Transforming mapped fields
While designing new flows or updating existing flows in BMC Helix Integration Studio, you can transform the fields in the source application to enable modified data delivery to the target application. You can also unify data types across applications that are involved in a flow.
In BMC Helix Integration Studio, you can use the following types of transformations:
- Source value to target value
- Multiple source values to target value
- String transformation
- Configuration-specific transformations
Important
You can use different types of transformations in one flow if these transformations do not get in conflict with each other.
In addition to transforming the fields of the same data type, BMC Helix Integration Studio supports transforming the fields that have different data types. If required, the source fields are automatically transformed in a flow as follows:
- String to integer
- Integer to string
- Date to string
- Date to integer
- Integer to date
To access the Transformations pane
To access the Transformations pane while designing a new flow, perform the following step:
While mapping source fields to target fields, click the (transformations) icon.
The following illustration shows the Flow Designer point of access to the Transformations pane:
To access the Transformations pane while updating an existing flow, perform the following step:
In flow profile, in the field mapping section, click the
The following illustration shows the flow profile point of access to the Transformations pane:
In both cases, the transformations icon is active only if the field mapping is set to Source Fields, and one or more source fields are already added. If you select and save a transformation type for a flow, the icon gets highlighted in green:
.To transform a source value to a target value
By using this transformation type, you can transform a single source field's value to a mapped target field's value.
The following table provides an example of the Source value to target value transformation type and describes the steps to transform.
Example | Steps to transform |
---|---|
In a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, you want the escalated ITSM issues to automatically have a high priority in the corresponding JIRA tickets, and non-escalated issues to have a low priority. To achieve this goal, you must set the Escalated?=Yes case to be mapped to Priority=High. Because the only other possible case is Escalated?= No, No is the default value and should be mapped to Priority=Low. The following image illustrates the preceding example: |
Note: If you select the Source value to target value transformation type, but include more than one source field, only the first source field is transformed. To transform multiple source fields, use the Multiple source values to target value transformation type. |
To transform multiple source values to a target value
By using this transformation type, you can transform multiple source fields' values to a single mapped target field's value.
Important
This option is available only if two or more source fields are mapped in a flow.
The following table provides an example of the Multiple source values to target value transformation type and describes the steps to transform.
Example | Steps to transform |
---|---|
In a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, you want an escalated user service request in BMC Helix ITSM to be assigned to a specific user; for example, to Allen Albrook, whose JIRA username is aalbrook. To achieve this goal, you must set Escalated?=Yes and Incident Type=User Service Request to be mapped to Assignee=aalbrook, The following image illustrates the preceding example: |
|
To transform a source value by using the string transformation functions
By using this transformation type, you can apply string functions to a source field's value.
Tip
Typically, string transformation is useful only if applied to a source field that holds string data, as opposed to other data types.
For example, in a Helix ITSM-to-JIRA flow, it's not recommended to transform the Escalated? field because it is a boolean field.
In such a flow, you can apply string transformation to the Summary field to trim or format the string value, or replace certain parts of it, assuming that the resulting string is more aligned with your JIRA practices.
The following table provides an example of the String transformation type and describes the steps to transform.
Example | Steps to transform |
---|---|
See String transformation functions. |
Important: Functions are applied to the source string in the order you enter them. For example, if you have If you want to reorder the functions, you should remove and re-add them in the required order. |
To set up configuration-specific transformations
By default, transformations in BMC Helix Integration Studio flows are connector-specific. This means that transformations are automatically applied to all flows that use a particular connector.
You can set up configuration-specific transformations. In this case, transformations are applied to each connector configuration separately. For example, you might want to create two separate flows that are using a JIRA connector. In a JIRA-to-Helix ITSM flow, you might not need any transformations. But, in a JIRA-to-Salesforce flow, you might need to apply transformations to several mapped fields. To achieve this goal, you can use separate connector configurations for JIRA.
To tie transformations to a connector configuration, you must select an existing custom schema instead of a default schema while creating a flow, as shown in the following illustration:
If a connector that you use while designing a flow does not have a custom schema, the original connector-specific transformation functionality is retained. For information about how to create a custom schema for a connector, see Generating custom schema for connectors.
To remove the transformations
Warning
If you remove or modify the transformations in a flow, this action affects the behavior of the flow across environments and has a direct impact on all users who use the flow. By removing mapped source fields, you also remove all transformations of these fields. We recommend that you notify the flow's users before removing or modifying the transformations.
- Access the Transformations pane.
- Next to the required source field, click the transformations icon.
- Next to a transformation that you want to remove, click the
The transformation is removed. icon.
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