Importing service categories

Service catalog administrators can import categories from an external system that provides categories, or map external system categories to existing categories in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog.

Before you begin

Create a connection to the external system, as described in Configuring service connectors.

Category import and mapping pane

Service catalog administrators can open the category import and mapping pane by either of the following ways:

• In BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, go to Services > Categories. Select Actions > Import & Mapping.
• In BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, go to Catalog > Import. Select Category Mapping.

To import categories from external systems

You can import one or more categories from an external system. When you import categories and their subcategories, BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog retains the category and subcategory structure. You can import a single subcategory as a main level category.

1. Open the category import and mapping pane.

2. Under External Categories, filter and search to find the desired categories, and select them.
   Under BMC Helix Digital Workplace Categories, the Matched Categories section shows existing categories that share all or a part of the same name.

3. Click Import.
   If the category does not exist, it is created. If the category shares the exact spelling as an existing category, the system creates a new category with an incremented number.

   If you import a category with its subcategories, click to view the imported category structure.

After you import the categories, you can map the external system categories to existing categories in your system.

To map imported categories to existing categories

You can map external system categories to existing categories. The categories do not need to share the same name. Services that you import follow the category associations based on the mapping.

1. Open the category import and mapping pane.

2. Under External Categories, filter and search to find the desired category, and select the category.
   You can select only one external category name to map at a time.

3. Under BMC Helix Digital Workplace Categories, select the categories that you want to map to the external system category from Matched Categories or All Categories .
   You can map to multiple internal categories.

4. Click Map.

You can view the mapping assignment from the Imported & Mapped tab.

To remove category mappings

You can unmap categories to remove the association for imported services. The existing services are not affected.

1. Open the category import and mapping pane.
2. Under BMC Helix Digital Workplace Categories, click the Imported & Mapped tab.
3. Find the category with the association to remove.
4. Click the link to the number of mapped categories, and select the category or categories to unmap.
5. Click Unmap to remove the association.
   

Unmapping categories does not delete the categories from your system. To maintain your category list, go to Category Management.

Required licensing

SaaS subscribers who use BMC Helix ITSM or BMC Helix Virtual Agent Basic service are entitled to this feature.

Where to go from here

Enable the categories in the service type template. For more information, see Managing service type templates.