Frequently Asked Questions on BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer

BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer is a tool that you can use to build and implement processes for requests such as change and service requests. It provides a graphical user interface for building processes that can be executed within BMC Remedy ITSM applications based on tasks, dependencies, decisions, and rules without the need to develop new applications or customize existing applications. BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer is useful for systems that require various multiple processes and tasks depending on the type of request.

Process Designer application comprise the following components:

• A Process Tracker to view the status and history of each instance of the process
• Release management feature with auditing and rollback capability
• Decision tree support and a data entry wizard
• Full integration with the out-of-the-box BMC Remedy ITSM applications and custom-built applications
• Import and export capability for migrating processes between servers

The Process Designer application has the following benefits:

• Processes that suit your business: You can design and implement processes that suit your business needs without having to customize existing out-of-the-box applications.
• Understand and review the processes easily: You can use a graphical format to build and review processes in exactly the way that they are implemented.
• Faster deployment at lower cost: You can use a simple graphical interface to implement processes without having to customize BMC Remedy ITSM applications.
• Reduced support and upgrade costs: BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer helps reduce time and effort to support the BMC Remedy ITSM applications because no additional development or customization is required.
• Streamlined processes: BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer enables automation of processes by implementing automated actions and approvals.
• Adherence to management, compliance, and audit requirements: The Process Diagram and Process Tracker provide a diagrammatic view of the process and its current status, and a historical flow of every transaction through the process.
• Simplified user interface: You can build decision trees quickly to provide a simplified user interface for the data required to support processes
• Automated, built-in version control: Processes are automatically version-stamped, which enables you to easily roll back to or report usage of earlier versions.

Usually Business Administrators or Process Designers for initial process construction, supplemented by BMC Remedy Administrators to review, augment and deploy.

Yes, in the following ways:

• Every process belongs to an ITSM company. 
• When you connect to the client you can only see processes that belong to your own company (unless you are a Remedy Administrator).

Process Designer may not offer a lot of cost savings over PDT/AOT approach for very simple fulfillment processes (for example, creating single incident). However, you may build out complex fulfillment processes in future or start using Process Designer for other ITSM workflows. Therefore, there is no need for you to learn any other tool.

Yes. You can use Process Designer with Remedy on Demand.

The task records are back-end records used to control the process routing and implementation.  End-users and administrators should not need to be exposed or interact with these records directly.

Using Process Designer has the following advantages:

• Higher business flexibility
• Faster and lower cost deployment – 60% savings
• Increase user productivity
• Reduced user training costs
• Increased process conformance, auditability and governance
• Graphical Process builder
• Automated implementation of processes in Remedy
• Support for multi-tenancy and localization
• Process Version control (including rollback capability)
• End user process navigator
• Graphical process tracking

The following Process Designer versions are available:

• Process Designer 9.0.00
• Process Designer 8.3.04
• Process Designer 8.3.03
• Process Designer 8.3.02
  
  

Which version of Process Designer is compatible with which version of BMC Remedy ITSM?

The following table provides the compatibility matrix of Process Designer with other products:

Changing the process has no impact on existing processes that are in-flight. The processes continue through to completion based on the version of the process that was mapped when the request was first submitted even if the process is deleted in the Process Designer client.

No. You must break it up into separate conditions and use a separate dependency line for each one.

No. You cannot use. However, you can use the process if process it is used in Live state and then moved to archived.

Yes, since the product binaries are used at runtime to initiate and progress the process.

Yes, you can install Process Designer without having BMC Remedy ITSM installed. This will be a standalone Process Designer installation.

You can install Process Designer as per the following sequence:

• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > BMC Remedy ITSM > BMC Service Request Management > Process Designer
• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > BMC Remedy ITSM > Process Designer > BMC Service Request Management
  Note: This includes Process Designer integration with BMC Remedy ITSM, to obtain BMC Service Request Management integration. In such cases, you must re-run the Process Designer installation and select BMC Service Request Management as integration point.
• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > Process Designer > BMC Remedy ITSM > BMC Service Request Management
  Note: This includes Process Designer Core Install, to obtain BMC Remedy ITSM / BMC Service Request Management integration. In such cases, you must re-run the Process Designer installation and select BMC Remedy ITSM/SRM as integration point.
• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > BMC Service Request Management > Process Designer > BMC Remedy ITSM
  Note: This includes Process Designer integration with BMC Service Request Management, to obtain BMC Remedy ITSM integration. In such cases, you must re-run the Process Designer installation and select BMC Remedy ITSM as integration point.
• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > Process Designer > BMC Service Request Management > BMC Remedy ITSM
  Note: This includes Process Designer Core Install, to obtain BMC Remedy ITSM/BMC Service Request Management integration. In such cases, you must re-run the Process Designer installation and select ITSM / BMC Service Request Management as integration point at such time.
• BMC Remedy AR System > BMC Atrium Core > Process Designer
  Note: This includes Process Designer Core Install, to obtain BMC Remedy ITSM/BMC Service Request Management integration. In such cases, you must re-run the Process Designer installation and select BMC Remedy ITSM/BMC Service Request Management as integration point after BMC Remedy ITSM / BMC Service Request Management is installed.

No. There are no prerequisites to install Process Designer apart from BMC Remedy AR System, BMC Remedy ITSM, and BMC Service Request Management installations.

You must restart Mid Tier and must set the default Web path.

Yes. Process Designer can be installed in Silent mode.

If possible retry the step and when the install completes, check the details of failed state and also check for related documentation of how to handle it. If the documentation too is not clear, contact the BMC support.

No. Process Designer does not support pause mode installation.

Yes, you must install Process Designer on all the servers within the Server Group.

No, the interface to ITSM is completely data-driven. It utilizes the BMC Remedy ITSM task management system (TMS), creating task records that equate to process steps. However, it adds some workflows at the install time.

The following table provides the compatibility matrix of Process Designer with other products:

Yes, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, BMC Service Request Management, Work Order are the applications used most commonly with Process Designer. During install time, you must select the BMC Remedy ITSM components you want to work with.

No they would need to upgrade to BMC Remedy ITSM 7.6.04 SP2 at the least.

Yes, it is possible to do so. However, you can created multiple child work orders under a parent work order, when you create it only through Create and Manage Request. You cannot create child work orders from Create New Request.

You observe this behavior because the status syncs are designed to work in the following manner:

• First task sets the Service Request status to In Progress.
• Last task sets the Service Request status to Completed.
• When the Service Request is between In Progress and Completed status, use Create and Manage Request to create child requests. The child requests will not go to In Progress state until an incident is nor resolved or a Work Order\Change Request is not completed or the child requests are cancelled.
• The non-closed child requests created using Create and Manage Request will inherit the work info added to the Service Request.

The mandatory fields are highlighted in bold. However, the check for mandatory fields is not done at the design time so as to avoid any conflicts with the business logic that might exist in the AR filters. Process Designer should explicitly decide on the mappings. Also, in case of ITSM forms, the Interface form's field list is shown in the full list view. Here, you must ensure that custom fields are handled as well.     

Process Designer uses the Approval Engine to implement approval actions in the process.  These approvals are currently limited to ad-hoc type approvals.

Yes you can have as many as you need but they cannot run in parallel and they should be followed by a step with an assignment rule to check for approval/rejection as the outcome.

No. Currently, this is a limitation.

While it is technically possible to use both approaches in parallel, it is not recommended to mix PDT/AOT approach with Process Designer approach. Along with a long high curve required to learn and master both the tools, end users experience two different interactions (visualize request progress, Activity Log Process Designer updates).

No, you must still continue to use these for data capture and use Process Designer for the back-end fulfillment. Rather, Q&A captured in SRM traditionally, can be used in Process Designer processes for driving the process business logic.

Refer to the following tables:

For ITSM:

Comparison of using SRM PDT vs PD

The following is an example based on customer feedback for Service Request Definition:

Yes these can be read directly from the SR Type fields on the Service Request that are populated using the Q&A Mappings on the SRD.

Yes, they can use Process Designer for any new SRDs without conflicting with the existing ones.

When viewed in a full list view, all the required fields on the form are displayed in BOLD. However, this condition is not applied during the design time, in order to avoid conflict with business logic that may exist in AR filters. Process Designer should consciously decide on mappings. Also, in case of ITSM forms, the Interface forms field list is shown in the full list view. Ensure that the custom fields are handled on the ITSM forms as well.

Yes. Using Process Tracker you can create ad hoc task and task templates. However, currently, this is restricted to Incident. For more information, see Inserting Ad hoc Tasks.

No, you should still continue to use these for data capture and use Process Designer for the back-end fulfillment.

The following browsers are supported:

• Internet Explorer 9.x
• Mozzila Firefox (latest version)
• Google Chrome 39.x
• Safari 6.3.x

The following server platforms are supported:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 and later (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions)
• RHEL 6.5 x64 and later

There is no need to provide/install any license keys – the product will run against any licensed version later than ITSM 7.6.04 SP2 version of the AR server.

No. However, it is possible with the help of Load balancers.

User should be able to use processes already created before upgrade.

The following database platforms are supported:

• SQL Server 2008 R2
• Oracle Database 11gR2 (11.2.0.3.0)

Use the Import/Export feature of the Process Designer client, and then re-create the mappings to the SRD records on the target server.

No. However, Process Designer has its own OLAs that can be defined against individual tasks and escalated if the defined threshold is exceeded. However, it is recommended to use SLM component’s SLAs Feature.

The SLA and OLA functionality in Process Designer today is meant to support simple timed-based notifications and ability to track OLAs on individual tasks.  

SLM should be used at process level instead of Process Designer.

The SLM product should be used for managing the SLA contract agreement with the business.  It provides functionality for managing multiple service level targets, rolling those targets up into an overall agreement and sending notifications and taking actions as a result. 

This functionality is already tightly integrated with SRM and Change Management.

Other key SLM function – Reporting, Dashboards and so on.

No, but you need to be a member of the Process Designer Administrator group.

In Process Designer, when you cancel a particular task, all the child tasks associated with that task also get cancelled.