Some BMC Remedy ITSM 7 Terminology
This is from 7.1 so it’s a bit dated already – but it could still be useful.
assignee
The person assigned the responsibility of working on any of the following activities: change request, incident ticket, problem investigation, known error, solution database entry, and so on.
assignment
Automatically or manually assigning a group or individual the responsibility of resolving an issue or request. ITSM applications use the Assignment form for group automatic assignment and the Assignment Engine for individual automatic assignment.
broadcast message
An application feature that enables users to create messages that can be viewed by the ntire organization or by users in specific groups.
CAB
See change advisory board (CAB)
change advisory board (CAB)
A group that advises change management on the implementation of significant changes to the IT infrastructure. This group is often made up of representatives from various IT areas and business units.
CI
See configuration item (CI).
Company field
A field in ITSM that controls multi-tenancy. It shows only data for the companies for which you have permission. See also multi-tenancy.
configuration item (CI)
An infrastructure component or an item associated with the infrastructure that is (or will be) under the control of configuration management, for example, a Request for Change. A CI can be complex or simple, large or small. CIs can include entire systems or be a single module or minor component. CIs can also include records of people (users and customers) and locations.
configuration management
The process of maintaining detailed IT inventory records. It involves identifying and defining the CIs in a system, recording and reporting the status of all CIs and requests for change, and verifying the completeness and correctness of all CIs. See also configuration item (CI).
dashboard
Web-based, graphical user interface using flashboards where compliance and service target results can be viewed by service level managers, service delivery managers, other IT professionals, and customers or line of business owners. See also service level agreement (SLA), service target, and flashboard.
decision tree
A step-by-step guide set up by an administrator. It guides the user through a questionnaire and, based on the user’s answers, completes part of the form for a new incident.
form
A collection of fields that represents a record of information in the AR System. AR System administrators can define and change the fields and workflow associated with a form. An AR System application can include many forms.
impacted area
Companies, locations, or organizations affected by changes or updates to CIs.
incident
Any event that is not part of the standard operation of a service and that causes an interruption to or reduction in the quality of that service. See also incident management and problem investigation.
incident management
As a concept, a reactive process typically initiated in response to a customer’s call. The primary goal of the incident management process is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and with minimum disruption to the business.
incident manager
A person who monitors incident tickets and activities to help plan resources and to identify incident trends. The incident manager also handles assignments.
incident matching
A search process in Incident Management that can be used to search for other incidents, problem investigations, known errors, and solution database entries that share some of the same characteristics as the current incident, such as product categorization.
incident owner
The user who records the incident. This user might differ from the current incident assignee. See also assignee.
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
A set of guidelines for the management and provision of operational IT services.
known error
A problem that has been successfully diagnosed and for which a temporary work-around or permanent solution to the known error has been identified. See also problem and work-around.
multi-tenancy
A feature in ITSM that uses the Company field to limit access by individuals. The Company field can be used to represent a company, department, or other group. The Company field also can be used to control access in a hosted environment. By default, ITSM applications operate in multi-tenancy mode. See also single-tenancy.
navigation pane
An area on the left side of consoles that provides links to functionality and links to other programs.
notification
A message sent to a user by workflow. Notification can be in the form of an alert, email message, or other method using integrations.
operational catalog
A feature in which operational categories for service requests are defined.
process flow
Shows the progress of a request as it moves through the stages of its life cycle. It does this within a form, such as an incident request. A diagram shows the stages of the process, as indicated by best practices, rooted in ITIL processes. It indicates the current stage and state of the request. The
process flow diagram also serves as a wizard, guiding the user through the life cycle.
product categorization
A five-tier hierarchical representation of products as defined in the Product Catalog configuration form. This categorization is included in records to specify the range of products to which the record applies.
registered user
A user who has an entry in the People form with an AR System login ID.
reminder
A message similar to an AR System notification, except that you can define the content of a reminder and specify when to send it.
requester
A person in the organization who needs assistance from the IT support staff. A requester is usually an employee in the organization who needs to have a change implemented or an incident resolved.
single-tenancy
A feature that allows selection of a default company for company fields in ITSM. Single-tenancy mode is required to give unknown users access to the ITSM Requester console. See also multi-tenancy.
submitter
A person who reports a problem, makes a request, or enters information into a database. See also change request.
task
A unit of work that needs to be completed as a step in implementing an incident or problem investigation. In the Change Management application, you can also group a number of activities for requests with a number of actions that need to be completed before the request can be resolved. Your administrator creates task templates and task group templates that you can reuse for the same types of requests. Tasks can be manual or automatic.
task management system (TMS)
A sub-system that is used to create task templates and task group templates. Besides the ability to set up predecessor-successor relationships, TMS supports branching and multiple task paths as well as the data exchange between activities.
template
1. A set of predefined criteria or settings that can be used by many agreements or service
targets. See also service level agreement (SLA).
2. A form set up by an administrator that a user can select to complete an incident ticket or a change request with information consistent with the user’s support group and the type of incident or change request.
Adding Breach Exception Information in SLM 7.x
How to add breach exception information in BMC Remedy Service Level Management (SLM) 7.x
This is actually very easy – but it’s not covered in any of the manuals that I found. I had to document it for a so I thought I’d publish it too.
Naturally this only works if you are using SLM 7.x and Incident Management 7.x with the SLM/IM integration installed (which I assume you would do, or else you wouldn’t bother installing SLM…)
- Navigate to the Home Page. From there go to Application Administration Console > Custom Configuration > Foundation > Product / Operational Catalog Configuration > Generic Catalog Structures. The following screen appears:
Generic Catalog Setup (click for full size)
- Hit the “Create” button highlighted above. The following screen appears:
Add Generic Catalog item (click for full size)
- Select “SLA Breach” from the Category Type menu
- Enter your desired values for
- Generic Categorization Tier 1
- Generic Categorization Tier 2
- Confirm the status is set to “Enabled”
- Press the “Save” button
That’s it. The new values will be immediately available in the Incident Management SLM Tab for the SLM Breach Reason and Breach Exception.
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Installing a new Remedy server without running the installers (Unix only)
I have several issues with the BMC/Remedy installers for Unix. Personally I think they’ve needed some more quality control for a while, especially in version 7.0 and 7.1.
With 7.5 they’ve gone completely to GUI-based installers – meaning you need X-Windows (or a variant) or an emulator. That’s fine – but if you are installing multiple servers (Dev, Cat, QA, Prod) – why not just skip the install completely after you get the first one done? That’s my preference. It’s easier – and more importantly, it’s FASTER.
In the following example we’ll assume the dev server name is “devserver” and the QA server is “qaserver”
Let’s assume you’ve just installed your DEV server. It’s up, running and healthy. So the next step is very simple: take a complete database backup of your ARAdmin tablespace (or better yet, the whole database if it’s dedicated). We will refer to this as the “Baseline DB Copy”.
To install the next server (QA in this example) we’ll do the following:
1. Have your DBA creat the QA Database instance on the QA DB server and import the Baseline DB Copy. Make sure the ARAdmin user gets full rights/roles.
2. Copy all of the install files from your install to a new directory. In this example our DEV is installed in /SAN/DEVinstall/ar so we are copying all files to /SAN/QAInstall/ar and changed the owner/group to match the appropriate system user (if you are running non-root – and you should be if you are on Unix regardless of what BMC says).
3. Copy the /etc/arsystem/devserver directory to /etc/arsystem/qaserver directory. Edit the armonitor.conf to change the server names and paths to the appropriate new server name and path.
Useful Solaris commands for BMC Remedy newbies
I wish I had this list a few years ago – anyone who’s been around Solaris for any length of time won’t find this helpful. But I would have liked it on the first day I was exposed to Solaris and Remedy (also, I’d like to be that age again….). It’s a good short list of common commands for beginners.
The bullet points below each question demonstrate the actual Solaris commands (which are the same on most flavors of unix).
1.) How do I start/stop the Remedy server?
- cd /<install dir>/ar/bin
- arsystem start
- arsystem stop
2.) If I have multiple instances running on a server how do find out which (if any) are running?
- ps -ef | grep arserverd
When looking for processes running as a particular user (for example, if you have multiple installs of the product running as different system users…). In this example the unix UID is “remedydev”
- ps -ef | grep arserverd | grep remedydev
3.) How do I set an environment variable like ARNONROOTINSTALL=TRUE
- export ARNONROOTINSTALL=TRUE
or
- cd /<home directory of user>
- vi .profile
- vi is the editor most people use in Solaris – .profile (note the dot in front of it) is where the user configured enviroment is stored
- add the lines below:
- ARNONROOTINSTALL=TRUE
- export ARNONROOTINSTALL
4.) How do I tell what version of Solaris I’m on?
- uname -a
5.) How do I tell if a certain value like “Oracle-Two-Task” is in a file like ar.conf file?
- cd /<install dir>/ar/conf
- grep Oracle-Two-Task ar.conf
You can grep just about anything using the redirect, ie, the pipe sign |. For example, you can grep the results of a directory hierarchy listing if you are looking for a file. Let’s say the file is 123.so and all you know is that it’s under the install directory somewhere. You could navigate to that directory and type this:
- ls -lR | grep 123.so
That will take the entire list, redirect it to grep, and return the listing(s) that have 123.so in them.
6.) How do I change permissions on a file?
- chmod 777 filename
777 is of course wide open permissions – normally you would not do this. However, their is a complete listing of the file commands in numerous places on the internet. The thing to remember is you are setting three permissions - owner, group, and world. Each number represents the respective permission. WinSCP does this visually like this (if you choose the properties of a file):
Also, to change permissions to an entire directory hierarchy you can do this:
- chmod -R 777 directoryname
7.) How do I….
- Make a directory?
- mkdir directoryname
- Copy a file in the same directory (ie, ar.conf to ar.conf.bak?)
- cp ar.conf ar.conf.bak
- Copy a file in a different directory to this one?
- cp /full-path-to-file/filename .
- Copy a file from here to a different directory?
- cp filename /full-path-to-file
- Delete a file?
- rm filename
- Delete an entire directory (THIS IS NOT RECOVERABLE)?
- rm -r directoryname
Flash Board Server 7.1 patch 005 install failure and solution
Apparently the BMC Remedy Flash Board 7.1 patch 005 doesn’t like being installed as non-root on Solaris 5.10. We kept getting this error when it asked for the directory to install the product:
Directory to install BMC Remedy Flashboards? [/usr/ar/flashboards]
/xxx/yyy/a00/ar/flashboards FBServer
fb_install: syntax error at line 1: `)’ unexpected
It turns out awk was returning the wrong value – a “)” was being appended.
If you run into this just edit the shell script so the installer skips the section that checks for disk space. If you need help with that you can always contact me.