FAQ

Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions about BMC Helix Innovation Suite.

BMC Helix Innovation Suite licenses FAQ

How do I translate what licenses I bought to what entries I see in the Add or Remove Licenses form?

With the new bundled license option, you can configure license limits, assign licenses to users, and control and report license consumption in alignment with how user licenses were purchased. You do not need to manually map the new pricing models to the old pricing models and then apply the licenses in the system.

Why is the user to whom I have assigned a bundled license not getting displayed in the license usage report or on the Admin Manage User licenses screen?

The License usage report gets updated in every 45 minutes. The Admin Manage User licenses screen displays two new options, bundled - current users and bundled - registered users, to display the consumption of bundled licenses along with the existing granular license consumption options.

BMC Helix Innovation Studio FAQ

What can you do by using Sandbox?

Design and develop your innovative ideas
Build tailorable definitions for your app so that it can be safely customized by your end users
String together the UI of your application
Define your data model and relationships
Configure and tailor existing apps using BMC Helix Innovation Studio
Create new workflows, processes or UI using designers
Design and develop new custom components

How do I set account usernames and passwords?

When you first request a Sandbox (on the Developer Portal), you are provisioned two accounts, developer account and administrator account. By default, the developer account is developer and administrator is admin (as shown in the image below). You can specify the account names and passwords.

You can changes the usernames for these accounts and specify the passwords for these accounts. The passwords you specify must meet the following criteria:

Passwords must consist of at least one uppercase character and at least one lower case character.
Passwords must consist of at least one numeric value.
Passwords must consist of at least one special character (any of the following special character ~!@#$%^&*_-).
The length of the passwords must be between 8 to 30 characters.

If I am a BMC customer, do I need to sign-up for the Developer program?

Yes, you still need to sign-up for the program to ensure you benefit from the exclusive Developer content and the Personal Sandbox that will be available only as part of the program.

Do I need to be an existing BMC Customer or Partner to be part of the program?

No, that is not a pre-requisite to sign up for the program.

Can I deploy the application I built in the sandbox into production?

The personal sandbox you get is only a Development Environment. This does not have a Production Environment with a run-time available to deploy applications in the cloud at this time.

How long do I have access to the sandbox?

You have unlimited access to the sandbox as long as you use it. The sandboxes will be reclaimed by BMC if there is a week's worth of inactivity. You will have to request a new sandbox once your sandbox has been reclaimed.

How do I reset developer password?

You can reset the developer password by using Sandbox details page.

On the Sandbox details page, navigate to Manage Your Sandbox > RESET PASSWORD, click RESET PASSWORD.
Select Innovation Suite Developer, enter the new password, and reset the password.

The following image shows the Manage Your Sandbox section:

How do I set the required language for BMC Helix Innovation Studio?

BMC Helix Innovation Studio supports the following languages:

German (de)
Japanese (ja)
Russian (ru)
Spanish (es)
French (fr)
Italian (it)
Korean (ko)
Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br)
Chinese (zh-cn)
Swedish (sv)
Dutch (nl)

The following table describes how users can select the required language from various browsers:

Browser	Operating System	Steps to change the language
Google Chrome	Windows, apple MacOS	Open Settings, search for language settings, and add the required language.
Mozilla Firefox	Windows, apple MacOS	Navigate to Open Menu and click Options. Search for language settings and add the required language.
Edge	Windows	In Control Panel, in the Clock, Language, and Region option, add the required languages in the order of preference. You must download the install pack of the added languages and then restart the computer.

BMC Helix Innovation Studio also provides localized error messages in the supported locales.

How do I reset Foundation Data user password?

You can reset the Foundation Data user password by using BMC Helix Innovation Studio.

Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio as a developer.
For more information about the roles and their permissions in BMC Helix Innovation Suite, see Roles-and-permissions.
On the Administration tab, click Administration > Foundation Data > Manage People > All People.
Select the user for whom you want to change the password, click Edit, and navigate to the Basic tab.
On the Basic tab, click Access Details.
In Password, enter the new password, and click Save.

How do I unlock an account?

If you encounter the error ERROR 624 User account locked, when you login to BMC Helix Innovation Studio, review the following knowledge article for steps on how to unlock the account:

BMC Helix ARSystem - ARSystem administrator cannot login.

How are test metrics calculated for BMC Helix Platform Cognitive Service?

Example of how cognitive test metrics are calculated

You have created a data set to test whether BMC Helix Innovation Studio Cognitive Service can categorize appropriate service requests in Category A and Category B. The following table indicates the number of expected and predicted categories:

	Expected Category A	Expected Category B	Total Predictions of expected categories
Predicted Category A	8	4	12
Predicted Category B	2	6	8
Total predictions for A and B	10	10	20

Based on the above results, the accuracy, precision, recall, and F-score for Category A and Category B are calculated as shown in the following table:

Test metrics	Category A	Category B
Accuracy	8/10 = 0.8	6/10 = 0.6
Recall	8/10 = 0.8	6/10 = 0.6
Precision	8/12 = 0.67	6/8 = 0.75
F-score	2* (0.80*0.67)/ (0.80 + 0.67)	2* (0.60*0.75) / (0.60 + 0.75) = 0.66

The consolidated results for BMC Helix Innovation Studio Cognitive Service for Category A and Category B are calculated by using the weighted macro average as shown in the following table:

Test metrics	Formula	Result
Accuracy	10/200.80 + 10/200.60	0.70
Recall	10/200.80 + 10/200.60	0.70
Precision	10/200.67 + 10.200.75	0.71
F-score	2(0.700.71) / (0.70+0.71)	0.70

Important

For multi-class categories, Accuracy and Recall that is computed for each category and the consolidated calculation for BMC Helix Innovation Studio Cognitive Service are the same.

What do I do when I get the error 'You are not authorized to access BMC Helix Innovation Studio?'

If you encounter the error You are not authorized to access BMC Helix Innovation Studio when you log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio, use your developer account to log in. This error occurs when you try to log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio by using an administrator account.

What do I do when BMC Helix Innovation Studio locks constantly?

If you encounter the following error even if you do not have any failed login attempts:

ERROR (624): User account locked out due to too many failed login attempts. Please contact your Administrator.; developer

In this case, you should create a new account in BMC Helix Innovation Studio and use the account for development. To create a new account, perform the following steps:

Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio.
Navigate to Administration > Configure My Server > People > Manage User Accounts.
Create a user with Administrator permissions and a fixed license.

How do I access database record and transaction record in a process?

To access the transaction record of a rule, you can use record as the process input, and have rule call process and pass the transaction record. See Working with rules.
To get the database value of a record, you can use Get Record action, and access the database value using the activity results of the Get Record action. See Get Record action.

How to use transaction (TR) field or DB field in rule qualification?

In rule qualification, you can use the function NEWVALUE() for TR field and the function OLDVALUE() for DB field. See Working with rules.

How do I create display only field to store action results?

You do not need the display only field to store the activity results. In a process, you can get the activity results in the following ways:

You can use the expression ${activityResults.<activityGUID>.xxx> to access an activity output.
All activity results are stored in the process context and can be accessed anywhere.
If an activity is not executed, you get an empty value.
If an activity returns a record (that is Get Record Service Task), only the record identity (record ID and record definition name) is persisted to the process context. Record field values are not persisted to the process context.
If you access field values of Get Record Service Task, you get the latest database value of the record. See Get Record.
You can use the activity Output Map to store activity result in a process variable.

How does a process transaction works in process runtime?

When a process is started through an API (Record API triggers rule, which starts the process or Start Process API), process transaction starts at the REST APIs.

The process transaction joins the API transaction and the process runs till its completion or it is goes to a wait step. Wait steps are User Tasks or Receive tasks. When the process reaches a wait step, it persists all the transaction values and returns from the wait state. When the process resumes the execution from a wait step, the process transaction continues till it completes or reaches the next wait step. The records, signal inputs, process operations, process context, and the wait state information are all persisted in one transaction.

For more information on APIs, see PDFs-videos-and-API-documentation.

For more information on User Tasks and Receive tasks, see Activities.

How are process instances managed?

Process instances are managed by the platform and third party process engine Activiti. The platform manages process context and Activiti engine manages process instance state information.

Process context consists of process variables and process activity results.
Process instance state information consists of process current activity, start time of a process, and end time of completed process activities.

For process context, there is a form to store active process instances, and a form to store completed process instances. The archive policy of completed process instances is that all completed process process instances are moved to an archive form after three months. Process instance state information follows the similar pattern.

How does a process instance resumes from User Task?

The condition to resume a process instance from User Task is specified in the Completion Criteria property of User Task (process designer element). Completion Criteria specifies the condition when the user task is considered as complete. The condition is an expression that evaluates fields of a task record.

The platform service EntryEventNotificationService is used to monitor registered record events. User Task uses EntryEventNotificationService to monitor the task completion. Records that need to be monitored are registered in the Entry Event Registration system form and the Notifier Listening field is set to true.

When a record event occurs, the EntryEventNotificationService evaluates the record instance condition and if the condition is true, the Pending Notification flag is set.
A background thread notifies event listeners of all pending notification records with the Notification Information provided by the record event register. When the listener is notified, the record event is cleaned up from the registration form and the Notifier Listening flag is reset. Event listeners are notified by a separate pool of threads where the pool size can be configured.

Where are my overlay objects?

To make the platform operational in varied customer environments, the way you customize objects in core BMC applications has changed from 17-02 onwards. You can customize the objects developed in your own applications, but you cannot customize the objects developed in com.bmc.arsys. For example, objects in core BMC applications like Foundation, Approval, and Assignment cannot be customized. You cannot customize the record definitions by updating the permissions or adding security labels, adding or updating record fields, and so on. Therefore, you must delete the customizations and then perform the upgrade the BMC Helix Innovation Studio. If you attempt to customize any objects developed in core BMC applications, you encounter the following error message:

If you attempt to customize any objects developed in core BMC applications, you encounter the following error message:

Why are the required Default Tenant field values displayed empty?

In BMC Helix Innovation Suite, you may find the required fields of the Default Tenant (Administrator > Configure My Server > Manage Tenants) such as Domain Identifier and Virtual Host Name are empty. This is because the default tenant fields are imported during the platform creation and when you use tools such as data import there is an option to not trigger the required field check.

I am unable to export a licensed application that includes definitions and data? What do I do?

If you are working on a dedicated system, ensure that you have assigned the application license to yourself using the Foundation Person UI. For more information, see Setting up Foundation data.

I am unable to see my licensed application. What do I do?

To see a licensed application, you must have that application license assigned to you using the Foundation Person UI. For more information, see Setting up Foundation data.

Application upgrade FAQ

How do I enable logging for applications that are created by using BMC Helix Platform 17.02 or earlier?

The logs for applications created using the BMC Helix Innovation Studio SDK 17.02 or earlier are stored in the arextension.log file located at the following location:

Windows: <ARSystemInstallDir>\Arserver\Db
UNIX: <ARSystemInstallDir>/Arserver/Db

By default, only error messages are logged. If you want to log all messages (debug, info, warning, and error), you must change the log level to debug in the logback_server.xml file. The following configuration enables debug log level:

Important

When you make changes to the logback-server.xml file, you do not need to restart the AR System server. After making the changes to the logback_server.xml file, you must reload the file by using the Reload Log Conf File option in the Server Information form on the Log Files tab.

The logback logging framework provides this logging functionality.

Mid Tier FAQ

How do I achieve mid tier scaling?

You can use the JSP servlets to make the Mid Tier scalable. For more information, see Mid Tier scalability.

What are the recommendations for mid tier caching?

For Mid Tier caching recommendations, see Best practices for configuring mid tier cache.

Internet Explorer Compatibility View warning

IE is running in Compatibility View. Please remove Mid-tier URL from either IE Compatibility View Settings or Registry location (AR WARN:9429)

Why do I receive the warning on mid tier "IE is running in Compatibility View. Please remove Mid-tier URL from either IE Compatibility View Settings or Registry location (AR WARN:9429)"

This message indicates to the end user that the Internet Explorer has Compatibility View enabled through one of the following mechanisms:

Enabled by the end user in the Internet Explorer using the Tools > Compatibility View Settings
Enabled by the System Administrator, usually using a registry entry like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\BrowserEmulation\PolicyList
Enabled by the System Administrator, using the Microsoft Windows Group Policy Editor.

(This Warning might also appear as: Internet Explorer is using Compatibility View which may cause degraded user experience. Try removing Midtier URLs from the browser's Compatibility View Settings, or contact your administrator (ARWARN 9429) )

The admin has upgraded Midtier and now the end-users are complaining about the warning. What should the admin do?

The Admin will have to find out the mechanism with which Compatibility View has been enabled and respond appropriately. This is not an error but a warning, so end-users can continue using the product while the Admin finds the best way to disable Compatibility View for Mid Tier. This is not a critical problem.

What is a degraded user experience? Is the Compatibility View bad for BMC Remedy Mid Tier 8.x and later?

Compatibility View forces Internet Explorer to emulate an older, unsupported version of the browser (IE7), so that sites designed for the older version render correctly. However, such a browser configuration is not necessary for web-applications like Mid Tier.

The degraded experience might not always be evident, but sometimes may show up as:

Script errors
UI distortion
Client-side performance issues

I am an administrator and I will require 1-2 weeks to be able to disable Compatibility View for mid tier URLs. Is there any way to suppress this alert?

Yes. The admins can choose to add arsystem.display_IE_compatibility_view_alert=false to <MidtierInstallDirectory>/WEB-INF/classes/config.properties to turn off the alerts temporarily. However the longer this alert is suppressed, the higher the risk of client-side problems for the end-users. It might be necessary to apply the latest cumulative hotfix for Mid Tier before this property is usable.

Some of our intranet applications still require us to use Compatibility View. However, I would want mid tier to not show the alert. How do I proceed?

Microsoft recommends that admins identify the applications that require Compatibility View, and add the individual URLs. (See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/features/compatibility-view.)

To achieve this, the Group Policy Editor is also expected to be usable. (See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn321457.aspx.)

What are the consequences of suppressing the Warning endlessly?

The end users could run into client-related problems that require assistance from BMC Customer Support. BMC Customer Support may request Admins to disable Compatibility View for affected users. Rather than having to find solutions at this point, the admins are advised to proactively disable Compatibility View when end-users see the Warning.

Internet Explorer 11 shows 1 hour time difference in certain cases

This issue is specifically noticed with Internet Explorer 11 browser. The rest of the browsers works fine.

Support for Google Chrome version 80

I cannot enable the single sign-on experience using Google Chrome browser version 80 and later.

Some content is unavailable due to permissions.

PDFs

How do I find content in the online documentation that was previously provided in PDF format?

For information about PDFs, see PDFs and videos.

FAQ