Support for overlays and custom objects

BMC Remedy Migrator supports preserving customizations with overlays and custom objects by enabling you to: 

• Select only overlays or only origin objects in the object list by using a context menu or by sorting on the Customization Type column
• Compare overlays at the source to origin objects at the destination
• Compare origin objects at the source to overlays at the destination
• Generate a detailed difference report for selected objects only
• Generate a detailed difference report for objects that are listed in a BMC Remedy Migrator instruction file
• Generate a BMC Remedy Migrator instruction file for selected objects only
• Generate a BMC Remedy Migrator configuration file
• Generate a Detailed difference report for differences not permitted in overlays. See Creating a Migration Instruction file.

In this topic:

• •  Creating a Migration Instruction file
  •  Comparing objects at the same location

 Creating a Migration Instruction file

Perform the following steps to create a Migration Instruction file to use for comparison.

To create a Migrator Instruction file

1. Select one or more items in the objects list and right-click to bring up the menu.
2. From the right-click menu, select Create Instruction File.
3. Select the source-destination mapping method to handle mapping in the report.
   • Map Origin to Overlay
   • Map Overlay to Origin
4. Use the Save As dialog to specify a file and location, and save the instruction file.
   
   BMC Remedy Migrator caches overlays and custom objects along with all origin BMC Remedy AR System objects and displays them in the objects list. For example, if an overlay (ALI1_o) exists for an active link (AL1), BMC Remedy Migrator caches both these active links because they are valid AR System server objects. It displays both AL1 and AL1_o in the objects list of the server.

BMC Remedy Migrator also enables you to perform the following operations:

• Compare and migrate overlays and custom objects in the same manner as origin BMC Remedy AR System objects.
   When migrating objects, BMC Remedy Migrator does not migrate the overlayProp and overlayGroup properties. These properties are managed by the server, and their values are set only when you create an overlay or a custom object. See Customizing-applications-using-overlays-and-custom-objects.
• Compare objects within the same file or on the same AR System server.
   See Comparing objects at the same location

• Specify backup and masking options, and create migration scripts and dependency reports for overlays and custom objects as you would for origin BMC Remedy AR System objects.

  Important

  BMC Remedy Migrator provides migration and comparison masks for view and field properties. Do not disable the migration masks. If you do so, BMC Remedy Migrator does not migrate overlays and custom objects corresponding to view and field objects that you modified or added in your source setup.

• Migrate overlays and custom objects along with origin BMC Remedy AR System objects.
   See Migrating overlay objects and custom objects.
  BMC Remedy Migrator supports these operations only for those objects that the AR System server supports. See Fixing non-permitted modifications in BMC Remedy ITSM Deployment documentation. 

 Comparing objects at the same location

You can compare overlay objects that are of same type, having different names and exist in the same file or on the same AR System server. For example, you can compare an object with its overlay if they exist on the same server.

To compare objects at the same location

1. In the objects list view of a file or an AR System server, select the objects that you want to compare with other objects.
2. Select View > Differences > currentFileOrServerName.
    The Source - Destination Mapping dialog box appears, as shown in the following figure.
   
   Source - Destination Mapping dialog box
   
   Initially, the Destination Object Name column is empty.

3. Use one of the following methods to compare the source objects with other objects:

   • To compare overlay and origin objects in the same file or on the same server, perform one of the following actions:
     • To compare origin objects with overlay objects, click the Map To Overlay button. Any overlay objects in the Source Object Name column are cleared. The names of the source objects suffixed with __o, which indicate the corresponding overlay objects, are populated in the Destination Object Name column.

     • To compare origin objects with overlay objects, click the Map To Base button. Any origin objects in the Source Object Name column are cleared. The names of the source objects without the __o suffix, which indicate the corresponding origin objects, are populated in the Destination Object Name column.

       For overlaid objects, the difference report indicates the differences against their overlays. For unmodified objects, the difference report indicates that the corresponding overlays are missing.

   • Change the values in Destination Object Name to the names of the objects that you want to compare with the source objects. For example, to compare two different active links (AL1 and AL2) on the same server:

   1. In the server objects list, select ALI1.

   2. In the Source - Destination Mapping dialog box, enter AL2 in the Destination Object Name column and click OK.

      Tip

      Edit the values in the Destination Object Name column only if you know the exact names of the objects that you want to compare. Otherwise, the difference report generated might not be of value.

      You cannot change the values in Source Object Name. Only the objects that you selected in the objects list are considered as source objects for comparison.

   • Click the Prefix Dialog button to open the Prefix dialog box, where you can specify a prefix for the destination objects.
      See Creating and using Differences reports.
4. Click OK.

BMC Remedy Migrator compares the objects and generates the difference report.