Exporting and importing content packages to move customized data between environments

BMC Helix Business Workflows can be used to implement case management for different lines of business. As a case business analyst, you can customize the required templates, processes, and documents for a line of business based on your organization's requirements. You must create the content in your tailoring environment and test it in your QA environment before you deploy it into production. 

BMC Helix Platform provides a utility to export and import your custom content between environments. The exported package maintains any associations defined when creating the template or process. For example, when you select a case template for export, all associated task templates, processes related to the task template, and dynamic data included in the case template are exported. 

Content packages provided out of the box

BMC provides several content packages out of the box. You can download the content package files and directly import them to BMC Helix Platform. For more information about importing these content packages, see Deploying application tailoring changes. 

Click to view and download available Content Package files.

To export and import a content package for BMC Helix Business Workflows

On a dedicated or shared tailoring system, you can create a deployable export or content package that gets downloaded as a ZIP file. The ZIP file is named in the <developer ID>.<application name>-<application version>-content.zip> format. For example, com.example.ticketingservice-1.0.0-content.zip. If an application's export or content package was created earlier, BMC Helix Platform overwrites the earlier export or package with the latest package.

Important

Use the 7 Zip utility to extract the contents of the ZIP file. You cannot extract the contents of the import ZIP file using the Windows Zip utility or Mac archive utility.


  1. Log in BMC Helix Platform as an administrator. 

    Note

    If the export package contains any dynamic data that includes an attachment, the administrator must be assigned the Case Business Analyst functional role to so that the dynamic data definition can be successfully imported.

  2. Navigate to the Workspace tab. 
  3. Select Business Workflows.
  4. Click Actions and select Create Content Package.

  5. In the Create Export Package window on the tabs displayed, perform the actions described in the following table:

    Tab Name

    Action

    Notes

    Select Definitions

    Select the customized definitions you created for BMC Helix Platform, for example, documents (dynamic fields), processes, and so on.

    This tab lists all the customized definitions you have created for BMC Helix Platform.

    Add Data


    Select the data you want to export and click Next.

    • Do not remove any predefined qualifications. To add additional qualifications, add brackets to the current qualification, and use the AND operator to specify the qualifications.
    • You can create content packages only for specific BMC Helix Platform data, if required.
    • When exporting knowledge articles, you must select the knowledge article and the knowledge sets for which the articles have been created.
    • When exporting service targets that use notification templates for milestones, you must also export those notification templates.

    To filter the data to be exported, click Click to build an expression to enter selection criteria. For example, if you only want to export case templates defined for the Facilities Flowset, enter the following expression: Flowset Name = "Facilities"


    Ignore Rules—Do not select this option.

    When importing data, the utility checks for duplicate records. Selecting this option bypasses all validations during data import.

    Duplicates—Select one of these actions for duplicate data

    • Ignore—Does not import the record if it exists in the system.
    • Create New—Creates a new record with a different GUID even if the record exists in the system.
    • Overwrite—Overwrites the existing record only if the fields Created Date and Owner are updated in the new record. 
    • Merge—Update the delta part on the existing record Field exists and is populated - overwrite will replace the value and merge will append the data to the existing data.

    To avoid errors, the recommended option is Merge.

    Include configuration data in the package — Do not select this option.


    Order Data

    Do not change the order displayed.

    For BMC Helix Business Workflows, the order is predefined to the order in which the records need to be imported without errors.

    Select Approval Configuration

    Select the group for which you want to export the approval configurations.

    You have to export all approval flows created for a group and cannot select individual approval configurations.

    • Select Assignment Configuration
    • Select Definitions To Delete Options

    Skip these steps when exporting data for BMC Helix Business Workflows.

    These fields are not applicable for BMC Helix Business Workflows export.

    For details about these fields, see Deploying application tailoring changes.

    Package

    Review the data items included and excluded and click Create Package.


    Download

    To download the content package, click Download.


    After you create the content package, you can import it to the target system, where you want to move this data. 

  6. To import the content package, see Deploying application tailoring changes.

Related topic

Content-package-for-BMC-Helix-Business-Workflows


 

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