Overview of the data load process

Planning activities

Before you start to populate the data management spreadsheets, make sure you thoroughly understand the nature of the data load jobs that you will run and their specific needs. The following planning activities will help you manage the data load jobs:

• Identifying forms
• Identifying data creation and update use cases
• Preparing for bulk data loads
• Identifying customizations
• Creating a test plan
• Populating the data spreadsheets
• Identifying spreadsheets
• Identifying templates
• Ensuring  data  quality
• Data quality application preferences

Identifying forms

Data for BMC Helix ITSM applications is stored on three types of forms, depending on the type of data they contain: 

• Foundation forms
• Process setup forms
• Transactional forms

Before you create a data load job, you need to identify which data form types are involved in the data load. Familiarizing yourself with the types of data that you are loading helps you to better understand the nature of the data load and its need. This kind of familiarity with the data load job is important in later steps. 

Identifying data creation and update use cases

Ensure that you understand the forms and spreadsheets that your data load job will use to:

• add information to the database, if any.  
• update information in the database, if any.

You cannot update data from every spreadsheet tab. Some spreadsheet tabs allow you to only add new data. See Data creation and updates using a dataload job for a list of the spreadsheet tabs from which you can only add new data.

Preparing for bulk data loads

Bulk data loads can present troubleshooting and performance challenges when the data quality cannot be guaranteed or if your system resources are not sufficient to run the data load processes. If you are running bulk data loads, understand the following points when planning the data load jobs. These will help you reduce the impact of any issues associated with data quality or performance:

• If you are unsure of the quality of the data you are loading, we recommend that you load the data in smaller, manageable chunks.
• Loading bulk data in chunks makes it easier to troubleshoot the data load job if it encounters issues with data quality or formatting during the validate step.
• You cannot move on to the promote step step until all of the data that you are importing is valid. 

Identifying customizations

The data load spreadsheets that BMC ships with the Data Management feature are designed to work with an out-of-the-box BMC Helix ITSM system. If you have customized the database for the specific needs of your organization by adding fields to the data forms, you must account for these custom fields when planning the data load jobs. If not, then the data load job will not pick up the data from the customized fields. 

When using spreadsheets to run a data load job, always place any customized data fields in the columns that come after the out-of-the-box data columns. Do not intermix the customized data columns with the out-of-the-box data columns.
For example, if the form you are loading has 10 out-of-the-box fields and two customized fields, on the data load spreadsheet the out-of-the-box forms will appear in columns A through J and the customized data fields must appear in column K and L.

Creating a test plan

Always test your dataload jobs before you run them on live data. Create a test plan that takes into account the following considerations:

• The forms into which you will be loading data.
• The volume of data that you are loading.
• Your system performance and resources such as memory, processing speed, network bandwidth, and database capabilities.
• The number of threads configured for CAI.
• UDM performance on the server.

When you finish drafting the test plan, review it with stakeholders and experts on the various system areas that your plan touches on.

Populating the data spreadsheets

When all of the prerequisites are in place and you have completed your test plan, you can start to work with the data load spreadsheets.

Identifying spreadsheets

• Identifying the spreadsheets for your use case Spreadsheets-provided-and-target-form-mapping.
• Using CTM_LoadPeopleModification tab on the People.xlsx spreadsheet: 
  • You can create a template with all support group associations and permissions that you would like to give a user or a login id.
    Specify the newly created template name and login id in the spreadsheet to load those support group associations or user permissions groups. Update the Group list in the AR System User form with the  support group associations and permissions.
  • A deadlock in the database happens if same person or login ID is repeated in a spreadsheet and the duplicate records are processed in different threads or processes in the database.
    To prevent the deadlock in the database, BMC recommends you to have one template with all support group associations, people permissions, and functional roles to apply to all users in one job. If multiple templates need to be added to a single person, divide the job per template rather than dividing a job per user. 

Identifying templates

Using the templates that BMC provides with the Data Management utility, you can quickly create data load jobs. You can use the data load templates as provided, or you can create custom templates for each Data Management user, based on the type of data loads the user performs.

The following example describes how to create a custom template based on the out-of-the-box provided People template:

From the Application menu on Mid Tier, select Data Management > Job console.

1. In the navigation pane of Job console, choose Other Functions > Search template.
2. In the Template Name field, type People, then click Search. The system shows the People template details.
3. Click Copy Template.
4. Provide a name for the new template that you are creating and select a template category from the Category menu. 

5. In the Steps section of the window, remove any steps that you do not need in the template. To do this, select the steps that you do not need and from under the Steps section, as shown in the following image, click Delete:

   
   
   The job dependency and sequencing within the steps that remain are adjusted by the built-in UDM sequencing and dependency logic.

6. Click Save. 

Ensuring  data  quality

If the validate step of the data load job encounters missing required or conditionally required fields, unexpected null values, data formatting issues, and so on, it will not run successfully. Before running that data load job, you need to manually review the data in the spreadsheets to ensure that the data that they contain is free from these types of errors.

If you find errors, you must address them in the spreadsheet before you create the data load job. In some cases, you might need to address the data errors in the database and then generate a new set of spreadsheets.

Data quality application preferences

If you are unsure of your data quality, consider setting the Job Wait preference to Manual Validate - Manual Promote. This preference causes the the job to wait at the validate step so that you can review the data before the validation runs and gives you the opportunity proactively troubleshoot data issues. We recommend setting this user preference especially when loading bulk data in which data quality is uncertain.

You also have the option of setting the Wait flag on individual steps in any given data load job directly on the Job console, by highlighting the job step and clicking Enable Wait. Use this option if you don't want every job step to wait for manual verification, but only the ones that you choose.

Data creation and updates using a data load job

BMC provides out-of-the-box data load spreadsheets that are used as a source of data to run a data load job. The data from these spreadsheets is used to create new records and update the pre-existing records on the target forms. Each spreadsheet is organized into tabs and each tab is mapped to an intermediate form, also known as staging form. You can access and download these spreadsheets from the Spreadsheet Management window. For more information about data load spreadsheets, see Content in data load spreadsheets and to locate and download spreadsheets, see Managing spreadsheets.

Creating and running data load jobs

After completing the pre-requisites, planning activities, an populating the spreadsheets, you are ready to work with the data load jobs. 

When importing Company and Support Group data, Data Management generates new group IDs for imported companies and for imported support groups. This happens in the background and is transparent to you. The generation of new group IDs does not alter or affect the row level permissions of these companies and support groups.

Each data load job has the following steps:

1. The load step imports your data from your source files to the dataload staging forms.
   This step leverages Atrium Integrator jobs, which integrate source and target data stores with data transformation based on specific rules.
2. The validate step ensures that the data that was loaded during the load step does not contain fatal errors. 
   Each Validate step represents the validation of data for one staging form. Note that during this step, if errors are found you will need to address the data errors.
3. The promote step either automatically or manually pushes all staging form records that are valid to their respective target forms within the BMC Remedy ITSM applications, based on the option selected for each Promote step within the job.

You might need to run these steps iteratively until all of the data passes the Validate step and can be promoted.

Data load job overview

You can use the data load tool to import data into your BMC Helix ITSM applications.

The main procedures of the data load process are described in the following list:

1. Create a job using the Data Management Job Console. For more information, see Creating-a-data-load-job.
2. Select a job template that includes a set of steps.
   For instructions on using a template supplied by BMC, see Creating a job using out-of-the-box templates. For information about customizing templates, see Creating customized job templates.

3. Run the job. Choose one of the following methods to run your job:

   • Schedule a job by using the Job Scheduler Console to run at a future date and time. For more information, see Scheduling-data-load-jobs.
     Running a job includes loading, validating, and promoting data. For more information, see Completing-steps.
   • Run the job manually and immediately instead of scheduling the job. For more information, see Running a job.

   If you have customized BMC Helix ITSM, see Using-Data-Management-tools-for-custom-Foundation-data.

Updating data

The Data Management supports data updates only for CTM:LoadPeople form. 

  If you try to update the data on the forms for which data update is not supported, the following events might occur:

• For certain forms, the system overwrites the data and replaces the earlier field values with the values provided in the update. 
  If you want to update data on such forms, you must provide values for all the form fields irrespective of whether you want to update those fields.
• For certain forms listed in Data creation and updates using a dataload job, the data is only created and not updated.
  These forms are marked by a Create Only flag, which is displayed in the Steps panel of a job record when the Validate and Promote steps are created for a job.
  Forms marked by a Create Only flag
  

Troubleshooting and Best Practices

The following links provide valuable information about troubleshooting the Data Management feature and Data Management Best Practices.

• Troubleshooting-Data-Management
• Data Management Best Practices

 List of Create Only forms 

The following forms are marked by the Create Only flag for which data is only created and not updated: