BMC Helix ITSM activation

Activation activities for your BMC Helix ITSM services include provisioning the solution in all environments, configuring basic data to enable you to use your service, and providing you with login IDs and passwords to each environment.

Your BMC Helix ITSM services also include access to Smart IT. Smart IT provides the next-generation user experience that makes it easier to create tickets, view related items like tickets, assets, or knowledge articles, and update profile information. It also provides mobility functionality. For more information, see BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT.

BMC Helix Single Sign-On (SSO) service integration is also configured with your activation. The following authentication types are supported:

  • AR native
  • Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) or similar SAML v2-based authentication
  • LDAP authentication (supported with SSO only)

Related topics

BMC Helix Client Gateway

Lifecycle-Requests

Federated-authentication


As activation activities are completed, BMC sends you an email message with login credentials and general information about accessing and using your service. These email notifications are sent encrypted, so you will need to register before access to the email is allowed. The URL for your BMC Helix ITSM service follows these formats:

ITSM:

  • Development environment: https://<customerprefix>-dev.onbmc.com 
  • QA environment: https://<customerprefix>-qa.onbmc.com
  • Production environment: https://<customerprefix>.onbmc.com

Smart IT:

  • Development environment: https://<customerprefix>-dev-smartit.onbmc.com 
  • QA environment: https://<customerprefix>-qa-smartit.onbmc.com
  • Production environment: https://<customerprefix>-smartit.onbmc.com

You will define <customerprefix> when registering your service in the BMC SaaS registration portal. This prefix must be unique and may not contain special characters.

Important

Customers can customize the text within <customerprefix>. BMC determines the customer-specific URL and custom URL naming conventions are not allowed.

Additional environments, if purchased, must follow a similar naming convention as the environments listed above, but with the following naming extensions:

Additional environment

Extension

Example URL

Training

Sandbox

System Integration Testing

-tr, -trn or -train

-snd or -sand

-sit

<customerprefix>-trn.onbmc.com

<customerprefix>-sand.onbmc.com

<customerprefix>-sit.onbmc.com


Activation activities include the following steps: 

  1. Provision the following environments:
    • Development — This environment is used for implementing and testing system changes and provides visibility to new releases. The development environment is fully accessible by customers and their authorized representatives. You will be provided with an administrator ID to this environment.
    • Quality Assurance (QA) — The QA environment serves as a staging environment for implementing and testing system changes as a part of the change promotion process. This environment is directly managed by the BMC SaaS Operations team to ensure a stable, monitored, and change-controlled environment.
    • Production — Your production environment is for customer-authorized users and provides access to the live, operational system. This environment is directly managed by the BMC SaaS Operations team and is monitored and proactively managed with BMC tools to ensure BMC meets or exceeds its service level agreement. 
  2. Configure basic customer-specific content:
    • Setup of one operating company
    • Setup of one user, to facilitate administrative access to the system. Authentication for this user is configured using native AR System authentication.
    • Configuration of user credentials for one Smart IT user, for authenticating to BMC Helix ITSM with Smart IT
  3. Configure license entitlements, based on the services and quantities of each that are purchased
  4. Enable email for outbound notification via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server
  5. Integrate inbound email by configuring one mailbox to accept inbound email messages through the BMC Helix ITSM inbound email framework
  6. Activate the Smart IT mobile application
  7. Enable Smart IT functionality, including:
    • Creating, updating, and handling tickets
    • Following and searching for tickets, assets, resources, and people
    • Creating broadcasts
  8. Configure BMC service accounts. To reference the login IDs may be present on the People and/or User forms, please visit Login-IDs-on-BMC-Helix-ITSM-People-Forms.
  9. Configure BMC monitoring data:
    • Setup of one company (BMCOpsMonitoring), three users for application monitoring (as detailed above), one support group (BMCOpsMonitoring > BMCOpsMonitoring Support Org > BMC OpsMonitoring Support Group1) and one site (BMCOpsMonitoring > Americas > United States > Houston Support Center) 
    • Configuration of one Operational Category: Tier1/Tier2/Tier2 = BMCOps OpCat1/BMCOps OpCat2/BMCOps OpCat3

    • Configuration of one approval process and one approval mapping to support the application monitoring activities.

      Important

      We recommend keeping the BMC service accounts and data elements as is, and not modifying or removing them, as they are needed for BMC support and monitoring activities. Customers are not billed for these additional users. For additional information, see In-application workflow.

  10. Test and verify that the BMC Helix ITSM and Smart IT solutions are available and accessible in all environments.

Where to go from here

For general information about changing or configuring your BMC Helix ITSM environments, see the Request-for-Change-process.

 

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