Upgrading BMC Digital Workplace and Smart IT
The Remedy with Smart IT (Smart IT) and BMC Digital Workplace installer supports direct upgrade to Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02.00 from the following versions, respectively:
- Smart IT 1.4, 1.5, 1.5.01, 1.6
- MyIT 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
- BMC Digital Workplace 3.3.02, 3.4, 3.5
The Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace installer also supports upgrade from Smart IT 1.6.
Considerations prior to upgrading
The following table provides information about specific scenarios that you should consider prior to upgrading to Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02:
| Scenario | Consideration or action required | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
| You plan to upgrade to BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) 9.1 Service Pack 1. | Install BMC Remedy AR System Patch 1 followed by BMC Remedy ITSM 9.1 Service Pack 1 before upgrading to Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02. | The installation sequence ensures that existing BMC Remedy ITSM functionality is not affected and escalations are enabled when Smart IT 2.0 is installed. For more information about escalation status, see
KCS Forms and escalations
|
| You are using BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.02 or later. | Upgrading to Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02 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 Remedy ITSM 8.0.xx | You can upgrade to Smart IT 1.5.01 and MyIT 3.3. However, to upgrade to Smart IT 2.0 and
BMC Digital Workplace
18.02, you must first upgrade to BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.02 or later. | None |
You have BMC MyIT 2.6. You plan to upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 18.02. | Before upgrading to
BMC Digital Workplace
18.02, you must upgrade to MyIT version 3.1, or 3.2 . | The AppZone integration is removed when you upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 18.02. |
Upgrade recovery
The installer for Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02 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 had failed in the previous attempt.
Notes
- Do not exit the installer while the upgrade is in progress.
- In rare cases, you might need to perform the upgrade from all over again. This requires that you take a back up of BMC Remedy AR server database and Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace database, indicated as a step in the upgrade process.
Upgrade process
BMC Digital Workplace and Smart IT use the same server and share the same installer. This topic describes the general upgrade process.
Best practice
Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace upgrade comprises the following stages:
- Stage 1: Prepare to upgrade Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace
- Stage 2: Upgrade Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace
- Stage 3: Review Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace configurations
- Stage 4: Review Smart IT configurations (Links in this table direct you to the Smart IT online documentation.)
- Stage 5: Review BMC Digital Workplace configurations
- Stage 6: Review deployment of Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace clients to users
Stage 1: Prepare to upgrade Smart IT and 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 following release notes: |
| 3 | Download the BMC Digital Workplace and Smart IT installation files | This topic explains how to obtain the files that you need for installation from the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) site. |
| 4 | Review the
Smart IT performance
| BMC has conducted an analysis of various performance test results and provided performance benchmarking methodology and environment. The recommendations from these tests are validated by the test results. |
| 5 | 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. |
| 6 | This patch enables cognitive service management and offers the capabilities to migrate Remedy with Smart IT 2.0 definitions from the development environment to production environment. | |
| 7 | (If upgrading from a version earlier than BMC Digital Workplace 3.3.02 or upgrading to Smart IT 2.0) Install the User Experience patch | Before you upgrade
BMC Digital Workplace
and Smart IT, you must install the User Experience patch. This patch enables BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) to work with Smart IT and
BMC Digital Workplace
. For Smart IT, this patch enables viewing incidents, requests, approvals, and so on in the timeline and activity feed. Without this patch, timelines, email notifications, and social features do not work in either Smart IT or
BMC Digital Workplace
. The installation applies required BMC Remedy ITSM patches. |
| 8 |
Upgrading Openfire chat to version 4.0.2
| Openfire chat 4.0.2 is compatible with Smart IT 2.0. |
| 9 | Upgrade to 64-bit Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 8. | Upgrade to JRE 8 on all the servers where you have Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace installed. |
| 10 | Take a backup of BMC Remedy AR server database and Smart IT and MyIT database. | To recover from any unexpected upgrade failure and resume upgrade from the last executed stage, take a back up of BMC Remedy with Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace database and BMC Remedy AR Server database. |
Stage 2: Upgrade Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace
Note
If you are on BMC Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) 8.1.02 and later, upgrading to Smart IT 2.0 and BMC Digital Workplace 18.02.00 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 | Upgrade MongoDB | The bundled MongoDB version can only be used for a fresh installation. In an upgrade scenario, the MongoDB is not upgraded automatically by the installer. In an upgrade scenario, you must manually upgrade the MongoDB.
|
3 | Do not use Xming to install the BMC Digital Workplace and Smart IT server, because it might not perform reliably during installation. Instead, use VNC, MobaXterm, or any other client. | |
| 4 | Verify the BMC Digital Workplace and Smart IT server installation | Verify whether the upgrade is successful. |
Stage 3: Review Smart IT and 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 and Smart IT server for the Social server | 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 and Smart IT server. |
| 3 | Integrating BMC Digital Workplace with LDAP | This topic describes how to configure the integration of LDAP for broadcasting with Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace . You can integrate BMC Digital Workplace with LDAP so that you can distribute broadcasts to your LDAP distribution groups. If configured, these groups are also used when setting up services on the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console. |
| 4 | This topic describes how to configure the integration of Remedy Single Sign-On with Smart IT and 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. |
Stage 4: Review Smart IT configurations
Note
Links in this table direct you to the Smart IT online documentation.
| Task | Action | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The information shown on timelines and feeds is uploaded from BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) and processed by the Social Server. To import the existing BMC Remedy ITSM data into the Social Server, use the BMC Remedy with Smart IT onboarding utility. | |
| 2 |
Disabling collision management and impact analysis in Smart IT
| If your organization does not use collision management or impact analysis functionality for Change Management, you can choose to disable these features. |
| 3 | To give users access to Smart IT, assign them the required user permissions. | |
| 4 | Note: This is specific to Smart IT. If your environment uses BMC Service Request Management, ensure that the People records for non-support staff include a login ID. Service requests cannot be submitted for a customer who has a People record with no login ID. Service requests cannot be submitted, because the Smart Recorder uses the login ID to show available service request templates for that person . | |
| 5 |
Adding custom fields to your views using Smart IT
| You might have custom fields defined for BMC Remedy IT Service Management, that you would like to display in the Smart IT user interface. You might also want to display out-of-the-box BMC Remedy ITSM fields that are not shown by default in Smart IT. When you add custom fields, they appear in the area that you specify in Screen Configuration. For example, you can add a custom field to the Assignment area of the Incident View. The custom field then appears in incident ticket details, with the assignment information. If you add custom fields to the Person Profile, those fields also appear in the customer information displayed in the Smart Recorder. |
| 6 |
Enabling full text search
| Full text search (FTS) is an optional feature that you can install with the BMC Remedy AR System server. To use FTS with Smart IT, you must install BMC Remedy Knowledge Management, even if you do not plan to create knowledge articles. To use the complete FTS capability, you must configure and enable the feature. |
| 7 |
Enabling SSL for Openfire chat server
| Complete the procedure to enable a secure sockets layer (SSL) for the Openfire chat server that runs with BMC Remedy with Smart IT (Smart IT). |
| 8 |
Integrating Smart IT with phone systems
| If your help desk phone system integrates with other web tools, you can configure it to start Smart Recorder directly from the phone system UI. |
| 9 |
Configuring notifications for Smart IT
| Configure your notifications. You can choose to use BMC Remedy ITSM notifications, for example if you have customized notifications. You can enable localized Smart IT notifications for mobile clients. |
| 10 |
Configuring automatic following in Smart+IT
| Configure whether users automatically receive updates for new knowledge articles, incidents, work orders, tasks, service requests, change requests, and broadcasts that they create. By default, users only receive updates for new knowledge articles that they create. |
| 11 |
Configuring security options for Smart IT
| Configure security options. Limit the types of files that users can attach to Smart IT records. Update the content security policy to allow users to attach images from external sources to knowledge articles. If you have Openfire chat installed, edit the openfire/conf/cross-domain-policy.xml file to only allow access to data from a specific domain (or domains). |
| 12 |
Disabling application modules in Smart IT
| If your organization does not use BMC Service Request Management, BMC Work Order Management, BMC Change Management, or BMC Problem Management in Smart IT, you can choose to disable these application modules. |
| 13 | Error rendering macro 'link-window' Failed to transform the HTML macro template for display. Nested message: The XML content could not be parsed. There is a problem at line 4, column 150. Parser message: Duplicate attribute 'href'. at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [4,150] | By default, Smart Recorder locates customer profiles by assuming a "first name, last name" order when you enter the person's name. You can configure Smart IT so that the Smart Recorder searches by the customer's last name as well as the first name. |
| 14 | Error rendering macro 'link-window' Failed to transform the HTML macro template for display. Nested message: The XML content could not be parsed. There is a problem at line 4, column 194. Parser message: Duplicate attribute 'and'. at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [4,194] | While creating a ticket using Smart Recorder, the customer name and contact names are automatically included in the title and description of the ticket. You can choose to exclude the customer name and contact names from the title and description by changing the default value of a configuration setting. |
| 15 |
Configuring the reconciliation method for assets in Smart IT
| Version 1.5 introduced a new Sandbox Job Calls setting is added to the AST:AppSettings form. This setting controls how reconciliation calls (requests) are processed for assets. |
Stage 5: Review BMC Digital Workplace configurations
| Task | Action | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 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. | |
| 2 | Administrators can grant or restrict access to the areas of the BMC Digital Workplace Admin console for other administrator. | |
| 3 | 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. |
| 4 |
| |
| 5 | 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. | |
| 6 | 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. | |
| 7 | You can change the settings that BMC Digital Workplace uses to connect to the following applications:
| |
| 8 | 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. |
| 9 | 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. |
| 10 | 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. |
| 11 | 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. |
| 12 | 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. |
Stage 6: Deploy Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace to users
| Task | Action | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Deploying Smart IT to your users
in the BMC Remedy with Smart IT online documentation. | IT users access Smart IT and 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. |
| 2 |
Comments
Stage 1 Step 4 link to performance tuning is broken and links to "smartit16:Smart". Also, reading the performance tuning in SmartIT1.6 looks like the FTS fortification to improve performance is only for 7.6 and 8.1. Is the recommendation also to apply FTS fortification to V9.x?
Thanks for your comment, Paul. We are currently investigating and will get back to you (and will update the content as appropriate).
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