Leveraging external data in questionnaires

As a catalog administrator, leverage data from external systems in service questionnaires. When responding to service questions, you can give users the option to select from a predefined set of answers instead of entering their answers manually. Offering predefined options for questions makes it easier for users to respond, minimizes errors, and saves users time and effort.

Scenario: Requesting resources

Scenario 1

Britney, a developer at Apex Global, requires extra disk resources on Microsoft Azure to store project files. Britney opens the Request Resources service and chooses Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider. She selects the desired disk type from the secondary menu containing various disk resource types provided by Microsoft Azure. The IT administrator proceeds to allocate the additional disk resources on Microsoft Azure. Implementing a lookup for selection ensures developers like Britney can efficiently select and request suitable resource types for their projects.

Scenario: Requesting a change in working hours

Scenario 2

Britney, an employee at Apex Global, needs to transition from a 5-day work week to a 3-day work week to care for her baby. The Human Resources department has created a service to handle the terms of an employee's contract, function, workload, or legal entity, to be changed in all systems according to what is agreed between the employee, the HR Consultant, and the Line Manager, and reflect in the Payroll system accordingly. Britney opens the Change of Job request and asks for a working time change. The request first looks up Britney's current 5-day week schedule from the external Human Resources Management System (HRMS). Britney asks for a 3-day work week and submits the request. The request is routed to her manager and HR for approval. Once the change is approved, her contract is updated.

Scenario: Ordering IT equipment

Scenario 3

Employees at Apex Global frequently require IT equipment like laptops, monitors, and printers for their workstations. To streamline this process, the IT department integrates an external system that contains a comprehensive list of IT equipment with their service request system. Employees who open a service for IT equipment see the list of available options. Employees can then browse through this list and select the items they need. After the selection is made and the request is submitted, the IT department coordinates the procurement and delivery of the requested equipment.

Set up configurations in BMC Helix Innovation Suiteand BMC Helix Digital Workplace to use the REST APIs provided by the external system to access its database and retrieve data.

Before you begin

Make sure you have administrator privileges to set up configurations in BMC Helix Innovation Suite and catalog administrator privileges to configure services in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog.

Configuring the steps to pull data from an external source into a questionnaire

The following image shows the configuration steps to leverage external data in questionnaires:

Steps to use external data in questionnaires

The following table provides the sequence of steps that you need to perform:

Important

All screenshots relate to Scenario 2 and its associated configurations.

Step	Product	Task	Description	Reference
1	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Create a document definition	Define how the data is sent in the body of a request for PUT and POST methods and how it's returned in the response. Click to see an example:	Defining a document schema
2	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Create REST API web service request definitions	Set up the API call by defining web requests to send and receive data from the external system. Click to see an example: Important: When the dataset is large and pagination is required, only the first page of results is returned.	Creating a REST API web service request definition
3	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Create a web API connection	Configure a connection to access the REST API web services of the external system. Click to see an example:	Creating a web API connection
4	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Configure a data source	Create an external data source from which the data will be retrieved. Click to see an example:	Configuring a data source
5	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Create an external record	Create an external record that maps the external data so that it appears as a local record instance. Click to see an example: Important: Use the Edit data option to examine the records of this external record definition. If the data created is as expected, your configuration works fine	Creating external record definitions
6	BMC Helix Innovation Suite	Map the data source alias with an appropriate data source configuration	Map the external data source alias to the data source configuration. When a record from the external record definition is accessed, the application connects to the external data source. Click to see an example:	Maping the data source alias with data source configuration
7	BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog	Create the service in BMC Helix Digital Workplace	Create a service that will use the external data. Click to see an example:	Adding-and-updating-services
8	BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog	Configure a questionnaire for the service	Add a questionnaire for the service. Click to see an example:	Adding-questions-to-a-questionnaire
9	BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog	Add a multi-choice type question and map question values to a form	Add a multichoice question and populate it by using external data. Multichoice questions can include dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, tables, lookups, and other formats. Click to see an example:	Creating-selection-menus-for-question-responses