2.0 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in version 2.0 of BMC Change Automation.

The following enhancements are available in this release of BMC Change Automation.

Simplified installation and automatic configurations

The BMC Change Automation installer simplifies the process of integration with base components and enables the solution features.

BMC Change Automation installer performs the following:

Simplification of user interaction

The new service-oriented architecture introduced in this release of BMC Change Automation ensures that user interaction is simplified, standardized, and robust. New web services are provided for efficient inbound and outbound communication between the automation system and the change management system.

For more information, see Service-oriented interface.

The following web services are added in BMC Remedy Change Management to support integration with an external automation system.

Job enhancements

The following job enhancements support the Operator-Initiated Change and Change-Initiated Job use cases in BMC Change Automation 2.0.

Ability to dynamically apply templates to a change record

In this release of BMC Change Automation, templates are dynamically applied to a change record. This ensures that change records are quickly created and relevant attributes are applied to enrich the change record.

To ensure that correct templates are searched, optionally, you can define template selection rules using the new Template Selection Configuration interface. Using this UI, you can create, edit, delete, and search template selection rules. A template selection rule consists of criteria to search and apply a relevant template when a change record is created.

Navigate to Administrator Console > Application Administration Console > Custom Configuration > Foundation > Advanced Options > Template Selection Configuration to access this interface. For more information, see Managing change template selection rules.

The following screenshot shows the new UI.

A new default change process to ensure change manager review

Starting with this release, a new process flow is provided out of the box that is applied to a Request for Change from an automation system. This process flow is called Standard Process-Automation System.

In this process flow, the state of the change record by default transitions directly from Draft to Planning in Progress stage. To avoid the possibility of applying existing auto-approval processes to these new types of automated change records, this stage transition ensures that the auto approval process is bypassed even if the auto approvals are configured in the system.

The following screenshot depicts the state transition of the Standard Process-Automation System process flow.

This capability ensures that the change manager has the opportunity to:

• Review the new automation change records
• Determine who can accept or reject the Request For Change 
• Establish under what conditions they want to configure an auto approval process going forward
• Ensure process compliance
• Ensure efficient tracking and documentation of the changes in the system

For more information, see Overview of Standard Process-Automation System process flow.

New change rules for automation systems

A set of new change rules are provided that are applicable to requests from automation systems.

The following tables lists the rules and their default values:

For more information, see Configuring change rules for requests from automation system.

A comprehensive one-click utility to validate integrations

A single-click, end-to-end integration validation utility is provided to help you verify whether the integration between the automation system, BMC Atrium Orchestrator and BMC Remedy Change Management is working fine. The one-click utility runs automatically after you set the connection details in the BSA console. The utility displays the results of the test and integration errors, if any. After you fix the errors, you can manually run the utility again to validate whether the integrations are working correctly.

For more information, see Validating integrations.

Data remediation support

The BMC Change Automation solution is built on the concept of providing resilience to the creation of change record. Resilience ensures that erroneous conditions are handled gracefully without throwing an exception to the end user. Resilience in this solution ensures that even though complete details are not sent in the Request For Change and even if the required attributes are incorrect or missing, a change record gets created without throwing an error to the user and relevant logs are updated to inform the user of the changes performed.

Using this solution, you can create a change record by sending in only the job summary. To enrich the change record, the solution automatically adds a relevant change template and populates it with default values. This ensures that the change record is complete. This ability also facilitates proper documentation of changes occurring in the system and equips the change manager with the relevant information.

For more information, see Resilience and Data transformation and remediation.

Guaranteed delivery of data

To facilitate guaranteed delivery of data and ensure reliability, this release of BMC Change Automation supports a store-and-forward mechanism in BMC Atrium Orchestrator. When BMC Atrium Orchestrator receives data from an automation system or retrieves information from the BMC Remedy Change Management system, the data is stored in the event when either of the endpoint is unavailable. In this event, periodically, BMC Atrium Orchestrator retries sending this data to the other end point. The default duration to resend the stored data is three days, which can be configured as per your requirement. For more information, see Configuring data persistence interval.

The major benefit of this feature is that BMC Atrium Orchestrator reliably tries resending data to the end point and communicates failure or success of the process.

BMC Atrium Orchestrator workflows and adapters

In this release of BMC Change Automation 2.0, workflows and adapters are provided in BMC Atrium Orchestrator for successful implementation of Operator-Initiated Change and Change-Initiated job. These workflows and adapters ensure efficient transmission of data between automation system and change management.

Workflows:

• BMC-SA-CLA_ITSM_Integration:SetConnectionDetails
• BMC-SA-CLA_ITSM_Integration:ITSM_Integration:Blade:Process Request
• BMC-SA-CLA_ITSM_Integration:Setup_Validation:OneClickValidation

Adapters:

• CLA_DBActorAdapter
• CLA_MonitorAutomation 
• CLA_MonitorRemedy
• CLA_WSAdapter
• CLA_WSAdapterSync

For more information, see BMC Atrium Orchestrator workflows and adapters.

Enabling customization best practices through customization windows

To extend your system and to maintain the flow of information from the automation system and change management, three new wrapper workflows are introduced in BMC Atrium Orchestrator. These wrapper workflows operate as customization windows and represent empty implementation of the workflow. These customization windows provide an opportunity to search and add functionality without changing the default behavior.

Ensure that you perform modifications only in the given customization windows. This best practice ensures that your modifications do not alter the default settings of the workflow.

For more information about the customization windows, see Best practices.