When end users request the dependent (child) services in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog, they are prompted to also request the parent services that are mapped to these child services in BMC Digital Workplace Catalog. A dependent (child) service request can be completed only after a corresponding parent service request is completed.

In this release, service catalog administrators or internal service supplier administrators can map a dependent service to bundles and services with multi-request questionnaires. For more information, see Specifying dependent services and Adding and updating bundles.

Deprecation of support for OpenJDK 8

Support for OpenJDK 8 is now deprecated. BMC Digital Workplace has been able to run and provide full functionality on OpenJDK 11 since the 19.02 release, and will continue to be supported. BMC Digital Workplace 20.02 requires you to install OpenJDK 11.0.2.