20.17.02 enhancements

The following topics contain information about enhancements in version 20.17.02 (Summer 17) of the BMC Remedyforce product.

Remedyforce now supports Salesforce Platform Encryption. Salesforce Platform Encryption, a part of Salesforce Shield , enables you to encrypt and protect your data at rest. With Shield Platform Encryption, you can encrypt certain standard fields, certain custom fields, and all files and attachments. For more information about Shield Platform Encryption, see Salesforce Shield - Platform Encryption.

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The following enhancements are added to Self Service 3.0:

• Clients can search records in Self Service 3.0 by using a ticket number, a service request number, or keywords. However, keywords are searched in the following types of fields:
  • Text
  • Email
  • Phone 
• Records displayed in My Activity are now sorted in chronological order of the created date. Previously, the records were sorted in chronological order of the last modified date. You can configure fields that are displayed in My Activity. For more details, see Selecting the fields to be displayed in My Activity.
• Clients can filter records using the State field, the Status field, or both. These fields are configured by the System Administrators. Also, Clients can see a tag for records that are awaiting their reply or action. System Administrators can select these Status values, which are actionable for clients, from  Remedyforce Administration > Configure Self Service > General Self Service Settings > Status values that are actionable for clients.

• Previously, when searching for a client, only user name was displayed. Now, email ID and profile picture are also displayed in the search results.

• While previewing a service request, height of the Description field is adjusted dynamically.

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The following enhancements are added to Activity Feed and SmartViews:

• Reduced clicks to attach files - Previously, to attach a selected file you had to click Save after selecting the file. Now, the Save button is removed. When you select a file to attach and click OK in the Browse window, the file is attached to the record. Therefore, you are able to attach files faster.
• Support of additional email conversation options - Previously, only a few email conversations options were available when you were sending an email message from Activity Feed or SmartViews. Now, all settings configured for email conversations on the Remedyforce Administration > Configure Email > Email Conversation Settings page are available for Activity Feed and SmartViews. For example, the To, From, Bcc, and Template fields.
• Staff members can attach an attachment to an email message before sending.
• On the Remedyforce Administration > Manage Users > User Settings page, if you have enabled the Contacts option for the Client Users Include setting, contacts are also shown when you type the name of a contact in the To, Cc, or Bcc field while sending an email message.

• Attachments attached to an email message are shown as hyperlinks below the Subject line of the email message. A maximum of 12 attachments are shown. If there are more than 12 attachments attached to an email message, to see all attachments, go to the Attachments section of the Activity Feed.

For more information about Activity Feed, see Activity feed in the Remedyforce Console.

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You can get the time taken to close an incident or service request. You can configure if the time is calculated on business hours of client, account, or your Salesforce organization.

On the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > General Application Settings page, the following setting is added: Calculate closure time using business hours of.

When an incident or service request is moved to the closed state, the time to close the record is calculated and saved in the Time to Close (Business Days) field. The Time to Close (Business Days) field is added to the Incident object. For more information, see General settings for Remedyforce.

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While writing an email message, when a staff member selects an email template from the Email Template field, all email templates are shown. For an email conversation, all email templates might not be applicable. Therefore, it is tedious to find the correct email template that you need.

You can create a folder on the Setup > Communication Templates > Email Templates page and add only email conversation-related email templates to the folder. When you select this folder in the Email Template Folder field on the Remedyforce Administration > Configure Email > Email Conversation Settings page, only the email templates present in the selected folder are shown in the Email Template field. For more information, see Settings for email conversation.

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The CMDB reconciliation feature is generally available. You can enable reconciliation to avoid adding duplicate configuration items (CIs) and assets to your Remedyforce CMDB.

 You can use the CMDB reconciliation feature to achieve the following goals:

• Merge information from different data sources: With multiple data sources to add CIs and assets to your CMDB, you might get different data related to one record. If you enable and configure reconciliation, you can merge information about a CI or asset. Therefore, reconciliation enables you to make your Remedyforce CMDB data consistent.

• Avoid duplication of information:  With multiple data sources, you risk data duplication. 

• Troubleshoot reconciliation issues by viewing reconciliation report: You can view reconciliation report to find out records that successfully reconciled and records that failed to reconcile so that you can take corrective measures.

To configure reconciliation, you need to create a reconciliation rule by selecting a field or fields that determine a unique record within a class. For more information about the CMDB reconciliation feature, see Managing reconciliation.

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Staff members can now view updated incidents and service requests as bold and highlighted in a different color in the Remedyforce Console list views. To show updated records as highlighted to staff members, you must select the Highlight New Action check box in the Highlighting of Records in List View section on the Remedyforce Administration > Application Settings > Consoles page and select the color in which the records are highlighted. For more information, see Highlighting new and updated incidents and service requests in list views.

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With the Service, Service Offering, and Configuration Item / Asset fields on the Incident form, a pop-up window is displayed by clicking  that shows details of the selected CI, asset, service, or service offering. The Instance Name in the pop-up window is always present and the value of the field is a hyperlink to the record in the Remedyforce CMDB tab. The fields that are shown in the pop-up window are configured on the Remedyforce Administration > Configure CMDB 2.0 > List View Customization page. If you add a field of type Lookup Relationship to the Base Element object on any form in the Remedyforce Console, the same pop-up window is displayed. For more information, see Customizing CMDB list views in CMDB. 

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The staff of a parent record is captured on the record history so that you can create email alerts on the History object for the assigned staff or create workflows to notify the assigned staff when a note or an email is added to a record. The existing Staff field of history objects that captures information about the user who added the history record is renamed to Sender.

This feature is available for the following modules.

• Incident History
• Task History
• Problem History
• Change Request History
• Release History
• Broadcast History

This feature is available by default and you do not require any configuration for it. For upgrades, the staff information is populated for action history records that are created after the upgrade. All existing records show the value of this field as blank.

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Starting from Salesforce Spring 17, Salesforce will eliminate the use of Javascript in hyperlink formula fields. In Salesforce, this change will be carried out gradually with a three-phase approach. For more details, see Salesforce knowledge article on Hyperlink Formula Fields for Javascript Disablement.

Anticipating this change, this release of BMC Remedyforce contains updated out-of-the-box hyperlink formula fields that do not contain Javascript. For more information, see Changes to Hyperlink Formula Fields. If you have created custom hyperlink formula fields using Javascript, you must update the custom fields according to the Salesforce guidelines.

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Related topics

Enabling new features in 20.17.02

Known and corrected issues

Configuring Self Service

Changes to Hyperlink Formula Fields

Activity feed in the Remedyforce Console