2021 enhancements

Review the BMC Helix Intelligent Automation enhancements for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users.

Dec 30, 2021

Improved user experience for the Intelligent Automation Value Dashboard 

On the Intelligent Automation Value Dashboard, the number of automation policies represented in the Total Automations widget display the total number of unique automation policies in the product. The widget label is changed to Total Unique Automations. If a policy is renamed, the Top Ten Automation Policy Runs widget show both the previous and the current policy names. 

For more information, see Viewing policies in BMC Helix Dashboards.  

Nov 19, 2021

Enhanced policy history search capabilities by using policy tags

To enable searching through a huge list of policy runs on the History page, you can add tags while creating an automation policy. Based on the selected event, some system tags are automatically generated. You can use the system tags or add custom tags in the key-value pair format.

 For more information, see Creating automation policies. 

Improved user experience for TrueSight Orchestration actions

The TrueSight Orchestration actions display all the mandatory input parameters. When you select an action, the workflow description is displayed and you can also hover over the input parameters to view additional details.   

For more information, see Executing a workflow.

Consolidated connector configuration page for cloud and on-premises connectors 

On the Available Connectors page, connectors are no longer grouped based on cloud or on-premises deployment. For applications that support both the deployments, the connector configuration page shows a message with a link to download and install the plugin. If you want to configure the on-premises connector, the download & install link takes you to the on-premises connector configuration page. For a cloud connector, you can continue to provide the details without needing to click the link.

For applications that support only cloud deployments, no such message appears. 

Ability to poll status for Ansible Tower and BMC Helix Innovation Studio actions

For Ansible Tower and BMC Helix Innovation Studio, BMC Helix Intelligent Automation runs actions in a policy that can be executed asynchronously. A polling action polls the endpoint applications on a periodic basis to verify whether the execution is complete and updates the status in the History page after the actions are complete.

For more information, see Viewing automation policy runs.

Capability to run plugins as system processes

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation supports running remote plugins as a system service (on Microsoft Windows) or a system process (on Linux) on hosts on which the plugins are installed. If a plugin is installed as a service, you can start, stop, or restart it like any other service. You can run a plugin as a service only on Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Enterprise and CentOS 7 operating systems.

The documentation for each on-premises connector contains information about running the plugin as a service. For an example, see Configuring the Kubernetes on-premises connector. 

Reuse existing plugins for on-premises connectors

If you have configured an on-premises connector at least once, you can reuse the plugin key to configure any other on-premises connector, which avoids creating and maintaining multiple plugin keys. 

The documentation for each on-premises connector contains an optional step for reusing plugins. For example, see Configuring the TrueSight Orchestration connector. 

Oct 22, 2021

New Generic REST API connector

The Generic REST API connector is available to connect with any application that provides RESTful Web services. Using the cloud or on-premises REST API connector, you can create policies in BMC Helix Intelligent Automation that execute the actions in the connected applications. 

For more information, see Running jobs by invoking REST APIs.  

New BMC Helix Innovation Studio connector

The BMC Helix Innovation Studio connector is available to connect with BMC Helix Innovation Suite. While adding actions to a policy, use the Sync Actions option to retrieve all enabled processes in BMC Helix Innovation Suite.  

For more information, see Invoking BMC Helix Innovation Studio processes.

Enable and disable connectors

You can disable a connector temporarily. When you disable the connector, the published automation policies associated with the connector move to the Disabled state and cannot be executed. When you enable the connector again, the policies revert to the Published state. By default, when you configure a connector, it is in the Connected state and does not need enabling. 

For more information, see Managing connectors. 

Support for installing and running plugins on Microsoft Windows

You can download, install, and run the remote plugins required for on-premises connectors on Microsoft Windows servers. The high-level process for configuring the on-premises connectors remains unchanged. 

The documentation for each on-premises connector contains commands specific to the operating system. For an example, see Configuring the Ansible Tower connector for commands specific to the operating system. 

Sept 21, 2021

The following video (4:22) showcases the features and enhancements available in the BMC Helix Intelligent Automation July to September 2021 release. 
https://youtu.be/nQumZG6keFk

Connectors in BMC Helix Intelligent Automation

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation supports the following connectors: 

• AWS (cloud)
• Ansible Tower (on-premises)
• Kubernetes (cloud and on-premises)
• TrueSight Orchestration (on-premises)

For more information about configuring connectors and the supported actions, see the documentation. 

Simplified UI for managing connectors

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation connects with cloud or on-premises automation tools and applications to perform remediation actions. To establish a connection, you first configure a connector.
The following enhancements are available for working with connectors.

New Connectors page

The Connectors page shows the available connectors in the Available Connectors tab. After you configure a connector, it appears in the Configured Connectors tab. You can view the status of the connectors and edit or delete connectors from the Configured Connectors page.

The plugin keys required for the on-premises connectors appear in the Plugin Keys tab.

View connector status

The Configured Connectors page shows the status, date, and timestamp when the connector was configured or last updated.

For cloud connectors, if the connector is disconnected, you can click the  icon to view the error message. 

For on-premises connectors, the  icon shows the plugin details such as the host name where the plugin is installed, the IP address and status of the plugin and the key associated with the plugin.

If disconnected, it also shows the error message. 

For more information, see Managing connectors. 

Enhanced UI to add actions to an automation policy

When creating a new policy, the action wizard enables you to add an action in three simple stages:

1. Pick an automation tool: Shows the configured connectors. 
2. Select an action: Shows the actions supported by the automation tool.
3. Configure an action: Allows specifying parameters for the action.

For more information, see Creating automation policies. 

Sync actions for TrueSight Orchestration and Ansible Tower

While creating automation policies for TrueSight Orchestration or Ansible Tower, you can use Sync Actions option to retrieve the available workflows or templates. 

For Ansible Tower, the Sync Actions option retrieves the available job or workflow templates.  

For TrueSight Orchestration, this action retrieves all workflows available in the active modules in your environment. 

For information, see Launching a job template (Ansible Tower) and Executing a workflow (TrueSight Orchestration). 

Support for resizing overallocated containers in Kubernetes

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation supports resizing overallocated containers in Kubernetes based on an incoming event from BMC Helix Continuous Optimization. You must configure the Kubernetes connector and create a policy to resize the contains in BMC Helix Intelligent Automation. 

For more information, see the  Integrating with BMC Helix Intelligent Automation to send resizing recommendations for overallocated containers  documentation in BMC Helix Continuous Optimization documentation. 

July 21, 2021

Connect with BMC Helix AIOps for event-driven automated remediation actions

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation connects with BMC Helix AIOps seamlessly to enable automated remediation actions for open events in BMC Helix AIOps. 

Support for event-driven remediation

If a BMC Helix AIOps administrator has permissions, the administrator can create a policy for an open event. Policies that match the trigger conditions in the event appear as available automations against an event in BMC Helix AIOps. An operator can then run those policies, which consist of remediation actions to resolve the events.

If there are no policies that appear for an event, BMC Helix AIOps operators can raise a request for creating relevant automation policies for that event. An automation engineer can then create a policy based on the request received in BMC Helix Intelligent Automation.

For more information, see Remediating open events in BMC Helix Service Monitoring.

New Automation Requests page

Automation engineers may have created policies that are displayed as automations for the open events in BMC Helix AIOps. If no applicable policies are available, BMC Helix AIOps operators can raise a request for creating a relevant policy. The Automation Requests page shows a list of requests for automation policy creation. An automation engineer can go through the request, update the request status, and create a policy based on the specified deadline. When a policy is published, it appears as an automation option for the open events in BMC Helix AIOps.

For more information, see Viewing automation requests. 

June 18, 2021

Launch from BMC Helix Portal

You can launch BMC Helix Intelligent Automation from the BMC Helix Portal console.

For more information, see the  BMC Helix Portal documentation .

Build automations using automation policies

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation, a service on BMC Helix Portal, enables automation teams to quickly build automations and define remediations for the incoming events by using automation policies. It also connects with third-party automation tools and BMC applications. 

This release provides the Remediate Windows Service Down and Remediate Unix Service Down out-of-the-box policies. You can also create and publish your own policies. For more information, see Managing automation policies.

Connect seamlessly with BMC Helix products for gathering events

BMC Helix Intelligent Automation connects seamlessly with BMC Helix Operations Management and BMC Helix AIOps to listen to events.

View the automation policy run statistics

In the Value dashboard, view the following statistics about the automation policy runs in your environment:

• Total unique automation policies
• Total automation policy runs
• Total successful and failed automation policy runs
• Top ten automation policy runs
• Time and cost that you have saved due to these automation policy runs

For more information, see Viewing policies in BMC Helix Dashboards.