BMC Remedy IT Service Management

Process Designer
Concepts Guide

Version 8.3.2
April 2012

BMC Software, Inc.2012

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

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Contents
CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................................ 2
1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 3
1.1. AUDIENCE AND SCOPE ....................................................................................................................... 3
1.2. RELATED DOCUMENTATION ............................................................................................................... 3
2. PRODUCT OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 4
3. PROCESS DESIGNER INTEGRATION ............................................................................................ 6
3.1. PROCESS INHERITANCE ...................................................................................................................... 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

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1. Introduction
The aim of this guide is to give an overview of the basic concepts relating to Process
Designer and its use with BMC Remedy IT Service Management applications. This guide
relates to version 8.3.2 and all later sub-versions under 8.3 of Process Designer unless
indicated 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 general
understanding of the product and its use with a BMC Remedy Service Management
application and does not require any prior technical knowledge. It is assumed that the
reader is familiar with Remedy Service Management, although they need not be an
administrator.

1.2. Related Documentation

The following guides provide additional information about Process Designer:
Guide

Description

Process Designer Installation Guide for

release 8.x

Describes the complete installation process

with guidelines on linking to an existing
Remedy Service Management application.

Process Designer User Guide Version

8.3.2

Describes all functionality provided by

Process Designer release 8.3.2

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

Process Designer is a tool for process designers that provides a graphical interface to
build processes that can be executed on Remedy without the need to develop new
applications or customise existing applications or templates. Process Designer is
particularly beneficial for systems that require multiple different processes and tasks
depending on the type of request such as Change Management, Service Request
Management and Incident/Problem Management.

The benefits of using Process Designer with Remedy are:

1. Processes that fit the business - Process Designer allows you to implement
processes that fit the business exactly without having to customise existing bespoke or
out 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 is
implemented.
3. Fast Deployment at lower Cost - Process designers use a simple graphical interface
to implement processes without needing to customise Remedy.
4. Reduced Support and Upgrade Costs - Remedy Administrators have reduced time
and effort in supporting the Remedy applications as there is no additional development
or customisation. Significant effort is also saved in upgrading as Remedy applications
are not customised.
5. Streamlined processes Process Designer allows the automation of processes
through the implementation of automated actions removing the necessity of manual
intervention where possible.
6. Adherence to management, compliance and audit requirements Not only is the
process diagram a self documenting description of the process as implemented but also
the Process Tracker provides a diagrammatic view of the current status and historical
flow of every transaction through the process.
7. Simplified User Interface Process Designer enables decision trees to be built quickly
to provide a simplified user interface for data required to support processes. This
ensures user productivity and consistent quality data.
8. Automated Version Control Process Designer includes automated generation of
version-stamped processes so that you can easily roll-back to or report on usage of
previous versions without the need to get into any workflow development.
Process Designer provides these benefits through a graphical interface that allows
process designers to build processes that can be executed within Remedy based on
tasks, dependencies, decisions, rules (such as Task Assignment and SLAs ,actions such
as get user data, updates fields and send emails).

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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-built
applications;
import and export capability to migrate processes between servers and
Pre-built ITIL process definitions.

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3. Process Designer Integration

Process Designer consists of
a) A Java application which provides the framework for developing and
maintaining processes and the exchange of data with the Remedy server
through the Remedy Java API or via XML over an http link to a server in the
cloud;
b) a Remedy Java API Plug-in run from the Remedy server used to interpret the
process 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 Management
applications by allowing the administrator to define the relationship between different
categories of request and individual processes. Once this relationship has been defined,
the Process Designer Integration triggers the automatic creation of process-related tasks
and actions whenever a new request for the specified category is created.
Typically, the process is related to a combination of the Operational and Product
Categorization fields although any combination of one or more fields on the request can
be used.
Once created, the progression of tasks on the request is then enforced using the
business 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 that
may 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 BMC
Remedy for an on-Demand environment.

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Launch
Button Click

AR Mid-tier
Launch
URL

Dynamically generated JNLP for JWS

Includes Mid-tier session information

Designer
Client

XML
DVM

Query or Create/Update command in XML

Using Mid-tier session
Query Data or Response in XML

Data or Response from

Remedy AR Server
Query or Create/Update
using DVM session

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 within
the BMC Remedy application inherits workflow rules from a process template defined
within Process Designer.
When a new ticket or request is raised in the IT Service Management application, the
user 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 combination
that you may wish to define.
Once the association with the process has been made, the Java API is used to generate
a set of tasks, dependencies, SLA targets, actions and related fields validation for that
particular request and will assign the tasks to business groups on the basis of the
information stored within the process definition. The category, type, task name,
description and assignee are copied from each process template task to each
corresponding task record in ITSM.

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4. Process Creation & Maintenance

Process Designer provides an easy to use graphical interface for creating process
diagrams. Objects are created by dragging and dropping icons from the palette onto the
drawing page on the right.

Process Designer User Interface

Each object includes a set of attributes which are presented whenever the icon is
dropped 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 and
related 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 existing
objects together. Dependencies can be conditional (based on an outcome value), or
unconditional.
The screenshot below shows an example of a task list generated from an Process
Designer ITIL Change Management process when used in conjunction with the BMC
Remedy Change Management application.

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Task-List generation from Process Designer

Process Designer not only generates the task list but enforces task dependency rules
within the process based on outcome values selected. It also sets the planned end date
based on the task SLA, validates required fields and runs any actions that have been
defined for each task.
For more information on process creation and maintenance, see the Process Designer
User Guide.

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5. Process Tracker
The graphical tracking of the progress of ITSM and SRM requests is provided through a
separate Request Tracking application. This allows the monitoring of process execution
from each ITSM application in Mid-tier. Each task is color coded to indicate the current
status as indicated by the legend.

Tracking an ITSM Request

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6. Process Wizard
The Process Designer process wizard provides a method of entering data for a request
and navigating the best practice process flow without the need for specialised training on
the ITSM application. The process wizard is generated directly from the Process
Designer process definition and can therefore be customised to provide whatever datacapture and work-instructions may be required.
By using the process wizard to capture data, you can eliminate the need to customise
your application, keeping it out of the box and reducing the effort and risk associated with
future application upgrades.

Process Wizard

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The process wizard can be used with any ITSM 7 application including Incident, Problem,
Change Management, Work Orders, Service Request Management or custom
applications.

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7. Process Designer and ITIL

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is now widely accepted as a best-practice framework
for defining IT service management (ITSM) processes. Process Designer includes a set
of pre-configured ITIL processes as standard that you can use to directly translate into
service management logic within your BMC Remedy application.
This allows users to graphically track the progress of requests within the ITIL process on
which it is based and allows administrators to modify them as necessary to meet
customer-specific business needs without customising the Remedy application.

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8. Architecture

Process Designer Architecture

The Process Designer client can communicate with the Remedy server directly through
the 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 configuration
management of processes. Every process template is automatically assigned a version
number that is unique for each process template.
This makes it easier to recall previous versions of the template while testing is being
performed.

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9.1. Process Templates

Processes created within Process Designer are stored in the Remedy database. Each
process which constitutes a collection of tasks, dependency rules, SLA targets, actions
and 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. Its called a template because it can be used as the basis for a
process that relates to an application record such as a fault, incident or change request
within the BMC Remedy Application.
Both Processes and tasks have associated SLAs (Service Level Agreements), which
define the time that is allocated to the completion of the process and its component
task(s).

9.2.Process Template States

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

Process Designer State Transition Diagram

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10. Process Automation

Process Designer facilitates the full automation of service management processes
thereby eliminating the overhead of manual work and improving the efficiency and
accuracy of component activities.
This is achieved by defining the business rules
required to automate each individual process step. The business rules are then
interpreted at run time by the Remedy application and used to automatically process that
step without the need for manual intervention.
By automating a chain of process steps, whole processes can be automated, leaving
resources free to deal with exceptions and/or non-standard requests and providing a
step-change in operational efficiency.

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