Migrating knowledge articles from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management

If your organization is currently using BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management and plans to use BMC Helix Innovation Suite Knowledge Management (ISKM), you can migrate existing articles by using the migration utility. Contact BMC Helix Support or your account manager for assistance with this process.

We recommend that you use only one Knowledge Management solution in an environment at a time. Running multiple knowledge providers simultaneously can lead to inconsistent search results, visibility issues, and behavior such as broken article links or conflicting access control.

After migration is completed, users can search for and work with migrated articles directly in ISKM and BMC Helix ITSM consoles. Authoring in BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management article is no longer supported after ISKM is enabled.

Scenario

Apex Global handles more than 12,000 knowledge article views each month across Support, Network Operations, and HR. Over time, their BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management library became cluttered with duplicate and poorly categorized content, much of it dependent on Mid Tier. To modernize their knowledge strategy and better align with current ITSM workflows, the IT team decides to transition to BMC Helix Innovation Suite Knowledge Management (ISKM).

Before enabling ISKM, Jordan, the administrator, runs the BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management to ISKM migration to transfer articles, images, relationships, and usage metrics. After indexing completes, ISKM becomes the primary knowledge source across ITSM and Digital Workplace. Carl, a service desk agent, later accesses an old ticket link that automatically redirects to the migrated ISKM article, validates the solution, and flags it for improvement. As a result, Apex Global now operates on a centralized, modern knowledge platform that reduces maintenance effort and supports future automation and AI initiatives.

Benefits of migrating to ISKM

ISKM provides the following benefits over BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management:

Migration_to_ISKM_benefits

For details on the benefits of ISKM, see Product overview.

Migration process overview

The migration process follows an extract, transform, and load (ETL) approach. During extraction, articles and related data such as relationships, statistics, and inline images are retrieved from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management. During transformation, the data is normalized, mapped to the ISKM schema, and adjusted to handle unsupported values.

During the load phase, the transformed data is migrated into ISKM while preserving content order, rich text formatting, and inline image references. After loading, the system triggers full-text search indexing and vector database indexing. The process also updates BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management article URLs to point to their corresponding ISKM articles.

A migration task table tracks each step, the number of records processed, and their status.

Key considerations for migration

Before migrating from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management to ISKM, consider the factors listed in this section.

Migration is a one-time, full migration of all supported articles. Selective migration based on criteria such as date or template is not supported.
Migration is supported only for the 5 out-of-the-box BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management templates:
- How To
- Reference
- Known Error
- Problem Solution
- KCS
Articles with pending approval are migrated as Draft.

Data that you can migrate

When you run the migration, the following data is extracted from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management, transformed, and loaded into ISKM:

Article content and structure
- Full article body (rich text)
- Multilingual versions of each article
- Article metadata, including product categories, operational categories, company, organization, department, region, and site
Article history and user interactions
- View count, helpful or not helpful votes (mapped to ISKM two-value feedback)
- Feedback comments
- Pins
- Social posts
- Article history logs
- Update requests
Relationships and associations
- Article associations (migrated as Related To)
- Linked ticket count
Indexing and search readiness
- After articles are migrated, the system triggers FTS indexing and Vector DB embedding and indexing
- These indexing jobs make sure that the migrated articles become searchable within ISKM and consuming applications.

What is not migrated?

BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management permissions. Foundation data–based visibility is handled in ISKM instead.
BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management KCS data. For details, see KCS knowledge article assessment.
Article visibility groups (recomputed based on foundation fields)
Search boost values
Authoring notes
Environment metadata
Extended approval configuration. For details, see Configuring approvals.
Archived articles
Notifications history
Resolution categories

To migrate BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management articles

As an administrator, log in to BMC Helix ITSM.
Click Settings.
Expand Helix IS Knowledge Management and click Enabling IS Knowledge Management.
On the Enabling Helix Innovation Suite Knowledge Management (ISKM) page, make sure that you have completed the required prerequisites. For details, see Configuring BMC Helix Innovation Suite Knowledge Management as a knowledge provider for BMC Helix ITSM.
In Steps to enable ISKM, review the migration steps in the table that will run automatically once you initiate the migration. The steps listed are displayed based on the available BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management data in your environment. The Status column displays the status as New.
- Migrate Howto Articles
- Migrate KCS Articles
- Migrate Reference Articles
- Run RTF reference correction utility
- Migrate Known Error Articles
Click Initiate migration and review migration tasks progress and status.
Once all tasks are in Completed status, click Next and Initiate indexing.
After indexing is complete, confirm the prerequisites message and enable ISKM.
Validate migrated articles in the Knowledge Management console:
- Review random articles across templates
- Verify inline images, relationships, and searchability