BMC Helix ITSM Integration

Integrating the BMC Helix ITSM service into your BMC Helix Network Management monitoring workflow is fairly straightforward. Simply follow the steps below to create a new action group that will alert your BMC Helix ITSM service with a custom message of your choice that can then be assigned to the alarm configuration of any monitoring check.

Navigate to the Actions Administration page (Administration > Alerts > Actions).

Create a new action group.
Click the Add A Group button at the top of the page. Or, if there is an existing group to which you would like to add a new action, click the add action button in that group's header and skip to the next section.

1. In the Add Group dialog:
   1. In the "GROUP NAME" field, enter a name for this action group (for example, "HelixITSM").
      • No spaces are allowed in action group names.
   2. In the "MANUAL ALERT ACCESS LEVEL" field, select a user access level for this group.
      • This setting allows users of the selected access level and higher to manually run this action group from within an incident.
   3. Click Add Group to add this action group to BMC Helix Network Management.
      • Action groups are selected when configuring alarms for monitoring checks.

Create a new action to add to your action group.
If you just created a new action group, the wizard will automatically direct you to the Add Action dialog. Otherwise, click the "add action" button in an existing action group's header to open the Add Action dialog.

1. In the Add Action dialog:
   1. In the "ACTION NAME" field, enter a name for this action (for example, "Helix ITSM Action").
      • Spaces are allowed in action names.
   2. Click Add Action to add this action to your action group.

Create a new method to add to your action.
If you just created a new action, the wizard will automatically direct you to the Add Method dialog. Otherwise, click the add method button in an existing action's header to open the Add Method dialog.

1. In the Add Method dialog:
   1. In the "ACTION METHOD TYPE" field, select "Active Response Webhook" from the drop-down. (See Action Group for more information on webhooks.)
      • Be sure to select "Active Response Webhook" here, because you will be using a URL for creating incidents in BMC Helix ITSM, and you only want the incident created once. If you choose the standard webhook, it would create a ticket for each re-notification of the incident, which is not what you want.
   2. In the "URL" field, enter the URL to which this webhook will be sent. The URL will depend on your Helix ITSM deployment. It should be something like: https://restapi.onbmc.com/api/arsys/v1/entry/HPD:IncidentInterface_Create?fields=values(Incident Number)
   3. In the "WEBHOOK DATA PAYLOAD" field, enter something like:[header]
      { 
      "X-Requested-By":  "XMLHttpRequest",
      "Content-Type": "application/json" 
      }
      [header] 
      {  "values": {    "First_Name": "Allen",    "Last_Name": "Allbrook",    "Description": "REST API: Incident Creation AR",    "Impact": "4-Minor/Localized",    "Urgency": "4-Low",    "Status": "Assigned",    "Reported Source": "Direct Input",    "Service_Type": "User Service Restoration"     }}
      • Each header element must be on its own line. This includes the header tags and braces.
      • You can dynamically replace payload values using the built-in macros.
   4. In the "AUTHORIZATION TOKEN" field, select JWT Token from the pull-down menu.
   5. In the "HEADER PREFIX" field, enter the JWT prefix for the webhook data payload. (For BMC Helix, use AR-JWT)
   6. In the "TOKEN KEY" field, enter the field for which the JWT token exists from the login response payload. (For BMC Helix use access_token)
   7. In the "LOGIN URL" field, enter the URL to use for JWT authentication. (The URL will depend on your Helix ITSM deployment. It should be something like: https://netreohelix-demo-is.onbmc.com/api/rx/authentication/loginrequest)
   8. In the "TOKEN AUTHENTICATION PAYLOAD" field, enter something like:
      [header]
      { 
      "X-Requested-By":  "XMLHttpRequest",
      "Content-Type": "application/json" 
      }
      [header]
      {
         "userName": "evancabana",
         "password": "xxxxx",
         "locale": "en-us"
      }
      • This field is used to provide a username and password for authentication against the login URL.
      • Each header element must be on its own line. This includes the header tags and braces.
   9. Click Add Method to add this method to your action.

Select this action group in the alarm configuration of a monitoring check. When that check opens an incident, BMC Helix ITSM will be alerted and instructed to create its own incident.