BMC Remedy IT Service Management - Process Designer Concepts Guide

8/20/2019 BMC Remedy IT Service Management - Process Designer Concepts Guide

1/17

© BMC Software, Inc.2012

This document is the property of BMC Software, Inc. and the information contained herein is confidential. Thisdocument, either in whole or in part, must not be reproduced or disclosed to others or used for purposes other than thatfor which it has been supplied, without BMC's prior written permission, or, if any part hereof is furnished by virtue of acontract with a third party, as expressly authorised under that contract. BMC shall not be liable for any errors oromissions.

BMC Remedy IT Service Management

Process Designer

Concepts Guide

Version 8.3.2

April 2012


2/17

BMC Remedy IT Service Management - Process DesignerConcepts Guide

© Copyright 2012 BMC Software, Inc. Version 8.3.2Date: April 2012

Page: 2

Contents

CONTENTS .......................................................................................................................... ...................... 2

1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... ........................................................ 3

1.1. AUDIENCE AND SCOPE .................................................... ................................................................... 3

1.2. R ELATED DOCUMENTATION ............................................................................................................... 3

2. PRODUCT OVERVIEW ............................................................... ........................................................ 4

3. PROCESS DESIGNER INTEGRATION ............................................................................................ 6

3.1. PROCESS I NHERITANCE ................................................... ................................................................... 7

4. PROCESS CREATION & MAINTENANCE ..................................................................................... 8

5. PROCESS TRACKER ................................................................... ...................................................... 10

6. PROCESS WIZARD ........................................................... ................................................................ 11

7. PROCESS DESIGNER AND ITIL .......................................................... ........................................... 13

8. ARCHITECTURE ............................................................................................................................... 14

9. CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT ................................................... ........................................... 14

9.1. PROCESS TEMPLATES ....................................................................................... ................................ 15

9.2. PROCESS TEMPLATE STATES .................................................................................................. .......... 15

10. PROCESS AUTOMATION .................................. .................................................................. .......... 16


3/17



Page: 3

1. Introduction

The aim of this guide is to give an overview of the basic concepts relating to ProcessDesigner and its use with BMC Remedy IT Service Management applications. This guiderelates to version 8.3.2 and all later sub-versions under 8.3 of Process Designer unlessindicated otherwise.

1.1. Audience and Scope

This document aims to provide an overall understanding of the general concepts relating

to the use of Process Designer. It is aimed at any end-user that wishes to gain a generalunderstanding of the product and its use with a BMC Remedy Service Managementapplication and does not require any prior technical knowledge. It is assumed that thereader is familiar with Remedy Service Management, although they need not be anadministrator.

1.2. Related Documentation

The following guides provide additional information about Process Designer:

Guide Description

Process Designer Installation Guide forrelease 8.x Describes the complete installation processwith guidelines on linking to an existingRemedy Service Management application.

Process Designer User Guide Version8.3.2

Describes all functionality provided byProcess Designer release 8.3.2


4/17



Page: 4

2. Product OverviewProcess Designer is the quickest and most cost effective way of implementing newprocesses such as Change and Service requests. Remedy customers can quickly andeasily implement processes graphically using Process Designer without resorting tocustomisation or having to update multiple complex templates. This means implementingprocesses takes a fraction of the time it would without Process Designer.

Process Designer is a tool for process designers that provides a graphical interface tobuild processes that can be executed on Remedy without the need to develop newapplications or customise existing applications or templates. Process Designer is

particularly beneficial for systems that require multiple different processes and tasksdepending on the type of request such as Change Management, Service RequestManagement and Incident/Problem Management.

The benefits of using Process Designer with Remedy are:

1. Processes that fit the business - Process Designer allows you to implementprocesses that fit the business exactly without having to customise existing bespoke orout of the box applications.

2. Business user get what they want - Business users know what they are getting as

they are able to understand and review the process in graphical form exactly as it isimplemented.

3. Fast Deployment at lower Cost - Process designers use a simple graphical interfaceto implement processes without needing to customise Remedy.

4. Reduced Support and Upgrade Costs - Remedy Administrators have reduced timeand effort in supporting the Remedy applications as there is no additional developmentor customisation. Significant effort is also saved in upgrading as Remedy applicationsare not customised.

5. Streamlined processes – Process Designer allows the automation of processesthrough the implementation of automated actions removing the necessity of manualintervention where possible.

6. Adherence to management , compliance and aud it requi rements – Not only is theprocess diagram a self documenting description of the process as implemented but alsothe Process Tracker provides a diagrammatic view of the current status and historicalflow of every transaction through the process.

7. Simplified User Interface – Process Designer enables decision trees to be built quicklyto provide a simplified user interface for data required to support processes. Thisensures user productivity and consistent quality data.

8. Automated Version Control – Process Designer includes automated generation ofversion-stamped processes so that you can easily roll-back to or report on usage ofprevious versions without the need to get into any workflow development.

Process Designer provides these benefits through a graphical interface that allowsprocess designers to build processes that can be executed within Remedy based ontasks, dependencies, decisions, rules (such as Task Assignment and SLAs ,actions such

as get user data, updates fields and send emails).


5/17



Page: 5

Process Designer also provides:

• a request tracker to view the status and history of each instance of the process;

• release management with full auditing and roll back capability;

• decision tree support and data entry wizard;

• full integration to out of the box Remedy applications including custom-builtapplications;

• import and export capability to migrate processes between servers and

• Pre-built ITIL process definitions.


6/17



Page: 6

3. Process Designer IntegrationProcess Designer consists of

a) A Java application which provides the framework for developing andmaintaining processes and the exchange of data with the Remedy serverthrough the Remedy Java API or via XML over an http link to a server in thecloud;

b) a Remedy Java API Plug-in run from the Remedy server used to interpret theprocess rules, generate and assign tasks to application groups;

c) a Remedy Application of forms, workflow objects, menus, etc used to handle

generic workflow events.

Process Designer integrates neatly into BMC Remedy IT Service Managementapplications by allowing the administrator to define the relationship between differentcategories of request and individual processes. Once this relationship has been defined,the Process Designer Integration triggers the automatic creation of process-related tasksand actions whenever a new request for the specified category is created.

Typically, the process is related to a combination of the Operational and ProductCategorization fields although any combination of one or more fields on the request canbe used.

Once created, the progression of tasks on the request is then enforced using thebusiness rules from the process definition. The path through the process is driven by the

outcome value for each task supplied by the assignee.

The Process Designer integration also facilitates the forced entry of mandatory fields thatmay be required and the running of pre-defined actions either for sending emails,notifications or other commands that need to be run at specified points in the process.

The architecture diagram below shows how Process Designer integrates with BMCRemedy for an on-Demand environment.


7/17



Page: 7

AR Mid-tier

XML

DVM

Designer

Client

Launch

URL

Dynamically generated JNLP for JWS

Includes Mid-tier session information

Launch

Button Click

Query or Create/Update command in XML

Using Mid-tier session

Query Data or Response in XML

AR Server

Query or Create/Update

using DVM session

Data or Response from

Remedy AR Server

Process Designer Architecture for On-Demand Servers

3.1. Process Inheritance

Process Designer functions on the basis of process inheritance whereby a process withinthe BMC Remedy application inherits workflow rules from a process template definedwithin Process Designer.

When a new ticket or request is raised in the IT Service Management application, theuser can select (or the system can automatically select) an appropriate process template.This might be based on the category, type and item fields, or any other field combinationthat you may wish to define.

Once the association with the process has been made, the Java API is used to generatea set of tasks, dependencies, SLA targets, actions and related fields validation for thatparticular request and will assign the tasks to business groups on the basis of theinformation stored within the process definition. The category, type, task name,description and assignee are copied from each process template task to eachcorresponding task record in ITSM.


8/17



Page: 8

4. Process Creation & MaintenanceProcess Designer provides an easy to use graphical interface for creating processdiagrams. Objects are created by dragging and dropping icons from the palette onto thedrawing page on the right.

Process Designer User Interface

Each object includes a set of attributes which are presented whenever the icon isdropped onto the drawing, or the object is selected for editing. The attributes include the

task category, type, name, description, assigned group, SLA target, related actions andrelated fields in the application that need to be completed for each task.

Dependency lines are created in the same way but are used to connect two existingobjects together. Dependencies can be conditional (based on an outcome value), orunconditional.

The screenshot below shows an example of a task list generated from an ProcessDesigner ITIL Change Management process when used in conjunction with the BMCRemedy Change Management application.


9/17



Page: 9

Task-List generation from Process Designer

Process Designer not only generates the task list but enforces task dependency ruleswithin the process based on outcome values selected. It also sets the planned end datebased on the task SLA, validates required fields and runs any actions that have beendefined for each task.

For more information on process creation and maintenance, see the Process DesignerUser Guide.


10/17



Page: 10

5. Process TrackerThe graphical tracking of the progress of ITSM and SRM requests is provided through aseparate Request Tracking application. This allows the monitoring of process executionfrom each ITSM application in Mid-tier. Each task is color coded to indicate the currentstatus as indicated by the legend.

Tracking an ITSM Request


11/17



Page: 11

6. Process WizardThe Process Designer process wizard provides a method of entering data for a requestand navigating the best practice process flow without the need for specialised training onthe ITSM application. The process wizard is generated directly from the ProcessDesigner process definition and can therefore be customised to provide whatever data-capture and work-instructions may be required.

By using the process wizard to capture data, you can eliminate the need to customiseyour application, keeping it out of the box and reducing the effort and risk associated withfuture application upgrades.

Process Wizard


12/17



Page: 12

The process wizard can be used with any ITSM 7 application including Incident, Problem,

Change Management, Work Orders, Service Request Management or customapplications.


13/17



Page: 13

7. Process Designer and ITILThe IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is now widely accepted as a best-practice frameworkfor defining IT service management (ITSM) processes. Process Designer includes a setof pre-configured ITIL processes as standard that you can use to directly translate intoservice management logic within your BMC Remedy application.

This allows users to graphically track the progress of requests within the ITIL process onwhich it is based and allows administrators to modify them as necessary to meetcustomer-specific business needs without customising the Remedy application.


14/17



Page: 14

8. Architecture

Process Designer Architecture

The Process Designer client can communicate with the Remedy server directly throughthe Remedy Java API or via XML over an http connection to a server in the cloud.

9. Configuration Management

Process Designer makes use of version numbers to provide reliable configurationmanagement of processes. Every process template is automatically assigned a versionnumber that is unique for each process template.

This makes it easier to recall previous versions of the template while testing is beingperformed.


15/17



Page: 15

9.1. Process Templates

Processes created within Process Designer are stored in the Remedy database. Eachprocess which constitutes a collection of tasks, dependency rules, SLA targets, actionsand related fields is called a process template.

A Process Template is a combination of a header record and a logical grouping of tasks.The header record holds information on the status of the process, its version number,name, type and SLA. It’s called a template because it can be used as the basis for aprocess that relates to an application record such as a fault, incident or change requestwithin the BMC Remedy Application.

Both Processes and tasks have associated SLAs (Service Level Agreements), whichdefine the time that is allocated to the completion of the process and its componenttask(s).

9.2.Process Template States

The various process template states and the valid transitions between those states areshown in the following diagram:

Process Designer State Transition Diagram


16/17



Page: 16

10. Process Automation

Process Designer facilitates the full automation of service management processesthereby eliminating the overhead of manual work and improving the efficiency andaccuracy of component activities. This is achieved by defining the business rulesrequired to automate each individual process step. The business rules are theninterpreted at run time by the Remedy application and used to automatically process thatstep without the need for manual intervention.

By automating a chain of process steps, whole processes can be automated, leavingresources free to deal with exceptions and/or non-standard requests and providing astep-change in operational efficiency.


17/17



*262617*

Documents

BMC Remedy IT Service Management - Process Designer Concepts Guide