Ticket number searching and identifier transformation

The vast majority of the BMC Helix ITSM application workflow is indifferent as to whether a unique identifier was prefixed. However, ticket number searching is an area is impacted by transformation of ticket numbers.

Users can search for any of the following entities using the ticket number.

• Incident
• Problem
• Known error
• Change
• Work order
• Release

Typically, this searching is done from the main form associated with the entity in search mode (with the exception of incident where this feature is also supported when searching for incidents by ticket number when performing incident matching or creating incident relationships).

Ticket number searches on these forms do not require the full ticket number to be provided to perform the search. By entering the numeric portion of the ticket number and pressing Return, the rest of the standard ticket number format is populated, and the search is automatically performed.

Before

After

The intention of automatically populating the whole ticket number is to ensure that searches on ticket numbers do not use a LIKE search against the database. By forcing the search to use the whole ticket number, BMC Helix ITSM can perform an efficient equals match ensuring that the database uses the unique index on the ticket number field.

This functionality is driven by a shared set of active link workflow that is fairly consistent across all of the entities. The workflow uses the standard prefix for the form (for example, INC for incident or WO for work order), or, if custom prefixing is configured, the workflow looks up the custom prefix from the SHR:SchemaNames form.

The SHR:SchemaNames form allows a single custom prefix to be specified and is intended to be used for BMC Helix ITSM systems that have Distributed Server Option (DSO) configured. This feature allows data such as incidents to be exchanged between BMC Helix ITSM systems, but requires each BMC Helix ITSM system to have a unique prefix for Request IDs and ticket numbers in each system.

The custom prefixing can be configured from the Server Settings page (below). The Enable User Defined Prefix check box is selected here.

This feature is typically enabled at the same time as DSO prefixing of all Request IDs and ticket numbers. After this point, any tickets created prior to the prefixing can no longer be searched using the ticket number search, even if a correct and full ticket number is provided. For example, for ticket INC000000000123, the INC prefix is removed and substituted with the custom prefix.

Enabling Smart IT for a BMC Helix ITSM system and enabling the Remove leading zeros option (below) also impacts the ticket search behavior.

When this feature is enabled, the padding of ticket numbers with zeros is disabled, and an incident that would previously have had the ticket number INC000000000123 would be created with the number INC123. Furthermore, ticket number searches no longer pad the search string with zeros. To search for incidents created prior to Smart IT being enabled, the full ticket number including all zeros must be provided (for example, 000000000123 instead of 123).