Migrating BMC Helix ITSM customizations

This section describes how to migrate BMC Helix ITSM customizations between environments as part of the Staged Upgrade methodology for upgrading a BMC Helix ITSM environment.
To upgrade, you must migrate your customizations from your current ITSM system to the new BMC Helix ITSM system. This involves the following activities:

• Migrate CMDB customizations—Apply CMDB extensions to your new system and update any user interfaces impacted by these extensions.
• Migrate workflow customizations—Export overlays and customizations to definition file and import these definitions to the target system.
• Three-way reconciliation—Review and validation of the workflow in the new BMC Helix ITSM application using three-way reconciliation.

Migrating CMDB customizations

If the CMDB in the source system has been extended with custom attributes or custom classes, then these must be reimplemented by using the CMDB Class manager in the target system.

A BMC Community article KA359800 provides an excellent overview of CMDB extension. While this is an older article that is particularly relevant for the changes between 7.6.04 to 8.1 and above, most of the information is useful to understand the best-practice and use the Sync-UI utility. The high-level steps are:

1. Identify and re-implement CMDB custom classes and attributes in the target system.
   A BMC Helix Data Manager comparison can help you identify data model differences in the CMDB.
2. If any custom classes or attributes impact the UI, run BMC Sync-UI utility to update form views for new attributes.

Migrating workflow customizations

You can use BMC Developer Studio to migrate workflow customizations. The high-level steps are:

1. Identify and export overlaid and custom workflow to a definition file.
2. Migrate customer AR System groups.
3. Import overlays and customer workflow from a definition file.

To identify and export overlaid and custom workflow

1. Open Developer Studio and connect to source system. Ensure you are using Best Practice Development Mode.
2. Open the list of forms in your source system and sort by the Customization Type to bring all Custom and Overlay objects to the top of the list.
3. Select all overlaid forms. Then, right-click and select Export To File.
   
4. On the Export dialog box, enter the name of the file you want to export to.
   You can use multiple files for each category or consolidate all exports into a single definition file.
5. Select all of the real custom forms. Then, right click and select Export To File.
   Some forms might be incorrectly specified as Custom but may be out-of-the-box. These include SLA join forms generated by BMC Helix ITSM.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for active links, filters, active link guides, filter guides, applications, web services, and menus.

Migrating customer AR System groups

Before importing workflow, make sure that any custom AR System groups or roles that are referenced in your workflow have been migrated to your target system. Use BMC Helix Data Manager to migrate the data for your custom AR System groups or simply export the groups and roles to an arx file and use the AR System Import Tool to import them.

To import overlays and customer workflow from a definition file

1. Open Developer Studio and connect to target system. Ensure you are using Best Practice Development Mode.
2. Select File > Import.
3. In the dialog box, select Object Definitions, and click Next.
4. Select the server you want to import into, and click Next.
5. Open the Import definition file, and click Next to view the list of objects available for import.
   
   For overlaid forms, the underlying base form and the overlay will be in the definition file. The overlay is indicated with a " o" suffix. For example, an overlay of "AAS:Activity appears in the definition file as "AAS:Activity o".
   You must remove all instances of the base form or workflow from the definition file when importing an overlay, or the base form will be updated with the older version form definition.
6. After you have configured the set of workflow to be imported, click Import.
   You should not need to overwrite any definitions in the target system unless you are reattempting an import. If the Replace Objects on the Destination Server flag is not checked, you might accidentally update the base layer, so it may be safer to delete and re-import overlays if reattempting a migration.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 for each of your definition files.

Handling exceptions

It may not be possible to import all of your overlaid workflow. Examples include if an overlaid object does not exist on the target, or if the customizations are so significant that the definition cannot even be imported as an overlay. Manage these exceptions on a case-by-case basis because the change will likely need to be redeveloped.

Three-way reconciliation

Three-way reconciliation enables you to compare your overlaid workflow with the base objects from the previous and new BMC Helix ITSM version. This enables you to make an evaluation as to whether the customization that was applied to the previous version is still valid and whether you should carry it forward in the same way.

For additional details which you may find useful, see Comparing-and-reconciling-objects-using-the-Objects-list.

After your customizations and overlays are migrated to the larger system, complete the following steps to use three-way reconciliation to validate your customizations when using the Staged Upgrade methodology.

To validate your customizations

1. Open Developer Studio, and log in to the source and target AR System server.
2. Right-click the source server and select Capture Snapshot.
3. Right-click the target server and select Compare with Snapshot.
   Overlays that might not be compatible with the changes being applied in the new version are highlighted for your review as shown below. Overlays with no clashes are not flagged, so if you get no output from this comparison, that's good news.