Preparing an external portal for external administrators

Before you begin

• You must have the MyIT Super Admin permissions.
• An ITSM administrator must create the external company and also the company user that you will assign as the external administrator. For more information about creating companies and users in BMC Helix ITSM, see Configuring companies  and Adding people information in the BMC Helix ITSMonline documentation. 
• You must have the service catalog configured. For more information about configuring the catalog, see Enabling-and-configuring-the-enhanced-catalog-for-BMC-Helix-Digital-Workplace and Creating-and-managing-the-service-catalog.

To set up an external company

1. In BMC Helix Digital Workplace Admin console, select Configuration > Configuration > External Users.

2. On the Company Setup tab, click Configure.

   

3. From the list of companies, select the company for which you are creating an external BMC Helix Digital Workplace portal, and then click Confirm.

   The list of companies shows the companies that are available in BMC Helix ITSM.
   

4. In the confirmation dialog box, click Configure.

   You have set up the external company. Next, you must assign an external administrator. The assigned external administrator can then add a configuration for the company and provide the URL of the external portal to external users. For more information, see Configuring-an-external-portal-for-external-users.

To assign an external administrator

External administrators are assigned in BMC Helix ITSM. If you are not familiar with the ITSM people management process, see People Management console in BMC Helix ITSMonline documentation.

1. In BMC Helix ITSM, in the CTM:People form, find a user who you want to assign as an external administrator. The user must belong to the external company selected in BMC Helix Digital Workplace on the company setup stage.
2. Provide this user with the MyIT Admin permissions.
3. Save the changes.
   Users of an external company with the MyIT Admin permissions created in BMC Helix ITSM, are displayed as administrators of an external portal in BMC Helix Digital Workplace, as shown in the following example:
   
   

To add services to an external portal

Services for an external portal are controlled by a virtual marketplace. If you are not familiar with virtual marketplaces, see Creating-virtual-marketplace-entitlements. For an external portal, you must perform the following tasks:

1. Create a virtual marketplace in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. 

2. In the virtual marketplace, add services that you want to appear on the Catalog page of an external BMC Helix Digital Workplace portal.

   Important

   While creating questionnaires in services that you plan to entitle to external users, do not refer to the forms that could potentially contain information that should not be exposed to external users (for example, the user list in BMC Helix ITSM).

3. Assign an external company to a virtual marketplace by using the Company attribute.

To manage the visibility of the knowledge articles

The visibility of the knowledge articles is managed in BMC Helix ITSM. When you create a knowledge article from scratch, the visibility of this article is set to Global by default. Unless you change the visibility settings, knowledge articles are available to internal users of your regular BMC Helix Digital Workplace application and external users of an external portal.

If you want to change the visibility of some knowledge articles and make them unavailable to external users or available only to external users, perform the following steps:

1. In BMC Helix ITSM, select Applications > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management Console.
2. Select the knowledge article for which you want to change the visibility settings.
3. Open the Details tab.
   The knowledge article settings are displayed, as shown in the following image:
   
   
   
   
4. (Optional) To make the article unavailable to external users (and available to internal users), perform the following actions:
   1. From the Company list, select your internal company.
   2. In the Quick Actions menu, click Article Visibility.
   3. From the Company list, select the same internal company as in step 4a.
   4. From the Visibility Group list, select ALL.
   5. Click Add and Save.
      
      
5. (Optional) To make the article available only to external users, perform the following actions:
   1. From the Company list, select the external company configured in BMC Helix Digital Workplace on the company setup stage.
   2. In the Quick Actions menu, click Article Visibility.
   3. From the Company list, select the same external company as in step 5a.
   4. From the Visibility Group list, select ALL.
   5. Click Add and Save.
      
      
6. Click Save.

For more information about visibility groups, see  Configuring visibility groups in BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management online documentation.

To delete an external portal

1. In BMC Helix Digital Workplace Admin console, select Configuration > Configuration > External Users.
2. On the Company Setup tab, next to the external company, click Delete configuration.
   
   
   
   
3. Confirm the action.

Where to go from here

Configuring-an-external-portal-for-external-users