Transforming mapped fields

While designing new flows or updating existing flows in BMC Helix Integration Studio, you can transform the fields in the source application to enable modified data delivery to the target application. You can also unify data types across applications that are involved in a flow.

In BMC Helix Integration Studio, you can use the following types of transformations:

Source value to target value
Multiple source values to target value
String transformation
Configuration-specific transformations

Important

You can use different types of transformations in one flow if these transformations do not get in conflict with each other.

In addition to transforming the fields of the same data type, BMC Helix Integration Studio supports transforming the fields that have different data types. If required, the source fields are automatically transformed in a flow as follows:

String to integer
Integer to string
Date to string
Date to integer
Integer to date

Related topics

Designing and maintaining flows

Adding or copying flows

Updating or deleting flows

To access the Transformations pane

To access the Transformations pane while designing a new flow, perform the following step:
While mapping source fields to target fields, click the (transformations) icon.
The following illustration shows the Flow Designer point of access to the Transformations pane:

To access the Transformations pane while updating an existing flow, perform the following step:

In flow profile, in the field mapping section, click the (transformations) icon.
The following illustration shows the flow profile point of access to the Transformations pane:

In both cases, the transformations icon is active only if the field mapping is set to Source Fields, and one or more source fields are already added. If you select and save a transformation type for a flow, the icon gets highlighted in green: .

To transform a source value to a target value

By using this transformation type, you can transform a single source field's value to a mapped target field's value.

The following table provides an example of the Source value to target value transformation type and describes the steps to transform.

Example

Steps to transform

In a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, you want the escalated ITSM issues to automatically have a high priority in the corresponding JIRA tickets, and non-escalated issues to have a low priority.

To achieve this goal, you must set the Escalated?=Yes case to be mapped to Priority=High. Because the only other possible case is Escalated?= No, No is the default value and should be mapped to Priority=Low.

The following image illustrates the preceding example:

In the Transformations pane, select the Source value to target value transformation type.
Enter a target field value for the default value.
Click Add new, and then provide a different value for the source field.
Add a target field value for the new source field value.
(Optional) Repeat steps 3-4.
Click Save and Close.

Note: If you select the Source value to target value transformation type, but include more than one source field, only the first source field is transformed.

To transform multiple source fields, use the Multiple source values to target value transformation type.

To transform multiple source values to a target value

By using this transformation type, you can transform multiple source fields' values to a single mapped target field's value.

Important

This option is available only if two or more source fields are mapped in a flow.

The following table provides an example of the Multiple source values to target value transformation type and describes the steps to transform.

Example	Steps to transform
In a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, you want an escalated user service request in BMC Helix ITSM to be assigned to a specific user; for example, to Allen Albrook, whose JIRA username is aalbrook. To achieve this goal, you must set Escalated?=Yes and Incident Type=User Service Request to be mapped to Assignee=aalbrook, The following image illustrates the preceding example:	In the Transformations pane, select the Multiple source values to target value transformation type. Select or enter values for each of the source fields. Select or enter a value for the target field. Click Add >. Click Save and Close.

To transform a source value by using the string transformation functions

By using this transformation type, you can apply string functions to a source field's value.

Tip

Typically, string transformation is useful only if applied to a source field that holds string data, as opposed to other data types.

For example, in a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, it's not recommended to transform the Escalated? field because it is a boolean field.

In such a flow, you can apply string transformation to the Summary field to trim or format the string value, or replace certain parts of it, assuming that the resulting string is more aligned with your JIRA practices.

The following table provides an example of the String transformation type and describes the steps to transform.

Example Steps to transform

See String transformation functions.

In the Transformations pane, select String transformation.
Click the Function row, and then select the function that you want to use.
The selected function is highlighted in green—for example,.
Provide the required parameter values.
(Optional) To add additional functions, repeat steps 3–4.
Click Save and Close.

Important: Functions are applied to the source string in the order you enter them.

For example, if you have substring(0,250) followed by replace(legacyProject,newProject), the first function returns the first 250 characters of the source string, and the second function returns any occurrences of legacyProject found within those 250 characters with newProject.

If you want to reorder the functions, you should remove and re-add them in the required order.

To set up configuration-specific transformations

By default, transformations in BMC Helix Integration Studio flows are connector-specific. This means that transformations are automatically applied to all flows that use a particular connector.

You can set up configuration-specific transformations. In this case, transformations are applied to each connector configuration separately. For example, you might want to create two separate flows that are using a JIRA connector. In a JIRA-to-Helix ITSM flow, you might not need any transformations. But, in a JIRA-to-Salesforce flow, you might need to apply transformations to several mapped fields. To achieve this goal, you can use separate connector configurations for JIRA.

To tie transformations to a connector configuration, you must select an existing custom schema instead of a default schema while creating a flow, as shown in the following illustration:

If a connector that you use while designing a flow does not have a custom schema, the original connector-specific transformation functionality is retained. For information about how to create a custom schema for a connector, see Generating custom schema for connectors.

To remove the transformations

Warning

If you remove or modify the transformations in a flow, this action affects the behavior of the flow across environments and has a direct impact on all users who use the flow. By removing mapped source fields, you also remove all transformations of these fields. We recommend that you notify the flow's users before removing or modifying the transformations.

Access the Transformations pane.
Next to the required source field, click the transformations icon.
Next to a transformation that you want to remove, click the icon.
The transformation is removed.