20.02 enhancements

As an administrator, you can configure the application to open the latest published version of a knowledge article. When end users click the knowledge article link that is inserted within a knowledge article by using the Link Knowledge Article option , the latest published version of the knowledge article is displayed. In previous versions of Smart IT, such links open the latest version of the knowledge article, even if it is in Draft status.

To enable this feature, showPublishedLinkedArticle configuration parameter has been introduced in the Centralized configuration. To get this feature, the administrators need to set the configuration parameter value to true in the Centralized configuration. By default this configuration parameter is set to false and the behavior remains same as it is in the previous versions.

Ability to view the latest created tickets in a pinned knowledge article at the top of the list

When you view a Knowledge Article, in the Tickets Using this Article panel, the latest created tickets appear at the top of the list. In earlier versions of Smart IT, the latest created tickets appear at the bottom of the list.

Managing security incidents

You can create and manage security incidents with a unique incident type. With a subscription to Helix Multi-Cloud Service Management 20.02, you can automatically create incidents in Remedy IT Service Management from offenses generated in IBM QRadar SIEM. You can manage these security incidents by using the Ticket Console in Remedy Smart IT. You can also filter and auto assign incidents to the security team.

For more information, see Managing and tracking security incidents and Configuring settings for managing security incidents.

Enhancement in the Release Management ticket

In a Release ticket, when you create an activity by using the Activity From Scratch option, Summary, Description, Priority and Location fields are displayed based on the information given in the Release ticket. In the earlier versions, these fields are displayed blank.

Ability to search for relevant help content within the Smart IT UI

You can search the online documentation from the Self-Help tab and see the related help content from the Smart IT UI itself.

Removal of bundled Tomcat from the Smart IT installer

Tomcat is no longer included with the Smart IT installer. You must use an existing Tomcat server while installing or upgrading Smart IT to version 20.02.

As a result of this, for a fresh installation of Smart IT 20.02, from the User Inputs screen, the option Install Tomcat server has been removed. While installing or upgrading to Smart IT 20.02, you must specify your Tomcat server details in the User Inputs > Specify Installed/Existing Tomcat folder section. While uninstalling Smart IT 20.02, you do not get the option Uninstall Tomcat.

For more information on installing and upgrading steps, see Installing and Upgrading section.

(Version 19.11 and later) Introduction of a search box in the Ticket Console for aquick ticket search

As a service desk agent, you get an additional and quicker ticket search capability in Ticket Console. After adding the filters in Ticket Console, you can narrow down the search result further by entering a keyword in a newly-introduced search box. You need to press Enter after inserting your keyword. The keyword is highlighted in the search result. The keyword search is done on the Summary, Description, and Display ID columns.

For more information, see Managing your work in Smart IT consoles.

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to control the default date range in Ticket Console

You can modify the default date range of Ticket Console. By default, the Ticket Console search result displays information for the last 30 days. The date range that you set, is displayed when you open the Ticket Console, as shown in the following image. You can modify this date range by configuring restrictConsoleResultForNoOfDays parameter in Centralized configuration. For more information, see Centralized configuration.

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to create a ticket in a quick way by using Smart Recorder

You can create a ticket faster and directly from the Smart Recorder Home page. You no longer need to use the draft screen, click the Confirm+Save button, and use the profile view screen of the ticket. After creating a ticket in this mode, the Smart Recorder home screen is displayed to create another ticket. The ticket ID of the previously created ticket is also displayed on this page. For you to use this feature, in Centralized configuration, your administrator must set QuickTicketCreateEnabled parameter to true.

(Version 19.11 and later) Enhancements in the asset search

Asset search capability in the following areas has been enhanced so that the search results are displayed faster:

• Asset search in Smart Recorder
• Mentioning of an asset with @<asset> in the Activity tab
• Asset search in the Affected Asset field of the incident, problem investigation, and known error tickets
• Asset search in the Related Items field
• Global search of asset by selecting All or Asset option
• Relating CI while creating change request

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to open an item in the Ticket, Asset, or Knowledge console in a new browser tab

In the Smart IT Universal client, when you click an item in the Ticket, Asset or Knowledge console with the Shift key pressed, the details of that ticket, asset, or knowledge article is displayed on a new browser tab.

For more information, see Managing your work in Smart IT consoles.

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to open a ticket by using the display ID in the URL

You can open an incident, change, work order, or a task ticket by using the display ID of the ticket in the URL. You need to have the required permission to view a ticket. For example, when you open an incident, the GUID of the incident is displayed in the URL. In version 19.11 and later, you can directly go to the ticket profile page of another ticket by replacing the GUID with /displayid/<Display ID of the ticket> in the URL. For more information, see Viewing and updating tickets.

Managing security incidents

You can create and manage security incidents with a unique incident type. With a subscription to Helix Multi-Cloud Service Management 20.02, you can automatically create incidents in Remedy IT Service Management from offenses generated in IBM QRadar SIEM. You can manage these security incidents by using the Incident Management Console in Remedy IT Service Management. You can also filter and auto assign incidents to the security team.

For more information, see Configuring settings for managing security incidents and Managing and tracking security incidents.

Tracking automated work orders for continuous service automation initiatives

IT service management automation initiatives are often challenged to identify the most important activities to automate, and to report back the progress of automation to the IT and business stakeholders. For analyzing and tracking the service management related automation opportunities in an organization, process owners or service request managers can use the Service Automation Dashboard in Smart Reporting. For populating reports on this dashboard, an Automation Status field is introduced on the work order template form that can be filled while creating or managing the work order templates. While developing automation logic, this field can be set to track the success of automation. For more information, see Setting up automated work order tracking.

Faster loading of collision detection

With a changed and improved query in Remedy Change Management, the change collision detection feature runs faster and ensures optimal performance while loading collision in change requests. For more details about using collision detection, see Using Collision Detection.

For the Remedy IT Service Management Suite enhancements, see Remedy IT Service Management Suite enhancements .

Track the progress of work order automation initiative by using the Service Automation Dashboard and reports

As a process owner, you can use the out-of-the-box Service Automation Dashboard and reports to analyze and track the service management related automation initiatives in an organization. The reports in this dashboard highlight some of the key service automation parameters such as the total number of automated work orders, success rate of automation, and so on.

For more information, see Out-of-the-box Service Automation Dashboard and reports for automated work orders.

Ability to change the default custom role of new users

As a Remedy Smart Reporting administrator, you can set any out-of-the-box or a custom role as the default role of new users that are to be onboarded or synchronized into Remedy Smart Reporting. This eliminates the overhead of changing the role of multiple users after onboarding. If no role is set as the default role in the default organization, Consumer & Collaborator is set as the default role for all new users. The role of existing users is not changed. For more information, see Setting the default role.

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to restrict the number of rows retrieved from the database

To improve performance, an administrator can restrict the number of rows that can be retrieved from the Remedy AR System database. For this, a new CCS parameter named Jdbc-Row-Limit is added in Remedy AR System. The Jdbc-Row-Limit parameter ensures that there is no adverse impact on IT Service Management solution because of any inadvertent changes to the rowLimit parameter in Remedy Smart Reporting. For more information, see To configure the data connection limit on Remedy Smart Reporting.

For more information about the Jdbc-Row-Limit parameter, see Centralized configuration in the Remedy AR System online documentation.

Graphical Query Builder for creating a search query

You can create search queries by using the graphical query builder. The graphical query builder enables you to create a search query by dragging and dropping classes on a canvas and creating relationships between these classes. You can edit these queries, and save these queries as personal or shared queries.

For more information, see Creating a graph query to search for a CI.

(Version 19.11 and later) Mapping complex queries to classes

To facilitate implementation of Proactive Service Resolution, predefined complex queries are mapped by default to some classes in BMC CMDB. When a monitoring application such as TrueSight Operations Management creates an event, Remedy ITSM passes queries through a REST API call to CMDB to find the CI related to the incident. If the query is complex, the CMDB REST API uses the predefined complex queries mapped by default to classes to perform the search. You can use the Class Query Mappings page in CMDB to modify these mappings.

For more information, see Associating a CI to an incident and Mapping complex queries to a class.

Enhancements to Common Data Model

Common Data Model has the following enhancements:

• New attributes are added to the BaseElement class, which are ComponentAliases, InstanceName, and UnstructuredData.
• There is a change in attribute IDs for Floor, Rack, Shelf, Room, Pillar, CostApportionment, and CostFlow attributes. 

For more information, see Summary of changes to the Common Data Model.

(Version 19.11 and later) Ability to send event notifications from AR System forms to external applications

You can use the webhook to send real-time event notifications to external systems from the AR System server. The webhook definition eliminates the manual effort required to create workflows and removes the need for continuous server polling. To receive automatic notifications when an event occurs on an AR form, you can register a webhook by using AR REST API. An event could be creating, updating, or deleting a record on that AR form.For more information about registering and using AR System webhook, see Adding AR System webhook to receive automatic notifications.

(Version 19.11 and later) REST API endpoints to retrieve menu metadata

You can use GetMenu and ExpandMenu endpoints to retrieve menu metadata. Menu metadata enables you to retrieve all the information required in a menu such as labels and values. The GetMenu and ExpandMenu endpoints help to perform faster design level integration between a Remedy application and a third-party application without using Remedy Developer Studio. For information about retrieving menu metadata, see Example of using the REST API to retrieve menu details. For information about GetMenu and ExpandMenu endpoints, see the Operations on menu objects section in the Endpoints in AR REST API topic.

(Version 19.11 and later) Improved search results (FTS and MFS) with exact match of search strings

You get improved search results because Full Text Search (FTS) and Multi-Form Search (MFS) support exact matches for quoted strings even if the quoted strings contain ignore words. On the AR System Administration: Server Information form or on the Remedy Management Console: FTS Management form, you can enable the Support Exact Matches for Phrases setting that returns accurate search results for quoted strings containing ignore words. Thus, the end users do not experience any inconsistencies in search results and get precise matches for their search strings. For more information about the Support Exact Matches for Phrases setting, see Enabling exact matches for full text searches and Configuring the Ignore Words List.

(Version 19.11 and later) The URL-Safe-Encode command to encode the URL input

The URL-Safe-Encode command enables you to convert a string into a valid URL format. This command encodes the URL input based on the UTF 8 standards. When this command is invoked, the AR System server takes care of the special characters in the URL. For more information, see URL-Safe-Encode command.

(Version 19.11 and later) Spudsoft Excel report format for AR Web reports

AR System Report Console features a new export format called Spudsoft Excel that supports both List and Chart views. You can export your custom Web report to this format.

For more information, see Defining custom web reports and Exporting a custom web report.

SAML groups support

In earlier releases, retrieval of user groups was supported only for LDAP and Local identity providers. In this release, retrieval of user groups is supported for SAML identity providers.

The Remedy Single Sign-On server retrieves information about user groups from the SAML assertion responses by parsing the authentication login response from a SAML IdP. The information about the user groups is temporarily stored on the Remedy Single Sign-On server during the lifetime of the authentication session. End users logging in to applications integrated with Remedy Single Sign-On, are authorized to access the application features based on the groups they belong to.

The Xpath 1.0 for group retrieval new parameter has been added on the Authentication tab of a SAML realm.

For more information about how to use the new configuration parameters, see Importing configuration from an identity provider and configuring SAML.

Support to log audit records of Remedy SSO administrators

As a Remedy SSO administrator, you can enable auditing of actions performed by all administrators in the Remedy SSO Admin Console. For information about how to enable auditing of actions, see Configuring the Remedy SSO server. When enabled, the audit records are displayed on the new Audit tab in the Admin Console.

Introducing self-help

We are pleased to announce embedded self-help with guided assistance in this release of Remedy SSO. Guided assistance helps you learn to navigate the product and to actively complete tasks. In the Self-help pane, you can start guided assistance, access links to help topics, and watch videos relevant to where you are in the product and the task you are performing.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions for additional guided assistance by adding comments when you complete the self-help guidance or on docs.bmc.com.

As a Remedy SSO administrator, you can enable the self-help in the Remedy SSO Admin Console. For information about how to enable self-help, see Configuring the Remedy SSO server.

(Version 19.11 and later) Remedy SSO in multitenant mode

Starting with 19.11 release, Remedy SSO is supported in multitenancy mode in which a single application instance serves multiple tenants and guarantees data isolation between tenants. For more information about multitenancy for Remedy SSO, see Remedy SSO multitenancy.

By default, SaaS tenant is created when the Remedy SSO server is installed. After upgrade, all configuration available on the Remedy SSO server belongs to a single default SaaS tenant. You can enable multitenancy for Remedy SSO server by adding customer tenants and configuring them as required. For information about how to add tenants, see Activating tenants.

(Version 19.11 and later) New roles and permissions for using Remedy SSO

After upgrade, all Remedy SSO administrators automatically become SaaS administrators.

As a SaaS administrator, you have full administrative permissions to configure the default SaaS tenant on the Remedy SSO server, create tenant administrator users, and configure customer tenants.

As a tenant administrator, you can log in to your tenant on the Remedy SSO server, and perform actions required to manage local users by realms. For more information about roles and permissions on the Remedy SSO server, see Roles and permissions.

(Version 19.11 and later) Multitenancy for OAuth clients

OAuth 2.0 has been updated to support multitenancy for non-native clients. You can set a non-native client as multitenant by configuring the Multi-Tenant client and Tenant Name options for this client application. For more information about how to add non-native multitenant clients, see Configuring OAuth 2.0.

You can set an OAuth client as multitenant only for the SaaS tenant.

(Version 19.11 and later) Single logout

In earlier versions of Remedy SSO, in order to revoke an end user session on the Remedy SSO server and prevent automatic login to the application after the page refresh, end users had to log out from all integrated with Remedy SSO applications that were sharing a current session of the end user. For more information about logout experience for end users, see Login and logout experience for end users.

Starting with version 19.11, Remedy SSO administrators can enable the Single Log Out option for a realm to configure a global logout across all applications that are sharing a user session created through this realm. For more details about this option, see Configuring general settings for a realm.

Remedy ITSM supported operating system updates

To enhance the compatibility of Remedy ITSM Suite with the latest platform versions, Remedy ITSM Suite 20.02 adds support for the following operating systems:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15
• Oracle Solaris 11.4

For the complete list of the supported operating systems, see

BMC Solution and product availability and compatibility utility (SPAC)

Additional configuration checks

Configuration checks enable you to gather information about the general health of your environment. For more information about the configuration checks, see the following links:

• Remedy AR System checks
• Remedy ITSM checks
• BMC Atrium Integrator checks

Removal of bundled Tomcat from the Remedy ITSM Suite installers

Tomcat is no longer included with the Remedy ITSM Suite installers. You must use an external Tomcat server while installing or upgrading Remedy ITSM Suite to version 20.02.

Thus, for a fresh installation of Remedy ITSM Suite 20.02, the option Install Tomcat server has been removed from the User Inputs screen. While installing or upgrading to version 20.02, you must specify your Tomcat server details in the User Inputs > Specify Installed/Existing Tomcat folder section. While uninstalling Remedy ITSM Suite 20.02, you do not get the option to Uninstall Tomcat.

For more information, see Preparing your web server.