BMC Helix Integration Service is a cloud-based solution that enables you to design and automate event-driven tasks across applications. You can connect multiple applications in a single flow, and configure the flow to accomplish a task or a set of tasks required for achieving your business goal.

You can integrate applications running in the cloud, on-premises, or a combination of both. If a particular connector does not exist, or an existing connector does not meet your specific business requirements, you can build it from scratch or customize it to fit your needs.

The BMC Helix Integration Service product set includes the following components:

• BMC Helix Integration Studio to configure connectors and design flows
• BMC Helix Connector Designer to develop, build, and deploy custom connectors
• Integration Controller to connect with the applications or services that run on-premises

For more information about BMC Helix Integration Service, see Getting started.

BMC Helix Integration Studio is a cloud application and does not require to be installed. After you receive your access credentials, you can start using BMC Helix Integration Studio to configure out-of-the-box connectors and design flows with these connectors. However, if you want to develop custom connectors, you must set up the connector development environment by installing Docker, BMC Helix Connector Designer, and Integration Controller. For more information, see Installing and setting up the connector development environment.

In BMC Helix Integration Studio, you can design multiple flows for automatically performing various business tasks by using the required combinations of triggers and actions of the available connectors.

You can design personal, tenant-level, and catalog flows. Additionally, you can design flows with multiple actions. For more information, see Designing and maintaining flows.

The visibility of the flows depends on the flow type:

• If you design a personal flow, only you can view and use the flow.
• If you convert your personal flow to a tenant-level flow, all administrators in your tenant can view, use, and manage the flow.
• If you publish your personal flow to the catalog, a copy of your personal flow is created, and all users in your tenant can use the catalog flow as a template for designing their personal flows. Your original personal flow remains visible only to you.

For more information, see Adding or copying flows and Publishing or using flows.

The frequency of flow runs depends on the connector configuration. While configuring a connector, you can specify how often you want the connector triggers to be checked. For example, if you configure the setting to check a trigger every 30 minutes, a flow that contains this trigger will be triggered every 30 minutes (if the triggering conditions are met). For more information, see Adding throttling controls.

Additionally, you can initiate a flow on demand for testing purposes. For more information, see Activating or enabling flows.

To resolve the issues related to flows, you can use the flow debugger and review the common troubleshooting scenarios. For more information, see Troubleshooting flows.

For troubleshooting purposes, you can view connector logs and Integration controller logs. For more information, see Troubleshooting BMC Helix Connector Designer issues and Troubleshooting Integration Controller issues.

BMC Helix Integration Studio includes the default connectors, such as JIRA, GitHub, or Gmail, which you can use out of the box. To view the full list of these connectors, see Out-of-the-box connectors. Additionally, you can develop custom connectors. For more information, see Developing connectors.

Yes, you can develop custom connectors by using BMC Helix Connector Designer or by coding them manually. After developing custom connectors, you can deploy them to BMC Helix Integration Studio and use them to design flows. For more information, see Developing connectors and Best practices for connector development.

BMC Helix Connector Designer currently supports Java and JavaScript. You must use one of these programming languages to develop custom connectors. You can also use any helper node modules or JAR files.

Yes, you can connect on-premises applications to the cloud by using Integration Controller.

Integration Controller safely and securely communicates with the BMC Helix Integration Service cloud by establishing an outbound connection on port 61600. The connection from Integration Controller to the BMC Helix Integration Service cloud is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS). You do not need to open any inbound ports in your corporate firewall.

For more information, see Installing and configuring sites to run on-premises connectors.

You must review the system requirements for all required components. For more information, see Installing and setting up the connector development environment.

After you set up the environment, use the validation utility to run health checks and ensure that the environment is set up correctly. For more information, see Validating the connector development environment.

Yes, you can test newly built or existing custom connectors to check the generated code for errors. Run the BMC command-line utility before deploying the connectors to production instances. For more information, see Testing connectors.

Although you develop, build, and deploy custom connectors in BMC Helix Connector Designer, you must configure the connectors in BMC Helix Integration Studio. For more information, see Configuring connectors.

This is the expected behavior since the connection details might differ for different third-party or BMC application to which you are connecting. If a connector does not need additional connection details to connect to a third-party system, no additional connection details are requested in BMC Helix Integration Studio. For example, some connectors do not require authentication to connect to a third-party system; therefore, you do not need to create a connector account.

Configuration settings that are not required for a particular connector are not displayed for the connector in the BMC Helix Integration Studio UI.

As a customer or a partner, if you use BMC Helix Platform or a supported product, and you sign up for the developer program , an integration account is created for you. With this account, you can use the BMC Helix Integration Service tools.

In BMC Helix Platform, you can use the connectors available in BMC Helix Integration Studio to create processes and rules to enable integrations between applications without coding.