21.3 enhancements

Exclude fields from proactive problem management jobs

As a tenant administrator, you can hide certain fields containing sensitive information from users that are creating and running jobs in the proactive problem management workspace. By doing so, you enhance user privacy by restricting access to user data in compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regulations.
For more information, see Configuring additional stop words, number of jobs, and default number of clusters. 

Support for deployment size templates

BMC Helix Service Management deployment supports four different sizing profiles: Compact, Small, Medium, and Large. 

For more information, see Sizing and scalability considerations in Deployment documentation. 

Seamless authentication of users from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management to BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround

Users of BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management have seamless access to knowledge articles in BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround. The end users can view or edit the knowledge articles according to the assignment group, visibility group, and KCS role assigned to them.

Administrators of BMC Helix Innovation Studio can modify the mapping between the permission groups in BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management with BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround user groups, role, portal and knowledge access.

To learn how to modify the access mapping, see Mapping knowledge permissions from BMC applications to BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround.

Improved parity between articles in BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management and BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround

To improve parity between articles in BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management and BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround, the following knowledge article attributes are synchronized:

• Metadata fields with tags
• Doc ID
• Keywords
• Attachments
• Association with tickets
• Knowledge articles in all statuses

To learn more about the article types and attributes that are synchronized, see Synchronizing BMC applications with BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround.

Support for BMC Helix ITSM Insights and BMC Helix Dashboards deployment

BMC Helix IT Service Management supports deployment of BMC Helix ITSM Insights and BMC Helix Dashboards products in your on-premises environment. The BMC Helix IT Service Management deployment pipeline provides an option to select BMC Helix ITSM Insights and BMC Helix Dashboards deployment and you can optionally deploy the products along with other ITSM applications. The option is available for fresh installation and upgrade of BMC Helix IT Service Management.

For more information, see  Performing the installation in BMC Helix Service Management Deployment documentation.

Availability of BMC Service Request Management

For new SaaS customers, starting with version 21.3.02 of BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Service Request Management is no longer available in new or fresh deployments of BMC Helix ITSM. We will continue to maintain the current BMC Service Request Management capabilities and to deliver minor updates to the solution, as needed for the existing customer base and those who migrate from OnPrem to SaaS, but no major design changes or major innovations are planned for BMC Service Request Management. 

We recommend that SaaS customers use BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog to create and manage service request catalog items for your end users. Work Order management continues to be delivered with BMC Helix ITSM.

Review the availability of BMC Service Request Management in the following table:

1 - By default, only the Request Entry, Work Order Console, New Work Order, and Search Work Order links are enabled after upgrading. If you enabled more links before the update, you must re-enable them after the upgrade.

(SaaS only) Enhance knowledge article management by integrating BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround

Boost your knowledge management experience by integrating BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround with Smart IT.

BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround provides the following benefits:

• Extended language support and over 100 languages in auto-translation that reduces translation costs.
• Preloaded knowledge articles that contain screenshots and videos.

• Articles from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management synchronized with BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround.

• AI powered cognitive and natural language processing search capabilities that display the most relevant knowledge article to end users.
• Ability to expose knowledge articles in a public portal to external users and to BMC Helix Digital Workplace and BMC Helix Virtual Agent users.
• Support for KCS process and rich set of knowledge metrics and reports.
• Ability to embed multimedia content into knowledge articles.

For more information, see Integrating-BMC-Helix-Knowledge-Management-by-ComAround-with-Smart-IT.

Change in the landing page for Smart IT

In Smart IT version 21.3 and later, when you log into Smart IT, the landing page is Ticket Console. In versions earlier to 21.3, the landing page was Dashboard.

In Smart IT version 21.3 and later, Ticket Console does not show the ticket statistics by default. To view ticket statistics, click Show Ticket Statistics.

Launch Microsoft Teams chat from a major incident

You can launch Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) chat from the major incident screen. When launched, all the associated team members are invited to the chat. For more information, see Managing-and-tracking-major-incidents.

Map outgoing mailboxes to companies

Use the NTE:Config-EmailMailbox form to map companies with mailboxes. All email notifications to a specific company are sent through the mapped mailbox. To know more, see Configuring-default-notification-preferences.

Automate processes by using content packages

Automate the following processes by using content packages and create services in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog by using sample services:

• Fetching payslips from a payroll system by using a Blue Prism RPA process
• Fetching payslips from a payroll system by using a UiPath RPA process

For more information, see Automating actions performed in third-party systems by using a content package.

Manage and track major incidents

Track specific information about a major incident that is beyond the information that of a standard incident. Major incidents affect multiple customers and have a widespread impact on business and its goals. By using Major Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM, you can manage and track major incidents, establish teams, collaborate with specialists and technicians, and update the major incident status within the same incident screen. For more information about the Major Incident Management process, see Managing-major-incidents.

Use BMC Helix Service Monitoring (Powered by AIOps) to analyse service health and probable cause of an incident

Within the incident screen, use the Probable Cause Analysis (PCA) health card to view the health of an impacted service and the top probable causal nodes that have caused the failure in the service. Use the Top Probable Causal nodes (PCA card) to view, create, or associate the CIs, tasks, or change requests. For more information about how to use the PCA card in Incident screen, see Probable-cause-analysis-in-Incident-Management-by-using-BMC-Helix-Service-Monitoring.

Track the usage and benefits of ITSM Insights in BMC Helix Dashboards

Service Desk Managers and Problem Coordinators can track the usage of ITSM Insights for various KPIs in BMC Helix Dashboards.

Use this dashboard to track the incident and problem management statistics for a company for a defined period. The out-of-the-box report includes the number and percentage of problem investigations created from ITSM Insights, number of associated incidents, number of jobs and job executions, statuses of various problem types, top emerging clusters, and number of incident relationships created.

For more information, see Tracking-ITSM-Insights-usage-in-BMC-Helix-Dashboards.

Change the parent or remove parent relationship for incidents

Service Desk Managers can change the parent for incidents or remove parent relationship directly from the Show Duplicates window in the Real-time incident correlation workspace. This capability helps to identify and correlate incidents that refer to the same issue. 

For more information, see Identifying-clusters-of-incoming-incidents.

Simplified REST API for BMC Helix ITSM

Integrate your custom applications with BMC Helix ITSM by using the new simplified REST API.

Along with a robust framework, the enhanced API offers the following advantages:

• User friendly and industry standard naming conventions for endpoints and attributes
• Industry standard searching, filtering, and sorting of results
• Better error handling and status codes

Use the simplified REST API to perform operations such as searching and updating a ticket, downloading attachments, viewing people data, and getting a list of the recommended knowledge articles and tickets.

For more information, see Overview-of-the-simplified-REST-API.

BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting is available only for upgrade scenarios for existing customers

BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting version 21.3 is available only for upgrade scenarios for existing customers. This version is not available to new customers. For new customers, we recommend that you use the BMC Helix Dashboards reporting solution.

BMC Helix Dashboards is a SaaS service as a part of the BMC Helix Portal that offers unified reporting and gives you a consolidated view of data from applications across your environment. You can easily create, export, and share interactive dashboards with users within or outside your environment. You can also use template variables to reuse dashboard panels. For more information on the product offerings, see BMC Helix Dashboards online documentation.

CMDB Explorer enhancements

Easily edit and manage the CIs and relationships:

Quick Edit: Edit the name, descriptions, and impact directions for CIs and relationships within the CMDB Explorer view.

Collapse: If a large number of CIs are displayed, easily unclutter the view by using the Collapse Parents and Collapse Children options.

Show Relationship Details: View relationship details in CMDB Explorer and compare changes made in the sandbox dataset with the existing data in the production dataset.

For more information about Quick Edit, see Editing-CIs-and-relationships-in-BMC-Helix-CMDB-Explorer.

For more information about the Collapse function and to view relationship details, see Searching-and-viewing-CIs-and-relationships-in-CMDB-Explorer.

New attribute to store cloud resource IDs

The CloudId attribute is added under the BMC_BaseElement class in the Common Data Model. Easily store and locate the identification numbers for all the cloud resources from multiple cloud providers. The information for the CloudId attribute is populated by BMC Helix Discovery.

For more information, see Summary-of-changes-to-the-Common-Data-Model.

View information in full-screen mode in the Class Manager UI

When you view the class information in Class Manager, the tables that display information about relationships can be resized or viewed in full-screen mode. For more information, see Class-Manager-interface-to-view-CDM-and-extensions.

Integrate BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications with third-party applications through BMC Helix iPaaS, powered by MuleSoft

Integrate out-of-the-box and custom applications with other external applications by using BMC Helix iPaaS, powered by MuleSoft. Reuse the BMC Helix iPaaS MuleSoft APIs in the business processes of your applications without having to rebuild an integration for each application. For more information, see Integrating BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications with third-party applications by using BMC Helix iPaaS, powered by MuleSoft.

Track user activity in BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications

Track how end users are using an application by generating metrics on application usage and service consumption. These metrics measure the user activity for an application and help in understanding whether end users are fully utilizing the application.

For more information, see Tracking application usage and generating reports.

BMC Helix Dashboards the default platform for dashboards and viewing reports

BMC Helix Dashboards is a SaaS service on the BMC Helix Portal that offers unified reporting and gives you a consolidated view of data from applications across your environment. You can easily create, export, and share interactive dashboards with users within or outside your environment. You can also use template variables to reuse dashboard panels. For more information about the product offerings, see BMC Helix Dashboards online documentation.

BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting version 21.3 is available only for upgrade scenarios for existing customers. This version is not available to new customers. For new customers, we recommend that you use the BMC Helix Dashboards reporting solution.

For more information about accessing BMC Helix Dashboards from BMC Helix Innovation Studio, see Viewing and generating application reports in BMC Helix Dashboards.

Unified platform user license management capability for BMC Helix Innovation Suite

BMC Helix Innovation Suite supports a common licensing model that enables developers to create applications in BMC Helix Innovation Studio and Developer Studio. You no longer need HelixPlatform User Named license to access BMC Helix Innovation Studio.

Users with administrator permissions and Fixed license can access and use Developer Studio and BMC Helix Innovation Studio. Users with administrator permissions and Fixed, Floating, or Read licenses can access the BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications.

For more information, see BMC Helix Innovation Studio licensing model.

Copy application definitions to your target application

Copy out-of-the-box and custom definitions from one application to another so that you can reuse the definitions in any customized application. For example, you have an HR application with customized configuration data and custom definitions, and you want to reuse the definitions, such as processes, records, documents in Finance application. You can copy the relevant custom definitions from the HR to Finance application without having to recreate the definitions.

Improve the security of BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications

Use Permissions-Policy HTTP header, which is a security header that controls the use of browser features in BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications.

For example, you can disable sensitive features like geolocation by default in iFrames. This capability reduces the chances of users being tricked into giving embedded websites access to the application.

For more information, see Controlling the use of browser features by using Permission Policy header.

Automate tasks by using RPA tools

Connect your application with third-party systems and automate routine tasks performed in the third-party systems:

Automate routine tasks by using AutomationEdge RPA processes

Use the Run AE Process element to seamlessly integrate your application with AutomationEdge and use an AutomationEdge RPA process to automate routine and repetitive tasks.

For more information, see Automating tasks by using AutomationEdge processes.

Automate routine tasks by using UiPath RPA processes

Use the Run UiPath Process element to seamlessly integrate your application with UiPath and use an UiPath RPA process to automate routine and repetitive tasks.

For more information, see Automating tasks by using UiPath processes.

Use Blue Prism callbacks to receive real-time event notifications

Use webhook callbacks from Blue Prism to receive notifications about an RPA process execution. You can use these notifications in a process with the Run Blue Prism Process element to perform the following actions:

• Trigger specific rules or processes
• View the bot execution status
• Notify users on completion of a task

For more information, see Automating tasks by using Blue Prism processes.