Process collaboration

BMC Change Automation 2.0 solution is built on the philosophy of enabling process collaboration. Process collaboration involves two or more independent processes interacting closely to accomplish a common goal.

In BMC Change Automation, BMC Server Automation system and BMC Change Management seamlessly integrate to enable successful process collaboration. Even though collaboration exists between these two systems already, that collaboration is manual, inefficient, and tedious. With BMC Change Automation, efficient collaboration is possible between these two systems.

Process collaboration requires an efficient bidirectional communication mechanism and clear lines of responsibility between the products involved in the integration. For example, in BMC Change Automation, the automation system is responsible for the job execution whereas the change management system is responsible for governing the change approval process for Request For Change (RFC) that may impact the environment. Although these individual products maintain separate lanes of responsibilities, they seamlessly integrate to ensure successful collaboration.

The following diagram illustrates this concept:

In BMC Change Automation, the collaboration is more than bidirectional communication; it is an interactive, solution-level collaboration between two processes.

The following are some examples of effective communication to ensure process collaboration in BMC Change Automation:

• After the RFC is received from the automation system, the change manager might update the schedule dates, which is then communicated back to the automation system, thus resulting in reconciliation of requested date with the scheduled date.

• Activity logs that provide information to the job operator about the change record status. This enables the job operator to stay in their own system when the change record goes through its lifecycle in the Change Management system. When the change record transitions in a new state, the job operator can see the state transitions in their own activity logs.

• Any relevant work info notes/updates will be added to the activity log if the operator changes job details such as targets and so on. Such updates get reflected automatically in the change management system.

This interactive collaboration ensures that the changes are well documented and logged within the solution and both the systems are aware of the changes happening in each other's environment ultimately ensuring efficient integration and successful implementation of supported use cases.

• For information about how communication from automation system is established in change management, see Viewing worklog updates.
• For information about how communication of change management system activities is established in automation system, see Viewing job activity  and Status types for change management approval jobs  in BMC Server Automation 8.9 online documentation.