Integrating with Remedy Action Request System

Integrating with Remedy Action Request System enables you to collect and search change and incident management data.

Use the following information to understand the integration process:

Related topics

Integrating-with-Infrastructure-Management-and-ProactiveNet

Integrating-with-Infrastructure-Management-and-ProactiveNet-cells

Integrating-with-TrueSight-Presentation-Server

Integration use cases

Before you begin

Ensure that you have a Remedy user with Administrator privileges to connect with the Remedy AR Server and at a minimum access one of the following applications based on the kind of data that you want to collect:

  • Change Management
  • Incident Management

The credentials of this user will be required while integrating with Remedy Action Request System and collecting change and incident management data.

Key steps to an effective integration

The following table describes the high-level steps involved in performing this integration.

See System requirements to understand the supported versions of Remedy Action Request System.

Integrating with Remedy Action Request System

  1. Navigate to Administration > External Configurations.
  2. Select AR Configuration on the list at the top-left of your screen.

  3. Provide the following details and click Save.

Collecting change management and incident management data

After integrating with Remedy Action Request System, you need to create the Monitor using external configuration data collector to start collection of change management or incident management data. A single data collector can collect data from one application (change management or incident management application) only. To collect data from more than one application, you need to create those many data collectors. This applies even if you created an external configuration with both change management and incident management applications selected.

The following sections discuss various aspects related to data collection:

How is the collected data made available for search?

When data collection starts, data is indexed and made available on the Search page in the form of raw data and fields. Typically, a change management (or incident management) form contains a list of many entries (or fields). During data collection, a set of these entries is automatically collected. But from this initial set, a limited set is selected to be indexed and a further limited set is selected to be extracted as fields (name=value pairs) and displayed on the Search page.

For more information about the entries (or fields) collected, see List of entries (or fields) collected automatically.

Notes

  • Entries from the work notes section can only be indexed and displayed as part of the raw data (and not fields).
  • Data collected from configuration items (CIs) is displayed as the value of the HOST field (in your search results).
    This information can provide you additional context while troubleshooting issues.

Methods of customizing entries collected

As part of data collection, you can collect entries from the change and incident forms (or tickets) as well as associated work notes and configuration items (CI).

You can change the settings that govern the kind of entries (or fields) that must be collected from the change (or incident) forms and associated work notes and CIs.

To change these settings, you need to run the configureexternalfields-CLI-command. Changes made by running the command can be applied at a global level (for all data collectors) or at an individual data collector level.

At any given time, a minimum set of default fields are always extracted and displayed on the Search page. For more information about the default fields extracted, see About-field-extraction.

Note

By default, only computer system type of CIs ({{code language="none"}}
BMC_COMPUTERSYSTEM
{{/code}}) are collected.

You can customize the CI types that must be collected by modifying the value of a setting (as explained in the following procedure).

To customize CI types to be collected

  1. Navigate to the computer hosting the Collection Station (or the Collection Agent) that you are using to collect Remedy data.
  2. Based on the agent type that you are using to collect data, go to the customizable location of the agent.properties file of the Collection Station (or Collection Agent).
    For more information, see Modifying-the-configuration-files.

  3. Edit the agent.properties file and add the following properties:

    In the preceding table, the following definitions apply:

    • {{code language="none"}}
      Lookup Keyword
      {{/code}}       indicates the CI field name which determines the class ID based on which the CI type (or class value) is determined.
    • The value after the hash sign ({{code language="none"}}
      BMC_COMPUTERSYSTEM
      {{/code}}      ) indicates the CI type (or class value) corresponding to the class ID ({{code language="none"}}
      Lookup Keyword
      {{/code}}      ).
    • Request Description01 indicates the CI field name that determines the host name that must be displayed as the value of the HOST field (in the search results).

  4. Change the value after the hash sign (#). To collect additional CI types, you need to specify a comma-separated list.

    Note

    If you customize the {{code language="none"}}
    Lookup Keyword
    {{/code}}     and Request Description01 field names by using the configureexternalfields-CLI-command, then you need to ensure that you update the new CI field names as well as the value after the hash sign.

    Example
    ar.application.change_management.host.field.class=Lookup Keyword#BMC_VIRTUALSYSTEMENABLER
    ar.application.incident_management.host.field.class=Lookup Keyword#BMC_COMPUTERSYSTEM,BMC_CLUSTER

  5. Restart the Collection Station (or Collection Agent).

    For more information, see Starting-or-stopping-product-services.

List of entries (or fields) collected automatically

During data collection, the following set of total entries are automatically collected from the change management (or incident management) form. These entries are derived from the response received when you run the REST API for getting details of all entries on a form. For more information, see REST API for getting details of multiple entries.

Change and incident management form entries (or fields) collected automatically

The following tables provides the list of entries (or fields) collected from the change and incident tickets (or forms). Also, these tables provide information about the entries that are displayed as fields as part of the search results.

The field settings can be changed by running the configureexternalfields-CLI-command CLI command.

1 When you change field settings to add new field names, ensure that the new field name matches the name that appears in the preceding table, under the Entry name (in Remedy) column.


Work notes-related entries (or fields) collected automatically

The following table provides the list of entries (or fields) automatically collected from the work notes section (associated with the change and incident forms).

Note

When you search, entries (or fields) collected from the work notes section are not displayed as fields, instead, this information is only available as part of the raw data.

The field settings can be changed by running the configureexternalfields-CLI-command CLI command.


Configuration items-related entries (or fields) collected automatically

The following table provides the list of entries (or fields) automatically collected from the configuration items (CIs) (associated with the change and incident forms).

Note

When you search, entries (or fields) collected from the CIs are displayed as a comma-separated list of values of the HOST field. Unlike other forms from which Remedy data can be collected, no entry (or field) is displayed as part of raw data or as fields on searching.

The field settings can be changed by running the configureexternalfields-CLI-command CLI command.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*