Adding a validation process to a question

As an administrator, you need to validate user responses to notify your end users of input errors, prevent failures in processing requests, and to make sure users can successfully submit service requests. Use BMC Helix Innovation Studio processes to perform input validation and ensure that a user input satisfies specific criteria before you allow the user to move to the next step or service question.

You can add validation only to native BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog services and imported SRDs.  

Scenario: Check whether a user exists in Active Directory before accepting a request to add a user to Active Directory 

How validation works in the following scenarios

When External Validation is enabled with other settings, such as Regular Expression or Default Value, the processing is done as described below:  

• Regular Expression (regex) is enabled: For a required question, if the input passes the regex validation, it is then sent to the validation process. The input is not sent for further validation if the regex validation fails. For example, to check whether an email address exists in Active Directory, you use a regular expression to check if the address is valid. After you confirm it's a valid address, you use a validation process to check whether it exists in Active Directory..
• Actions are specified: Values are populated only if the validation is successful. To learn more about actions, see "About actions that trigger default responses' in Creating questions with default responses.
• Default Value is configured: If external validation is enabled, the default value is validated in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. For more information, see Creating questions with default responses.

Process overview

1. Create a BMC Helix Innovation Studio process to validate a user input for your use case and ensure that the process executes as expected.
2. Create a service and integrate the validation process with the service questionnaire:
   1. Add a Text Field or Text Area type of question to the questionnaire.
   2. Enable external validation for the question.
   3. Select the process that will validate a user's response to the question.

Before you begin

Create both of the following items:

• A service, as described in Adding and updating services. 
• A workflow for service fulfillment, as described in Workflows for service fulfillment. 

To create a process to validate user input 

1. Create a validation workflow in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog.

    Note the following points when creating a validation process:

   • The process must have text, integer, or both types of inputs. 
   • It must have at least one global input variable. It cannot have only local variables.
   • It cannot have more than one required process input. 
2. Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio as an administrator.
3. On the Workspace tab, click Digital Workplace Catalog.
4. On the Processes tab, click Manage Processes.

5. Search for and select your validation process and click Run.
   Test the process in isolation to make sure the process works as expected when it executes in a questionnaire. For more information, see  Viewing and managing process execution .

To map a validation process to a service question

1. In the Catalog console, open the service, and its questionnaire.
2. In the Questions Designer, add a question.
3. From the Form element type list, select Text Field or Text Area.
   
4. In the Label field, enter the text of the question prompt that is displayed to the user
5. Enable External Validation for the question.
6. Click Map to process and select the process you want to use for the response validation.
7. In Process input variable, select the process input for which you added the question. 
   The user's response to the question is passed as an input to the process for validation.
   Only text and integer data type process inputs appear in the Process input variable list. If the process has a required input, only that input appears in the list.

8. In Error State, specify the error message to be displayed to the user if validation fails.

    Types of error messages

   Message type	Description	Example
   Custom message	Administrator adds a custom message.	<user name> already exists in Active DIrectory. Enter a valid user name to procees.
   Custom message+process response	Administrator cofigured message appended by the response from the BMC Helix Innovation Studio process that validates the user input.	Invalid input: Object already exists.
   Process response	Response from the BMC Helix Innovation Studio process that validates the user input.	AD3011: Object already exists.

   In addition, error messages may be displayed to the end user if error handlers are configured to catch errors during process execution and an error occurs. For example, authentication errors, failed HTTP requests, or timeout are some errors that might occur when a process is executed.

   Important

   Process messages are in English and are not translated.

    

   

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9. Add other questions as needed. 
10. Save the service configuration.

Troubleshooting

The following table describes common problems and steps to resolve them: