Service connector overview

BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog integrates with external fulfillment systems through service connectors, which pass information from a service request to an external system.

Service connectors offer the following types of integration capabilities:

• Catalog import: Provides catalog items that can be imported into BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. For more details, see Importing service catalog items from external systems and Importing service categories.
• Process workflow: Provides actions and activities for use in designing fulfillment workflows in the workflow designer. For more details, see Connector elements. 
• Resource mapping: Provides data from external forms and data sets that can be used for building service questionnaires. For more details, see Creating service questionnaires. 

Integration types 

BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog can be integrated with third-party systems via service connectors through:

• Direct integration
• BMC Helix Integration Service

The following diagram illustrates these integration types:

The direct integration type uses connectors that are shipped with BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. For a summary of service connectors installed with BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, see Service connector capabilities.

The integration via BMC Helix Integration Service uses connectors that are available in Integration Service. When the connection to BMC Helix Integration Service is configured, the available and enabled connectors are displayed in the list of connectors on the Connectors page.   

Integration use cases

Service connectors are necessary for integrating BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog with third-party systems. When this integration is done, a third-party system can receive data from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, and process these data as described in workflows of corresponding services.

A service request is a ticket opened by the end user. A service contains a service description and the work that must be done to complete the service request. The work that must be done is described by the actions that are part of a service workflow.

The work to be done can be automatic (when no human is involved in a service request completion) or manual (a human is involved in the completion of a service request). In both cases, the actual work is performed on the third-party system, and a service request is closed only when this work is completed.

Examples of direct integration with external systems

The following diagram shows an example of a manual process that uses a Helix ITSM connector:

The following diagram shows an example of an automatic process that uses a third-party system, such as Amazon Web Services:

Example of integration with an external system via BMC Helix Integration Service 

The following diagram shows an example of an automatic process that uses a third-party system, such as a JIRA connector shipped with BMC Helix Integration Service: