BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.

04

Administration Guide

January 2011

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Contents

Preface 9
Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Best practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Related documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 11

What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Integrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Main components of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Application components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Knowledge life cycle management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Knowledge search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Overview of tasks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Analyzing organizational requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Setting up the framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Quick start process overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
About knowledge articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Article life cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Roles and privileges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Chapter 2 Getting started 29

About the Application Administration Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Accessing the Application Administration Console. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Configuration prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Defining the application administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Performing a standard configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Creating a company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Creating organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Creating locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Creating support groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Creating people information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Creating support staff members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Creating non-support staff people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Creating product categories (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Creating operational categories (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Configuring assignments (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Contents 5
 Configuring visibility groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Managing standard configuration data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Chapter 3 Article Conversion Tool 49

Remote access conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Managing conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Viewing conversion details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Running new conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Converting articles for default or modified templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Converting articles for new templates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Chapter 4 Working with reports 55

About reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Generating predefined reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Working with reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 5 Managing knowledge sources 61

About managing knowledge sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Accessing knowledge source management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
About the Registration Wizard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Registering searchable items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Searchable item panel sequence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Prerequisites for searchable item registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Registering knowledge base items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Registering file system paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Registering AR forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Running the Registration Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Using Registration Wizard parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Registering new knowledge sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Modifying knowledge sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Viewing registration and indexing statuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Indexing on demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Viewing the log file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Managing knowledge article templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Creating knowledge article templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Chapter 6 Configuring approvals 79

Approval process overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Approval workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Configuring approval chains for Global company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Configuring approval chains for a specific company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Configuring approval mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Chapter 7 Configuring general settings 85

Configuring application settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

6 Administration Guide
Configuring feedback strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Configuring system settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Configuring Plugin Log Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Configuring indexing intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Chapter 8 Configuring status transitions 91

About status transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Status groups and types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Status groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Status types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Status transition workflows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
User permissions for changing statuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Localizing status strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Configuring status transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Chapter 9 Enabling notifications 99

About notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Event types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Working with the Watch List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Disabling notifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Index 103

Contents 7
8 Administration Guide
Preface

This guide describes how to administer and configure BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management. The application runs on the BMC Remedy Action Request System
(BMC Remedy AR System) and consumes data from the BMC Atrium
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) application.

Audience
This guide is intended for the following administrators:

Application administrators who define standard system configuration
information such as users, migrate data from previous installations, manage
knowledge sources, and run and view reports. This user has the Knowledge
Admin role.

NOTE
Knowledge Admin users are advanced users who set owner and review date for
articles. For information on working with articles, see the BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management User Guide.

Configuration administrators who configure application settings for BMC

Remedy Knowledge Management, but do not directly work with articles. This
user has the Knowledge Config role.

NOTE
For more information on user roles, see “Roles and privileges” on page 22.

Preface 9
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Best practices
Documentation for BMC Remedy Knowledge Management contains the following
icon:

Icon Description
The Best Practice icon highlights processes or
approaches that BMC has identified as the most
effective way to leverage certain features.

Related documentation
The following table lists the documentation available for the application.
Unless otherwise noted, online documentation in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format is
available on product installation DVDs and the Customer Support website
(http://www.bmc.com/support). You can order printed documentation from the
Customer Support website. Post-release documentation, such as white papers, are
also accessible on this website as it becomes available.

NOTE
To access the support website, you need a support contract.

You can access application help by clicking Help links in the application.
Title Document provides Audience
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Information about new features and known Everyone
Release Notes with Known Issues issues.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Information about new features. Everyone
Release Notes
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Procedures for installing the application. Administrators
Installation Guide
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Procedures for administrating and configuring the Administrators
Administration Guide application.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Procedures for using the application. Everyone
User Guide

10 Administration Guide
Chapter

1 Introducing BMC Remedy

Knowledge Management

This section provides an overview of the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management

application, describes user roles, and provides other general information.
The following topics are provided:

What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? (page 12)

Architecture (page 13)

Overview of tasks (page 18)

Quick start process overview (page 19)

About knowledge articles (page 20)

Article life cycle (page 21)

Roles and privileges (page 22)

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 11

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

What is BMC Remedy Knowledge

Management?
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management is a framework for creating, publishing,
reviewing, and searching IT knowledge articles, to provide service desk analysts
with a knowledge base of easy-to-find solutions and give users self-service search
options to help them resolve issues on their own.
The Consortium for Service Innovation which created and maintains Knowledge-
Centered Support (KCS), shares best practices for capturing, structuring, evolving,
and reusing knowledge. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management leverages these
best practices to improve service levels by helping organizations to maintain what
their employees, partners, and customers know and reuse this knowledge to gain
value.
Knowledge, typically comprised of different types and formats, is stored as
separate knowledge articles contained in a knowledge-based repository. Storing
knowledge articles in a repository allows control and life cycle management.
Organizations that are just starting to build their own proprietary content, require
examples of content, or want to expand the organizational knowledge base can
import prepackaged knowledge for immediate use.
The authoring process enables authorized users to use rich HTML authoring and
extensive editing tools to create and maintain interactive, template-based
knowledge articles and manage the knowledge article life cycle within a defined
sequence of stages.
Powerful index and search capabilities across multiple sources, including
incidents, problems, and known errors, enable users to search the repository and
locate the requested knowledge. The robust search engine allows users to search
for solutions using natural language or Boolean searches.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management shares a common foundation with BMC
Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM) and BMC Service Request
Management—all applications are built on BMC Remedy AR System. BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management leverages foundational elements, such as
notification and email, of the integration platform to simplify and reduce
management costs.

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides the following functionality:

Helps IT and customer service personnel and other service providers to
guarantee a quick and accurate response when solving problems.

Allows organizations to provide users with the option to perform an ad hoc
search for knowledge by themselves.

Provides a means to create knowledge goals and monitor articles through
reports.

12 Administration Guide
 Architecture

Integrations
The BMC Remedy AR System integrations allow BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management to communicate and share data with the following applications:

BMC Remedy Incident Management

BMC Remedy Problem Management

BMC Service Request Management

Main components of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management

The application consists of the following main components:

Self-service search interface—Entry point where users can search for
knowledge from the knowledge base without accessing the application. Direct,
user-friendly access to knowledge articles without the intervention of
organizational members helps to reduce inbound call volume.

Knowledge Management Console (KM Console)—Lists knowledge articles in
various life cycle stages that are available to you, and links to functionality
according to your permissions. This console enables users to select an article for
viewing or editing content and metadata, and to create articles—all per user
permissions.

NOTE
For more information on working with the application, see the BMC Remedy
Knowledge User Guide.

Architecture
This section describes the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture,
including its relationship to the BMC Remedy AR System server.
A database forms the underlying element of the BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management architecture. The BMC Remedy AR System server is on top of the
database and processes all data entered by BMC Remedy Knowledge Management
applications.
In addition, the BMC Remedy AR System server is the workflow engine between
the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management applications and the database. It also
verifies that a user has permission to perform each action, thereby enforcing any
access control defined in the applications.
The BMC AR System server also manages BMC Remedy Approval Server, the
Assignment Engine, and BMC Remedy FTS, as follows:

BMC Remedy Approval Server—Self-contained, shared module that enables
you to automate any approval or signature process. For more information, see
the BMC Remedy Approval Server Guide.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 13

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

BMC Remedy Assignment Engine—Enables you to automatically assign

requests to individuals. For more information, see the BMC Remedy Action
Request System Configuration Guide.

BMC Remedy Full Text Search (FTS)—Provides a search mechanism that is
typically much faster than the native database searching functionality for
searching in long text fields. It is also the only search method available in BMC
Remedy AR System for searching text within documents that are attached to
requests. For more information, see the BMC Remedy Action Request System
Configuration Guide.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management also uses several integrated modules and
supporting applications that extend and enhance the basic BMC Remedy
AR System server functions:

BMC Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) Foundation—Contains the
common forms, workflow, and data that are needed to support the applications.
It also provides a repository for the following data structures used by each BMC
Remedy ITSM applications:

Company (tenancy and external company definitions)

Organization

Location

People

Support groups

Categorization

BMC Remedy Notification Engine—Provides a back-end workflow model for
defining which notifications should be sent, based on different events in a BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management application. Support staff uses the People
form to define which notifications they want to receive. Included predefined
notifications can be turned on or off.
The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application components as well as the
relationships among the database, AR System server, BMC Remedy Approval
Server, Assignment Engine, Full Text Search, the application’s BMC Remedy
Foundation, Notification Engine and the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management
applications are illustrated in Figure 1-1.

14 Administration Guide
 Architecture

Figure 1-1: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application architecture

Application components
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management consists of the following components:

Knowledge articles

Knowledge life cycle management

Knowledge search
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management has two types of knowledge articles:

AR form-based—BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can integrate with
any AR form and turn it into knowledge article. BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management includes a registration tool that enable customers to define which
forms and which fields on this form they would like to integrate to the
knowledgebase. Using the AR form rich text fields, AR form based knowledge
articles can include rich text formatting and can embed objects including images
and hyperlinks.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 15

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses the AR based knowledge articles

to define the knowledge article templates. By default, BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management provides the following knowledge article templates:

How to

Problem solution

Known Error

Reference

Decision Tree
Since these templates are based on AR System forms, a knowledge article can
have permissions assigned by group. This creates a knowledge article that has
field-level and knowledge article-level security. Knowledge article permissions
are assigned to a knowledge article in the BMC Remedy Developer Studio.
Customers can create their own templates or modify and customize the existing
templates using the BMC Remedy Developer Studio. They should use the BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management tool to register new templates.

External Sources—Using BMC Remedy AR System platform ARDBC Plugins,
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can connect to any external knowledge
source and can integrate that source into BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management knowledge base as knowledge articles. By integrating into the
knowledge base, these external knowledge items will include information like
BMC Remedy ITSM categories, update requests, feedback and workflow life
cycle management. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management is shipped by
default with a connector to file systems. This connector enables external file
system folders to be defined, and files such as PDF articles or Microsoft Word
documents to be integrated into the knowledge base as BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management knowledge articles. These knowledge articles are later
indexed by the search engine and can be searched on like any other articles in
the knowledge base.
Figure 1-2 illustrates how the different types of knowledge articles are integrated
into a single knowledge base. The information that is common to all knowledge
articles together with the workflow logic required for life cycle management of
knowledge articles is stored in the Knowledge Article Manager AR form.
AR Join forms are used in order to integrate the common knowledge information
with the knowledge content form, that could be any other AR form (in this
example the How To knowledge article template form) or an AR Vendor form
when connecting to external knowledge source (in this example file system).
The AR Join form is the actual knowledge article that is indexed by the search
engine.

16 Administration Guide
 Architecture

Figure 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management knowledge base

Knowledge life cycle management

The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management authoring process allows authorized
users to create knowledge articles and manage the knowledge article life cycle
within a defined sequence of stages, (for example, Draft, In Review, Published, and
Retired).
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management enables users to define the different life
cycle stages and the available list of stages that a knowledge article can switch to
from a given stage.
When switching between stages, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management routes
the article to the next assignee using the BMC Remedy Assignment Engine. This is
performed by analyzing pre-defined routing rules that are based on the company
that the article belongs to and the article categorization.
Some stages, such as Publish and Retire, may require an approval process. BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management uses the BMC Remedy Approval Server to
define approval workflow for these stages.

Knowledge search
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management’s search module uses the BMC Remedy
Full Text Search module to search on different knowledge sources using natural
language, and to present a consolidated search result list.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 17

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

The knowledge search module provides a search mechanism that is typically much
faster than the native database searching functionality for searching in long text
fields. It also lets you search on AR System form attachments.
Any AR form can be registered to BMC Remedy Knowledge Management as a
searchable item. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management will go over the records
in these forms, index them, and thus enable the application to search on these
records.
The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management has the ability to filter the search
results based on characteristics such as:

Company

Product and Operational Categories

Environment

Languages

Overview of tasks
This section provides an overview of what is involved in setting up the BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management system. You are essentially setting up the
framework that enables users to work with knowledge.

Analyzing organizational requirements

Before you begin administration and configuration, you need to analyze how to
build the knowledge management system. Some questions you might consider
are:

Who fulfills which user role and to what support groups will they belong?

How and to whom should articles transition within the article workflow?

How will search results be displayed?

How long are intervals between indexing knowledge sources?

NOTE
If you are integrating with other applications, some of the services might already
be configured.

18 Administration Guide
 Quick start process overview

Setting up the framework

Before configuring the application, the application administrator must define
users, and assign these users to the appropriate permissions and functional roles.
This administrator can also associate them with the appropriate support groups, if
necessary. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management includes some predefined
roles. Additionally, this administrator must set up permissions for users and
groups to ensure that the appropriate people can access the appropriate
knowledge and metadata. For more information, see “Roles and privileges” on
page 22.
You must also set up approvers in the People form. Setting up approvers allows
you to have requests for retiring or cancelling articles approved. For more
information, see “Configuring approval mappings” on page 82.

Quick start process overview

To perform the basic level of application configuration, perform step 1 and step 2
listed in the following table. To perform the tasks, you should have a basic
understanding of performing common configuration tasks using the Application
Administration Console (for example, you know how to log into the IT Home
Page, define users in the People form, and so on).
Table 1-1: Quick Start Actions

Action Where to begin For more information

1. Set up your company or organization
Perform standard configuration of From the Application
“Managing standard
your company or organization Administration Console, click the configuration data” on page 46
(such as People, Company, Standard Configuration tab.
BMC Remedy IT Service
Location, and Site information). Management Configuration Guide
Note: If you have already have
performed this step in BMC
Remedy IT Service Management,
you can ignore this step, except for
creating assignment routing for
the application. See “Configuring
assignments (optional)” on
page 42.
2. Define users
Define the application From the Application “Defining the application
administrator. Administration Console, click the administrator” on page 31
Standard Configuration tab. Then,
select the Create link for People.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Action Where to begin For more information

Define the support staff with From the Application
“Roles and privileges” on
appropriate privileges. Administration Console, click the page 22
Standard Configuration tab. Then,
“Creating support groups” on
select the Create link for People. page 36

“Creating support staff
members” on page 37

After the set-up is finished, the application administer can perform the following
tasks:

Convert articles from previous version—For more information, see “Article
Conversion Tool” on page 49.

Manage knowledge sources—For more information, see “About managing
knowledge sources” on page 62.

Work with reports—For more information, see “Working with reports” on
page 59.

Work with the application—For more information, see the BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management User Guide.
After the application administrator defines the configuration administrator, the
following configuration tasks can be preformed by the configuration
administrator:

Convert approvals—For more information, see “Approval process overview”
on page 80.

Convert general application settings—For more information, see “Configuring
application settings” on page 86.

Convert status transitions—For more information, see “About status
transitions” on page 92.

About knowledge articles

Knowledge is stored in units known as knowledge articles (articles). Each article
captures an issue and, using the appropriate predefined template, documents the
experience of solving a problem, providing referential information, describing a
process, or answering a question.
Once captured, article content can evolve and be improved over time, based on
user demand and usage. An article’s maintenance might continue indefinitely as
the knowledge evolves. Users can submit feedback that might include suggestions
for updating or improving the article, rate its content, and indicate whether the
article was useful. Content that becomes irrelevant, misleading, inaccurate, or
inappropriate can be revised, or the entire article can be retired and made
inaccessible to users.

20 Administration Guide
 Article life cycle

Users can track changes made to articles even when they are not involved in the
workflow, by selecting specific articles or by defining rules (watch list). When
these articles are changed, a notification is sent.
Articles are registered and indexed to enable searching. All users can perform a
search and view results from within BMC Remedy AR System, in accordance with
their permissions.
Users that have one of the Knowledge User roles can also perform a search from
within BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. When an appropriate article is not
found in the knowledge base, users with the appropriate permissions can create an
article as required.
Articles can be related to one another when their content is related. Thus it is
possible, for example, to add a link from an article that contains information about
resolving an issue to another article that contains referential information.

Article life cycle

Every article has a life cycle. At the beginning of its life cycle, the article enters the
pre-publish review and approval process. If approved, the article is published.
Published articles can be reviewed and retired from use, as required. Retired
articles continue to reside in the knowledge base, and although they are not visible
to end users, Knowledge users can search for them.
Statuses are used to denote the current phase of an article within the article’s life
cycle. Each phase determines factors such as:

Type of work the article requires

User or group to whom the article can be assigned

Status transition options for the article

User viewing permissions

Whether the article is searchable
The following example illustrates a typical article life cycle:

Step 1 The author identifies the need for new knowledge and creates an article.

Step 2 When the author is finished, the article is promoted into the workflow. At this
stage, the article’s content might be visible to some users with Knowledge user
roles. However, the content has not been reviewed and approved for use. This
content might change, or the entire article might be deleted

Step 3 A Subject Matter Expert (SME) reviews the article for content but cannot approve
it, so the article is re-assigned to the author for additional work.

Step 4 The author completes the required editing and resends the article to be reviewed
again by an SME who is a member of the same support group as the SME who
originally reviewed the content.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Step 5 The article passes the review this time and is assigned to another reviewer who
performs a review for technical accuracy. For example, if the article contains
procedural steps, this reviewer verifies that no steps are missing.

Step 6 After the content and accuracy have been reviewed, verified, and approved, the
article is proofread.

Step 7 The article has passed all the reviews and is ready to be published, but must first
be approved for publishing.

Step 8 When approved, the article is published and becomes available to all users, even
those without Knowledge user roles (Self Help users). In some cases, the content
might be confidential so the article might be marked as not available to Self-Help
users.

Step 9 A future (typically after a year) review date to ensure that the article content is still
correct is set for the article. When the review date arrives, notification is sent as a
reminder.

Step 10 Users search for and open the article, indicating whether the content has been
useful. Sometimes they send feedback or a request to update the content.

Step 11 A Knowledge User reviews the article and needs to update some of the content. A
duplicate copy of the article is created. After the changes are made, the new version
replaces the older article.

Step 12 At some point, the article becomes obsolete and a Knowledge User retires it,
rendering it not searchable and inaccessible to users.

NOTE
Managing and tracking the life cycle through its different statuses depends on the
valid status transitions that have been configured by Knowledge Config user. The
list of available statuses for selection is sensitive to the environment (for example,
user role, current status, and company permissions). See “About status
transitions” on page 92 for more information.

Roles and privileges

In BMC Remedy Knowledge Management, each user has an assigned functional
role, which defines what tasks they can perform. By default, BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management provides the roles and the permissions associated with
them.
By default, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management installs AR permission groups
that are already mapped to knowledge roles in the application. BMC recommends
that you use these AR permission groups to assign roles.

22 Administration Guide
 Roles and privileges

NOTE
When no Knowledge Management role is assigned, Self-Service permissions
enable end users to search and view published knowledge articles that are flagged
for external use.

Knowledge Viewer—Grants view access to knowledge articles in any status

without writing privileges. This role is usually assigned to support staff who
only search and view articles.

Knowledge Submitter—Grants write access to new knowledge articles only.
This role is usually assigned to junior knowledge users and trainees and enables
them to create and promote articles to Draft status only.

Knowledge User—Grants write, assign, and promote access to new and
existing articles without administrative tasks. This role is usually assigned to
senior knowledge users of a support group and enables users to participate in
the knowledge article life cycle.

Knowledge Admin—Grants full access to the application. This role is usually
assigned to the most advanced knowledge users and enables users (in addition
to Knowledge User privileges), to generate reports, manage knowledge sources,
migrate data from previous installations.

Knowledge Config—Grants access to configuration settings. This role enables
users to configure the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management settings.
Typically, a user assigned with this role is not a member of a support group and
is not intended to create, edit, or publish articles.
Table 1-2 shows the available default actions for the different roles.

Table 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management roles with their privileges (Sheet 1 of 5)
Privileges Self Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Comments
Service Viewer Submitter User Admin Config
Viewing
View articles in + + + + + +
simple view
View articles in + + + +
advanced view
View in-progress + + + +
articles
View draft articles + + + +
View in-review + + + +
articles
View published + + + + + +
external articles
View published + + + + Internal articles
internal articles are approved
but not
exposed to end
users.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 23

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Table 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management roles with their privileges (Sheet 2 of 5)
Privileges Self Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Comments
Service Viewer Submitter User Admin Config
View closed + + + + Closed articles
version are not
returned after a
search, but can
be viewed in
the revisions
tab of the
advanced
view.
View retired + + + +
articles
View cancelled + Cancelled
articles articles can be
viewed from
the console.
View articles + + + + Articles
waiting for waiting for
approval approval (both
publish and
retire) can be
searched and
viewed.
View update + + + +
requests
View relationships + + + + + +
View Categories + + + + + +
View Revisions + + + +
View History + + + +
View Usage + + + +
Editing
Create a new article + + + After an article
has been
updated to In
Progress, it can
be assigned to
a Knowledge
User or Admin.
Edit In Progress + + + Knowledge
Submitters can
edit only their
own articles.
Edit draft + +

24 Administration Guide
 Roles and privileges

Table 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management roles with their privileges (Sheet 3 of 5)
Privileges Self Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Comments
Service Viewer Submitter User Admin Config
Edit in-review + + The editor
must be part of
the relevant
reviewer’s
support group.
Edit published + + This action
creates a new
version in
draft.
Edit closed version + + This action
creates a new
version in
draft.
Edit retired + +
Edit cancelled
Edit waiting-for- + + This action
approval stops the
approval
process and
reverts the
article to the
previous
status.
Workflow
Change status to + + + The status is
draft changed to
Draft from In
Progress.
Change status to + +
review
Change status to + + Draft articles
publish/retire can also be
approval changed to
retired-
approval.
Change status to + Only users
cancel with the
Knowledge
Admin role can
cancel any
article from all
statuses.
Knowledge
users can
request to
cancel articles.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 25

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Table 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management roles with their privileges (Sheet 4 of 5)
Privileges Self Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Comments
Service Viewer Submitter User Admin Config
Take ownership + + User must be
part of the
relevant
reviewers
support group
if the article is
in review. In
other statuses
the group is not
relevant.
Assign ownership + + User must be
part of the
relevant
reviewers
support group
if the article is
in review. In
other statuses
the group is not
relevant.
Approve publish Configured in
the BMC
Remedy
Knowledge
Management
configuration.
Requires
support group
membership
and approval
role.
Approve retire Configured in
the BMC
Remedy
Knowledge
Management
configuration.
Requires
support group
membership
and approval
role.
Set owner/owner- +
group
Knowledge Management Console

26 Administration Guide
 Roles and privileges

Table 1-2: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management roles with their privileges (Sheet 5 of 5)
Privileges Self Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Comments
Service Viewer Submitter User Admin Config
Open knowledge +
source
management
under Functions
Quick Actions + +
View articles not + A user with the
assigned to me/All Knowledge
Admin role can
view articles
not assign to
that user when
filtering 'my
groups'.
Remedy Home Page
Open RKM console + + + +
Open +
configuration for
RKM
Open search dialog + + + + + +
Other
Submit update + + + +
requests
Submit feedback + + + + + +
Create reports +
Remedy fixed + + +
(write) license
Part of support + + + + +
staff
Create + + + Submitters can
relationships create
relationships
only for in-
progress
articles.

Chapter 1 Introducing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 27

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

28 Administration Guide
Chapter

2 Getting started

This section describes how to set up and configure the application.

The following topics are provided:

About the Application Administration Console (page 30)

Accessing the Application Administration Console (page 30)

Configuration prerequisites (page 31)

Defining the application administrator (page 31)

Performing a standard configuration (page 34)

Configuring visibility groups (page 45)

Managing standard configuration data (page 46)

Chapter 2 Getting started 29

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

About the Application Administration Console

The Application Administration Console shows common items and items for the
applications that are installed. The console enables application administrators to
set up the application, and configuration administrators to configure the settings
for working with the application. These forms are unavailable to other users.
The Application Administration Console provides the following two tabs:

Standard Configuration tab—Lists seven steps that walk the application
administrator through the process of setting up organizational and user
information.

NOTE
If a BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite application was installed and
configured before installing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management, the standard
configuration steps might have already been done.

Custom Configuration tab— Provides access to configuration forms.

For more information about configuration, see the BMC Remedy IT Service
Management Configuration Guide.

Accessing the Application Administration

Console
You can access the Application Administration Console from the web.

NOTE
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management is not supported in BMC Remedy User.

If you installed the Application Administration Console shortcut on your desktop,

you can double-click the icon to launch the console; otherwise, use the following
procedure to open the console:

To open the Application Administration Console from the web

1 Type the following URL into your browser:
http://midTierServer:port/arsys/forms/ARServer/Home Page
where:
midTierServer is the fully qualified name of the BMC Remedy Mid Tier server,
specified in the format serverName.company.com.
port is an optional port number, which is required if the web server is not on the
default port (port 80).

30 Administration Guide
 Configuration prerequisites

ARServer is the name of the BMC Remedy AR System server that contains the
application.

NOTE
If the mid tier and the application are on the same system, BMC Remedy
AR System server name can be omitted.

2 In the User Name and Password fields of the Welcome page, enter your user name
and password.
3 Click Login to open the IT Home Page opens in your browser.
For a list of supported browsers, see the compatibility matrix at:
http://www.bmc.com/support.
4 From the Quick Links section on the left navigation bar, click Application
Administration Console.
5 Select the appropriate task to open the form for the selected task.

Configuration prerequisites
You can set up the application to contain entries about the various people, groups,
skills, responsibilities, and geographic locations associated with your
organization.
Before you begin configuring the application, verify that the following
configuration prerequisites are met:

You must have an BMC Remedy AR System write license (either fixed or
floating).

You must have a basic knowledge of BMC Remedy AR System administration
tasks.
For information about setting the BMC Remedy AR System options, see the BMC
Remedy Action Request System Configuration Guide.

Defining the application administrator

The application is installed with a default application administrator (appadmin).
Before you proceed to set up application settings, use appadmin to log in to the
application for the first time and proceed to define yourself as the Knowledge
Admin user.
The following procedure describes the minimum number of entries that you need
to define and enable the application administrator to set up the application. You
should add support staff information to the application administrator entry, as
described in “Creating support staff members” on page 37.

Chapter 2 Getting started 31

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

To define a BMC Remedy Knowledge Management administrator

1 Log into the BMC Remedy AR System server as the appadmin user.
2 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to define the application administrator.
3 Click the Create link next to People.

NOTE
Always configure people by opening the People form from the Application
Administration Console. Information that you add or modify on the People form
is automatically updated to the BMC Remedy AR System User form, but
information updated on the User form is not updated to the People form.

4 In the People form, enter information in the required fields.

5 Enter the administrator’s email address.
The default notification method is email.
6 For the application administrator (and all support staff), select Yes in the Support
Staff field.
The Support Groups tab appears. For the application administrator and all support
staff, you must complete the Login/Access Details tab and the Support Groups
tab.
7 Give the person the appropriate administrator permissions.
a On the Login/Access Details tab, enter the Login ID and the Password.
b Click Update Permission Groups.
c In the Permission Group field on the Permission Group dialog box, select a
permission group to add (the setting for you is Knowledge > Knowledge
Admin, and click Add/Modify.
For more information about permissions, see “Roles and privileges” on page 22.
d If required, select a license type of Fixed or Floating.
e Click Add/Modify for each permission group.
f When you finish adding permission groups, click Close.
8 If you use the Company field to restrict access to specific companies, complete the
following steps to give the application administrator access to data in the
applications by assigning the administrator to specific companies. Otherwise,
select Yes in the Unrestricted Access field (the default) on the Login/Access
Details tab of the People form.
To select a specific company:
a Click Update Access Restrictions.
b In the Access Restriction field of the Access Restrictions dialog box, select a
company for which to add access to the person.
c Click Add/Modify and Close.

32 Administration Guide
 Defining the application administrator

9 Follow these steps to relate the person to at least one support group:
a Click the Support Groups tab.
b Click Update Support Groups and Roles.
c In the Add Support Group Relationship area of the Update Support Group
Memberships and Roles form, select the Company, Support Organization,
Support Group, and Relationship Role.

NOTE
The relationship roles are Member and Associate Member. These values are
informational only. Member means that the person belongs to the support group.
Associate Member means that the person has access to modify requests assigned to
that support group.

d Click Add.
A support person can belong to more than one support group. To select the
primary support group, select the support group, and click Set to Default.
To change the relationship role, click Make Associate Member or Make
Member.
10 Click the Functional Role Update tab.
You can use this tab to assign functional roles to people in support groups.
Functional roles extend access granted by permissions groups, but only for specific
support groups that are used in the application. For example, someone might be a
member of two support groups, but is a Knowledge Management Approver for
only one.
11 To add a functional role, complete the following steps:
a Select the Company, Support Organization, and Support Group Name.
Selections in lists for the Company, Support Organization, and Support Group
Name fields on this tab appear only if support groups have been related to the
person on the Support Group Update tab.
b Select a functional role (Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Approver) and click Add.
12 Click Close, and click Add in the People form.
13 Confirm the password.

Chapter 2 Getting started 33

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Performing a standard configuration

The Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console walks
you through the standard process of setting up your organization’s information.
Perform standard configuration before the configuration administrator performs
custom configuration. Application administrators can perform all of the
configuration on this tab; if your account is missing a required permission (such as
the Config Categorization Admin permission to configure operational categories),
you are prompted to determine whether to grant yourself the required permission.
After you finish, you can view and modify standard configuration data, as
described in “Managing standard configuration data” on page 46. For information
about performing custom configuration, see “Working with the Custom
Configuration tab” in the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Configuration Guide.

To perform standard configuration by using the Standard Configuration tab

1 Open the Application Administration Console.
See “Accessing the Application Administration Console” on page 30.
On the Standard Configuration tab, check marks appear next to each step for
which standard configuration has been performed.
2 Continue to configure the selected company, or create a company.
To create a company, follow the procedure described in “Creating a company” on
page 35.

TIP
If you create a company, but do not complete standard configuration, you can
return to this procedure. Select the company you are configuring, and continue.

3 Click Next Step.

NOTE
Complete steps in sequence. If you skip a step, you might not be able to complete
a subsequent step. For example, you cannot create a people record for support staff
unless a support group has been created.

4 To create additional configuration records for a step, click the appropriate Create
link.
For example, to create additional departments for the company, click the Create
link next to Organization.
5 To modify or further customize a configuration record, click the appropriate View
link.

34 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

Creating a company
The first step in standard configuration is to configure a company. Everything else
that you configure belongs to this company. You can configure multiple
companies if your company is made up of smaller companies that are separate
entities.

To create a company
1 On the Standard tab of the Application Administration Console, click Click here
to create and configure a new company.
2 From the Company dialog box, enter the company name.
3 Select or enter a Company Type:

Customer—This company is an external company for which you provide
services.

Operating Company—This company is an internal company or business unit
for which you provide services.
Additional standard company types (Generic Contact, Manufacturer, Supplier,
and Vendor) are available for custom configuration using the Company form.
4 Click Add.

Creating organizations
Organization structure is defined as Company > Organization > Department,
which represents how a company is represented from a business perspective.

To create the company and organizations

1 From the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
click the Create link next to Organization.
2 From the Organization form, enter or select the organization.
Enter the name of the organization to create it. After you add the first department
to the organization, you can select the organization when you add another
department.
3 Enter the department, and click Add.

Creating locations
The Location structure is defined as Company > Region > Site Group and Site,
which represents locations of sites. The location structure can be used in group
assignment and other mapping functions, such as approvals. Sites represent a
physical location (such as a building) for a company.

Chapter 2 Getting started 35

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

To create locations
1 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to create a location.
2 Click the Create link next to Location.
3 (optional) Enter or select information in the Region and Site Group fields of the
Location form.
You can use the Region and Site Group fields to create a location structure with
two or three levels.

Region—Geographic areas can be divided into regions. A company can have
several regions, depending on how many sites it has and where the sites are
located. Examples of company regions are Northwest, Atlantic, and Pacific.
Creating regions under a company is done only for reporting.
Enter the name of a region to create it. After you add the first site group or site
to the region, you can select the region when you add another site or site group.

Site Group—Geographic areas can be subdivided into site groups, which are
collections of individual locations. A company can have any number of site
groups, depending on how many locations it has and where the locations are.
An example of a company site group is ABC Europe Group.
Enter the name of the site group to create it. After you add the first site to the site
group, you can select the site group when you add another site.
4 Enter the site designation in the Site field.
5 Enter or select the site address information.
6 Click Add.

Creating support groups

The Support Groups structure is defined as Company > Support Organization >
Support Group, which represents how a company is structured from a support
perspective. Support groups are typically used to assign work.

NOTE
Support groups are used in configuring business hours and holidays, which are
used in calculating the expected completion date of requests and in the Work
Order application.

To create support groups

1 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to create a support group.
2 Click the Create link next to Support Group.
3 From the Support Group form, enter or select information in the Support
Organization and Support Group Name fields.

36 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

Enter the name of the support organization to create it. After you add the first
support group to the organization, you can select the organization when you add
another support group.
4 Select the support group role.
The Support Group Role field describes the role that the support group has in the
organization. For example, the support group named Internal Support might
provide the Help Desk function, while another support group provides Tier 2
support.
5 Click Add.

Creating people information

You can create records for both support and non-support and staff. Non-support
staff members include anyone who is not a member of the IT or business services
organizations, or does not create or modify records in the application.
You must set up a login ID and password for anyone with access to the application,
aside from access. People information also includes each person’s company,
organization, business and home addresses, desk location, support groups, and
selected additional information.

NOTE
Guest users can search global company information only.

After adding users, log into the application with the new users to make sure they
can access the IT Home Page. Then verify that the users can view the correct
application consoles. For example, a user with Request Catalog Manager
permissions should be able to see only the Request Entry console and the Service
Request Coordinator Console.

Creating support staff members

Depending on how your organization assigns roles, you must add support staff
records for the following people:

Service Request Coordinator (requires the Service Request User permission)

Business Manager

Work Order Master

Work Order Assignee

To create support staff members

1 From the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the appropriate company.
2 To determine whether this person has already been added as a user, complete the
following steps:
a Click the View link next to People.

Chapter 2 Getting started 37

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

b From the People form, search for a user to add as a member of the support staff
(for example, the user who you want to be a fulfillment provider).
c Select the person to define as a member of the support staff.
Information for the selected user appears in the People form.
3 If this person has not yet been added as a user, Click the Create link next to People.
4 From the People form, enter the person’s first name and last name.
5 Select the client type.
6 (optional) Select a contact type, such as Hotline or Tech Support.
7 Set Support Staff to Yes.
8 To enter the phone number, click in the Phone Number field and press ENTER.
Select a Country Code for a phone number from the list or enter one manually.
If you omit the phone number, it is set as unknown.
9 (optional) Enter the email address. An email address is required to receive email
notifications.
10 (optional) If this person is a home-based employee, click Edit Home Address to
enter the home address and click the icon to the right of the Edit Home Address
field to enter the phone number.
11 In the Organization Information area, select the company and, optionally, select
the organization and department.
12 In the Location Information area, select the site.
13 To enable this person to log into the system, perform the following steps on the
Login/Access Details tab:
a Enter a login ID and password.
People who have access to the People form can change their password.
b Under License Type, select Fixed or Floating in the License Type field.
c If you have the BMC Remedy AR System full text search option, select the
appropriate Full Text License Type.
d In the Application Permissions area, click Update Permission Groups.
The Permission Group dialog box appears.
e In the Permission Group field, select each appropriate permission group to add,
such as Business manager, Service Request User, or Work Order Master.
f Click Add/Modify for each permission group.
14 If you use the Company field to restrict access to specific companies, click Update
Access Restrictions to give the support staff member access to data of the selected
companies. Otherwise, select Yes in the Unrestricted Access field on the Login/
Access Details tab.
15 From the Support Groups tab, click Update Support Groups and Roles and add
the support staff member to one or more support groups.

38 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

16 Add any remaining information needed to create the support person, and click
Save.
17 Confirm the password.
The person’s information is stored in the BMC Remedy AR System User form and
in the People form.

Creating non-support staff people

You can create non-support staff records for employees, customers, and vendors.
Support staff can use these records to complete forms, such as to indicate that a
specific customer called the help desk to report an incident. If non-support staff
have a login ID and password, they can record their own requests on the Request
Entry console.

To create non-support staff records

1 From the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the appropriate company.
2 Click the Create link next to People.
3 From the People form, enter the person’s first name and last name.
4 Select the client type.

Client type Information required

Office-Based Select or enter a site in the Site field.
Employee

Field-Based
Employee

Contractor

Customer Site information is optional.

Prospect

Vendor
Home-Based You must enter home information in addition to the site
Employee information.

5 (optional) Select a contact type, such as Finance or Sales.

6 Set Support Staff to No.
7 To enter the phone number, click in the Phone Number field and press ENTER.
Select a Country Code for a phone number from the list or enter one manually.
If you omit the phone number, it is set as unknown.
8 (optional) Enter the email address. An email address is required to receive email
notifications.
9 (optional) If this person is a home-based employee, click Edit Home Address to
enter the home address and click the icon to the right of the Edit Home Address
field to enter the phone number.

Chapter 2 Getting started 39

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

10 In the Organization Information area, select the company and, optionally, select
the organization and department.
11 In the Location Information area, select the site.
You must select a site for employees, but it is optional for customers and vendors.
12 To enable this person to log into the system, perform the following steps on the
Login/Access Details tab:
a Enter a login ID and password.
People who have access to the People form can change their password.
b Under License Type, select Fixed, Floating, or Read in the License Type field.

NOTE
If you select a Read license for any user, you must set the Submitter Mode option
to Locked in the Licenses tab of the AR System Administration: Server Information
form. See the BMC Remedy Action Request System Configuration Guide.

c If you have the BMC Remedy AR System full text search option, select the
appropriate Full Text License Type.
13 Click Add.

Creating product categories (optional)

You can create product categories for use in various forms. Products can be any
items used by an organization. Products are typically used to classify a
configuration item, an incident, a change request, or a work order.
The Product Categorization structure is defined as Tier 1 > Tier 2 > Tier 3 > Product
Name and Manufacturer > Model Version, which is used to categorize different
products or configuration items in the BMC Atrium CMDB.
Before creating or modifying product information, it is important to understand
product relationships:

When creating product category information, you must complete all three tiers.
The product name or manufacturer field is optional, but both are required if
either is specified. One tier can be sufficient, depending on the item being
created. If you create a product for which only one tier is required, you can set
the other two tiers to None.

Each product category can have more than one product model/version.

Products can be associated with one or more companies.
Each product category must be unique. You might find it helpful to view existing
categories before creating categories. For more information about viewing
categories, see “Managing standard configuration data” on page 46.

40 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

To create product categories

1 From the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to create product categories.
2 Click the Create link next to Product Category.
3 (optional) From The Product Category form, select the Product Type.
4 Select the configuration item (CI) type.
The CI Type field specifies the type of CI for which you are creating this product
category.
5 Select or enter the Product Categorization Tiers.

TIP
If you are creating a product that requires only one tier, enter None for the other
two tiers.

After you create a product category with a particular tier 1 and tier 2, you can select
those tiers when creating additional product categories. For example, if you create
a product category for Hardware > Server > Linux®, you might first enter all three
categories, but when you create a product category for Hardware > Server >
Windows, you can select both Hardware and Server.
6 (optional) Enter or select a product name.
If you specify a product name, you must specify a manufacturer. Select a
manufacturer, or click New to add a new manufacturer.
7 If you specify a product name, you must specify a manufacturer. Select a
manufacturer, or click New to add a manufacturer.
If you click New, the New Manufacturer dialog box appears. Enter a company,
select Enabled for the status, and click Save.
8 In the Product Category dialog box, select Enabled for the status.

NOTE
To temporarily prevent the category from being selected from the application, set
the status to Proposed.

9 In the Origin field, leave the default value of Custom.

10 In the Suite Definition field, select Yes if this product is part of a suite of related
products; otherwise, select No.
11 Select whether the category is available for the current company, or whether it is
available for all companies.
12 Click Add.
The operational category is automatically related to the selected company. and is
available on other forms.

Chapter 2 Getting started 41

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Creating operational categories (optional)

You can create operational categories of services for use in various forms.
Operational categories list all the operational services that a typical help desk or
business services organization provides, such as add user account and change
server password. It can also contain items that represent symptoms of incidents or
problems, such as application failure and network failure.
Each operational category must be unique. You might find it helpful to view
existing categories before creating categories. For more information about viewing
categories, see “Managing standard configuration data” on page 46.

To create operational categories

1 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to create operational categories.
2 Click the Create link next to Operational Category.
3 From the Operational Catalog form, select or enter an operational category.
After you create an operational category with a particular tier 1 and tier 2, you can
select those tiers when creating additional operational categories. For example, if
you create an operational category for Add > User > Account, you might first enter
all three categories, but when you create an operational category for Add > User >
Web Page, you can select both Add and User.
4 Select Enabled for the status.

NOTE
You can set the status to Proposed to temporarily prevent the category from being
selected from an application.

5 Select whether the category is available for the company that you are configuring,
or whether it is available for all companies.
6 Click Add.
When you save the operational category, it is automatically related to the Global
company. This makes the operational category available on other forms, for all
operating and customer companies.

Configuring assignments (optional)

You can set up assignments to select a default support group for one of the review
statuses, for assigning a knowledge article to an article reviewer. Creating
assignment routing
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management enables you to automatically assign
articles to support groups and roles by using fields as search criteria against the
Assignment Configuration form.

42 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

To create assignment routing

1 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company.
2 Click the Create link next to Assignment.
3 In the Event field of the Assignment form, select the type of assignment entry.
For BMC Remedy Knowledge Management, the following assignment entries are
applicable:

Knowledge Optional Review 1

Knowledge Optional Review 2

Knowledge SME Review
4 In the Description field, enter a description for the assignment.
5 From the Assigned Group list, select the support group to assign.
6 In the Routing Order area, specify when this assignment entry should be used for
the automated assignment.

Company—Select the location of the article. If this routing applies to all
companies, select Global.

Operational Categorization—You can route assignments by operational
services.

Product Categorization—You can route assignments by product categorization.
7 Click Add.

Creating group assignments

The first step in creating assignment information is configuring a group
assignment. You can then use predefined assignment information for automatic
assignment to an individual in the assigned group using the Assignment Engine,
if needed. Advanced administrators can also define custom individual assignment
information for the Assignment Engine.
From the Configure Assignment form, you can also modify or delete assignment
information.

Creating a group assignment

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Foundation > Configure Assignment >
Configure Assignment, and click Open.
3 To change the Configure Assignment form to New mode, click the New Request
button on the form in a browser.

Chapter 2 Getting started 43

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

4 In the Event field, select the type of assignment entry (for example, Knowledge
SME Review).
For more information, see “Automatic assignment to individuals” on page 44.
5 In the Assignment area, select the support company, support organization, and
assigned group to use for assignment.
6 In the Available Systems area, select Knowledge Management.
You can select different support groups for assignment, even if the mapping
selections are the same.
7 In the Routing Order area, further specify when this assignment entry should be
used for the automated assignment. (This is an advanced feature.)

NOTE
The Contact Company and Company fields are required.

The Assignment entry can be mapped using the following data structures:

Organization

Location

Operational Categorization

Product Categorization
When BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses the routing order, which is a
feature of many of the main ticketing forms, it uses information from the form that
it is on to find an assignment entry, and in turn, the support group for assignment.
8 Click Save.
9 Create the group assignment for Knowledge SME Review.
10 Create the group assignments for your company.
By default, assignment configuration records were installed out-of-the-box for
your use as templates. You can copy these records for your own company.

Automatic assignment to individuals

After you have configured BMC Remedy Knowledge Management group
assignments, the round robin method of assigning articles to individuals is
activated. By default, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses the round robin
method in the Assignment Engine to assign service requests and work orders to
the person who has gone the longest since receiving an assignment.
To remove a person from individual auto-assignment, set the Assignment
Availability field on the People record to No as described in the BMC Remedy IT
Service Management Configuration Guide.
Advanced administrators can also define custom individual assignment
information for articles with the Assignment Engine. For more information about
configuring the Assignment Engine for assignment to individuals, see the BMC
Remedy Action Request System Configuration Guide.

44 Administration Guide
 Performing a standard configuration

Configuring visibility groups

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses visibility groups to restrict access to
knowledge base content. To configure visibility groups, you create a group and
map it to an underlying AR group.
You can create visibility groups for a specific company or for the Global company:

When you create a visibility group for a specific company, only users who
belong to both the underlying AR group and the company can view articles that
are assigned to that visibility group.

When you create a visibility group for the Global company, the articles assigned
to that group are available for all users in the underlying AR group regardless
of their company.
You can create many visibility groups for one company. When assigning visibility
groups to articles, you can set complex permissions by assigning several visibility
groups from the same company or from different companies.
For more information about assigning visibility groups to articles, see the BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management User Guide.

NOTE
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management supports visibility groups that were
created in BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.5. When you import 7.5
knowledge articles, assigned visibility groups are imported as well to the new
release.

To configure visibility groups

1 From the IT Home page, select Knowledge Management > Functions > Manage
Visibility Groups.
The Visibility Group Info - Mapping to AR Group form opens in Search mode.
2 To search for visibility groups, enter search values and click Search.
If your server is configured to allow unqualified searches, you can leave all fields
blank to get all the visibility groups defined on the server. If not, a message appears
prompting you to enter a search value in at least one field.

NOTE
When you display a group in Search mode, you can modify only the AR group
field.

3 To create a new group, click New Request and enter values for the following
fields:

Company—Select the company to which the visibility group applies.

Group Name—Enter a name for the visibility group.

AR Group Name—Select the AR group that you want to associate with the
visibility group.

Chapter 2 Getting started 45

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

AR Group ID and Long Group Name are read-only fields that display the ID
and the full name of the selected AR group.

Status—Select Active to enable the group.
4 Click Save.

Managing standard configuration data

After you perform the standard configuration, you can view the data. When you
view the data, a form appears in which you can perform additional custom
configuration. For example, if you view support groups, you can use the Support
Group form to modify the data already entered or add additional information,
such as the business hours for a support group.

To view or modify standard configuration data

1 On the Standard Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console,
select the company for which to view or modify configuration data.
2 Click the View link next to the standard configuration data to view or modify.
The corresponding form appears with the search results that show all the records
for the selected company. If appropriate, records applicable to all companies are
also listed. For example, if you click the View link next to Support Group, the
Support Group form appears, showing all matching support groups.
The top part of the form shows the search results, and the bottom half shows the
selected record.
3 Select the appropriate record.
You can view the data or make changes, as appropriate. For additional
information, see the following table.

Table 2-1: Standard configuration data (Sheet 1 of 2)

Location of view link Form Additional information
Configuration for Company form See “Creating a company” on page 35.
Company
Organization People Organization You can make updates on this form, such as selecting a different
Update form department or typing the new name of an organization.
You can also make changes to the company’s organizations from
the Organizations tab of the Company form. See “Creating
organizations” on page 35.
Location Site Company You can view the locations for a company from this form, but you
Relationship form cannot make changes.
To modify a site, click the Edit Site button from this form to open
the Site form. See “Creating locations” on page 35.
Support Group Support Group form See “Creating support groups” on page 36.
People People form See “Creating people information” on page 37.

46 Administration Guide
 Managing standard configuration data

Table 2-1: Standard configuration data (Sheet 2 of 2)

Location of view link Form Additional information
Product Category Product Company From this form, you can only enable or disable the product
Relationship form category for the company or applications.
To modify the product category, click the Edit Product Category
button from this form to open the Product Catalog form. See
“Creating product categories (optional)” on page 40.
Operational Operational From this form, you can only enable and disable the operational
Category Company category for the company or applications.
Relationship form To modify the operational category, click the Edit Operational
Category button from the Product Category Relationship form to
open the BMC Atrium Operational Catalog form. See “Creating
operational categories (optional)” on page 42.
Assignment Routing Configure See “Configuring assignments (optional)” on page 42.
Assignment form

Chapter 2 Getting started 47

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

48 Administration Guide
Chapter

3 Article Conversion Tool

As of the 7.6.03 release of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management, knowledge

articles are based on BMC Remedy AR System forms. Knowledge articles that
were created in BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 and 7.5 releases are
based on XML templates and must be converted to AR System format in order to
operate properly.
The Article Conversion Tool provides an automatic conversion of the XML-based
articles and associations to AR forms. Typically, you run the Article Conversion
tool after upgrading to BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.03 or later.

NOTE
The Article Conversion Tool does not migrate article relevancy. Relevancy
information is reset for all articles after running the conversion.

The following topics are provided:

Remote access conversion (page 50)

Managing conversions (page 51)

Converting articles for default or modified templates (page 52)

Converting articles for new templates (page 53)

Troubleshooting (page 54)

Chapter 3 Article Conversion Tool 49

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Remote access conversion

If BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 or 7.5 installation resides on a
different machine than the BMC Remedy AR System installation (where the
Article Conversion tool is installed), perform one of the following options before
converting the articles.

Copy the content of the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management installation
folder\data folder to the BMC Remedy AR System machine.
Make sure that the data folder contains two subfolders and their content:
kms_data and kms_conf.

Access the files remotely over the network.
You can convert articles in the following system combinations:

Article Conversion Articles to Convert Comments

Tool
Windows UNIX You can install a software that
allows file and print services to
SMB/CIFS clients, such as Samba
service, on the UNIX system.
Windows Windows
UNIX UNIX

NOTE
The conversion is not supported for a combination where the conversion tool
resides on a UNIX system and the articles to convert reside on a Windows system.
BMC recommends that you copy the articles folders to any UNIX machine in the
same network.

Make sure that the AR server has been started with a special domain user, to
enable access to the files. This user must have read permissions for the file
system folder that contains the knowledge articles.

To start the AR System service with a special domain user

1 Stop the BMC Remedy AR Systems service.
2 Right click on the service and select Properties.
3 Open the Log On tab.
4 Select This Account and enter the name of the special domain user with the
permissions for the remote directories and sub-directories.
5 Enter and confirm the user password.
6 Click OK.
7 Start the BMC Remedy AR Systems service.

50 Administration Guide
 Managing conversions

Managing conversions
The Article Conversions window lets you run new conversions and view
conversions and events information of previous conversions.

Viewing conversion details

1 Choose Functions > Article Conversion Tool to open the Article Conversion
window.
Each row in the Article Conversions table is a previous conversion. To refresh the
table, click the icon. The following information is available for each
conversion:

Start—Displays the conversion start time.

End—Displays the conversion end time.

Status—Displays the conversion status:

In Progress—the conversion is still running.

Ended—the conversion has completed. Events or errors may have occurred.
Double-click the row to view more details.

Failed—the conversion did not complete. For more information, see,
“Troubleshooting.”

Summary—Displays summary details of the conversion.
2 Click the icon or double-click a row to view detailed events information
for a conversion.
The Article Conversion Details dialog box displays the conversion details and a list
of events that occurred during this conversion.
3 Double-click an event to view a complete description of the event. You can click
Delete All to delete all the events for this conversion.

Running new conversions

1 Choose Functions > Article Conversion Tool to open the Article Conversion
window.
2 Click the icon to run a new conversion.
For more information about converting articles, see “Converting articles for
default or modified templates” on page 52 and “Converting articles for new
templates” on page 53.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Converting articles for default or modified

templates
Perform this procedure if you want to convert articles that are based on default or
modified (modified fields) templates provided with the 7.2 and 7.5 releases.

To convert articles and associations

1 In the KM Console, choose Functions > Article Conversion Tool and click the
icon.
2 In the General Fields tab, enter the following information:

Full path—Specify a full path to the data folder that contains the articles you
want to convert. The path can be:

A full path to a folder on the local file system such as C:\data.

A UNC (Uniform Naming Convention) for remote access in the following
format: \\ComputerName\SharedFolder\Resource.

A full path to a shared folder on the network.
Make sure that the data\kms_data folder contains four subfolders: templates,
draft, publish, and attachments.

Owner Group—Select a user group from the list to specify the group.

Owner—Select the articles owner from the list.

Convert Only Visibility Groups—Select this option if you want to convert only
visibility groups information. This option is useful when you already converted
old articles without visibility groups information and now you want to convert
the visibility group information without converting all the articles again.
3 Click the Organization and Categorization and select a company from the list.
Select one of the following conversions mode:

Use Template Fields—The conversion tool copies organization and
categorization values from the XML template into the AR form.

Use Fixed Values—You enter organization and categorization values in the
fields below and the conversion tool automatically enters these values for all the
converted articles.
Enter values for Product Categorization, Operational Categorization, Business
Service, Organization, and Location fields.
4 (Modified templates only) Click the Mapping tab.
a In the XML Template Name list, select the template that you have modified.
b In the AR Form Name list, select the AR form to which the selected XML
template is converted.

52 Administration Guide
 Converting articles for new templates

c Select a modified field from the XML Field list and review the matching AR field
in the AR Field list.
d If required, change the mapping for the modified XML field and click Add
Field.
e After you complete mapping all the modified fields, click Save.
5 Click the Run tab and select one or more XML templates for conversion.
6 Click Run to start the conversion.
The conversion may take a while, depending on the number of articles that exist in
the folder you specified.
The tool does not provide progress indication of the conversion. You can retrieve
progress information from the arjavaplugin.log file (C:\Program Files\BMC
Software\ARSystem\Arserver\Db folder). The following text indicates that the
conversion has completed.
*******************************************
*** Knowledge Article Conversion REPORT ***
*******************************************
There are types of Articles that were
selected to transfer:
There were 50 found for Migration
Migrated successfully: 50
Failed: 0
###############END REPORT##################

Converting articles for new templates

Perform this procedure if you want to convert articles that are based on new
templates created for the 7.2 and 7.5 releases.

NOTE
Conversion of new templates is supported only if the XML schema of the new
template is identical to the XML schema of the 7.2 or 7.5 release.

To convert articles and associations

1 Create a new AR form with fields that match your new XML template.
2 Perform step 1 to step 3 as described in the previous section.
3 Click the Mapping tab to match fields in an XML template to fields in the
appropriate AR form.
a In the XML Template Name list, select a template for mapping.
b In the AR Form Name list, select an AR form to which the selected XML
template is converted.
c Select a field from the AR Field list.
d Select a matching field from the XML Field list.

Chapter 3 Article Conversion Tool 53

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

e Click Add Field.

The matched fields are added to the Mapping box.
f Repeat steps c to e to map all the fields in the template.
g After you complete mapping all the fields, click Save.
4 (optional) Repeat step 3 for all the XML templates you want to convert.
5 Click the Run tab and select one or more XML templates for conversion.
6 Click Run to start the conversion.
The conversion may take a while, depending on the number of articles that exist in
the folder you specified.
The tool does not provide progress indication of the conversion. you can retrieve
progress information from the arjavaplugin.log file located in the C:\Program
Files\BMC Software\ARSystem\Arserver\Db folder.
The following text indicates that the conversion has completed.
*******************************************
*** Knowledge Article Conversion REPORT ***
*******************************************
There are types of Articles that were
selected to transfer:
There were 50 found for Migration
Migrated successfully: 50
Failed: 0
###############END REPORT##################

Troubleshooting
The conversion process does not stop until all the articles are converted, even if
errors or failures occurred. BMC recommends that you review the generated log
file arjavaplugin.log located in the C:\Program Files\BMC
Software\ARSystem\Arserver\Db folder for information about the conversion
results after the conversion has completed.
Make sure that you have permissions to access and view this folder.
Possible reasons for failure are typically network problems, incorrect file names,
invalid XML schema, and an XML schema that is different from the XML schema
for 7.2 or 7.5 releases.
The log file contains the following information:

Number of successfully converted articles

Number of failed conversions with a short description of the reason

Names of articles that failed to convert and their types
If the log file indicates that several files failed to convert, you can run the
conversion tool again without re-mapping the fields by clicking the Run tab and
selecting the XML template for conversion.

54 Administration Guide
Chapter

4 Working with reports

The Reporting Console provides a list of reports for generation to view various
activities in the application.
The following topics are provided:

About reports (page 56)

Generating predefined reports (page 56)

Working with reports (page 59)

Chapter 4 Working with reports 55

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

About reports
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management enables Knowledge Admins to generate
predefined reports in the Reporting Console. You can manage the report scope, but
these reports are designed to be used without modification.
The Reporting Console enables you to create ad hoc reports that are based on
qualifications that you define, and advanced and saved qualifications. For more
information about creating custom reports, see the BMC Remedy Action Request
System Mid Tier Guide.
If you have other BMC Remedy applications installed, or have created custom
reports, additional reports and report types are listed in the Reporting Console. For
information about working with reports provided with other applications, see the
appropriate application guide.

Generating predefined reports

Standard BMC Remedy Knowledge Management reports are predefined Web
reports, giving browser users the ability to create formatted reports. You can
manage the scope of a predefined report using qualifications. You can also
generate reports with your own qualifications, advanced qualifications, and saved
qualifications.
Results are returned in the form of a list or both list and chart. Reports can contain
links that allow you to drill down from the report to view the data upon which the
report is based, or to open the article. For more information, see “Working with
reports” on page 59.
You can save reports in several standard formats, including Adobe PDF and
Postscript, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.
Table 4-1 lists the standard reports that are installed with the application and Best
Practice examples for using them.
Table 4-1: Standard reports (Sheet 1 of 2)
Report Name Display Type Description Best Practices
Article History List Shows a list of article status Use this report to track volume
changes and assignment events. of work per Assignee, and an
article’s life cycle.
Feedback Chart and list Shows articles sorted by average Use this report to determine the
feedback rating and Assignee. quality of article content per
article, and to measure the
overall quality of the
knowledge.

56 Administration Guide
 Generating predefined reports

Table 4-1: Standard reports (Sheet 2 of 2)

Report Name Display Type Description Best Practices
Articles Chart and list Shows articles sorted by Status, Use this report to compare the
Assignments Support Groups, and Assignee. number of articles assigned per
Support Groups number of
articles per status, and the
Assignee of each article.
This report also enables you to
gauge assignee workloads, and
indicates whether you need to
reassign tasks to other
assignees.
Articles up for Shows articles that are due for Use this report to track articles
Review review in the next x days. that need to be reviewed for
content accuracy, relevancy,
and up-to-dateness by a
specific date.
No Search Results List Shows details of searches that Use this report to identify
return no results. knowledge gaps regarding
missing content.
Note: When a guest user
performs a search with results,
the Searched By column is
blank.
Article Usage List Shows articles sorted by number Use this report to track the
of times Used/Viewed. usefulness of articles in solving
issues, and the number of times
it was opened for viewing.
You can:

Compare the number of
times an article is viewed
versus the number of times it
was used.

Use to measure the overall
quality of the knowledge.
Articles with Update Chart and list Articles sorted by number of Use this report to track the
Requests update requests number of times and dates on
which updates were requested
for an article.
Use to also measure the overall
quality of the knowledge.

Use the following procedure to generate a report for BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management in the Reporting Console.

NOTE
If you have formatting problems in viewing reports from a browser, verify that
report configuration settings are defined in the AR System User Preference form,
as described in the BMC Remedy Action Request System Configuration Guide.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

To generate a report
1 Open BMC Remedy Knowledge Management and access the Reporting Console
using one of the following options:

In the Knowledge Management Console, click Functions > Reports.

Open an article and click Consoles > Reports.
2 Verify that the All Reports parameter is selected in the Show field.
3 Select a report for generation using one of the following option:

In the Category field, choose, Knowledge Management, one of the following
options, and the name of the report:

All Knowledge—Article History, Articles Assignments, Articles with Update
Requests, or No Search Results

Open Knowledge—Article Usage, Articles up for Review, or Feedback

From the Reporting Console, select a report name whose form name begins with
the RKM: prefix.
4 (optional) By default when you run a report, a built-in query is used to select the
records included in the report. To change the report results, follow these steps:
a To override the built-in query to widen or change the report results, select
Override.
b To add a qualification that narrows the report results, click Show Additional
Filter.
For more information, see the BMC Remedy Action Request System BMC Remedy
Mid Tier Guide.
5 Click Run.
6 Enter any requested parameters, and click OK.

NOTE
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management reports are the only reports that filter
results using the Company parameter. However, this parameter is not displayed
in the generated report.

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 Working with reports

Working with reports

Table 4-2 provides information about how to work with generated reports
.

Table 4-2: Tasks and procedures

Task Procedure
Open an article Click the Article ID link from list of report results.
Export a report in 1 Click the Export icon.
any of the following 2 Select the export format and pages to export, and
formats: Excel, click OK.
PostScript, PDF, 3 Save or open the file.
Word, and
PowerPoint.
Print a report in 1 Click the Print icon.
HTML or PDF 2 Select the print format and pages to print, and
format, or in hard click OK.
copy form. 3 Define the print parameters.
4 If you selected the HTML option in step 3, define
the print settings and click Print.
Drill down report Note: As you drill down, individual links are
results, as follows: displayed for each level to which you have drilled
down. Click a link to return to that specific view.

Display a table of 1 Click the TOC icon.
contents that 2 Click an item on the list.
enables you to drill 3 Repeat step 2, as required.
down on chart
report results

Use the report Click the part of the graphic you want to drill down,
display to drill for example, a section of a pie chart or a bar.
down report
results

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60 Administration Guide
Chapter

5 Managing knowledge sources

This section describes how to add, modify, and perform ad hoc re-indexing of
knowledge sources. These tasks are performed by the application administrator
(Knowledge Admin role).
The following topics are provided:

About managing knowledge sources (page 62)

Accessing knowledge source management (page 62)

About the Registration Wizard (page 62)

Registering searchable items (page 63)

Registering knowledge base items (page 64)

Running the Registration Wizard (page 68)

Using Registration Wizard parameters (page 69)

Registering new knowledge sources (page 74)

Modifying knowledge sources (page 74)

Viewing registration and indexing statuses (page 75)

Indexing on demand (page 76)

Viewing the log file (page 76)

Managing knowledge article templates (page 77)

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

About managing knowledge sources

Knowledge sources contain data that can be managed and searched from within
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management after they are registered. Only knowledge
that is contained in registered knowledge sources is recognized and used by BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management.
Registration enables Knowledge Admin users to add knowledge sources in
addition to the following default knowledge sources:

Decision Tree

How To

Known Error

Problem Solution

Reference

Accessing knowledge source management

Follow these steps to access the knowledge source management location.

To access knowledge source management

1 In the IT Home page, click Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Console.
2 Under Functions, click Manage Knowledge Sources.

About the Registration Wizard

The Registration Wizard enables you to register new knowledge sources and
modify existing ones. When you add or modify a source, the Registration Wizard
opens and enables you to select the knowledge source type that you want to
register. Sources are used to filter indexed knowledge when searches are
performed. For more information, see the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management
User Guide.
The following source types are available for selection during the registration
process:

Searchable Item—Provides the option to register AR forms as knowledge
sources that are searchable only; no metadata or life cycle is saved or managed.

Knowledge Base Item—Provides the option to register external files or AR
forms. Metadata is saved and managed. Life cycle management is optional for
AR Forms.

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Registering searchable items

This section provides the registration sequences and prerequisites for registering
searchable items as knowledge sources.

NOTE
Visibility groups are not supported for searchable items registration.

Searchable item panel sequence

The Registration Wizard uses the following panel sequence when you register
searchable items as knowledge sources:
Welcome > Source > Relevancy Fields > Organization > Categorization > Content
Fields > Accessibility > Completion

Prerequisites for searchable item registration

Fulfill the following list of prerequisites before you register searchable items as
knowledge sources.

Verify that the Title Relevancy field has Public permissions.

For Relevancy fields, select a Character, Diary or Attachment field and set the
field's entry mode to Optional or Required.

For Organization and Categorization fields, select a Character field. Set the
Entry Mode property to Optional or Required and the Permission property to
Public.

Verify that you have permission to access forms and fields that the Registration
Wizard provides for selection during the registration process.

For Content fields, select a Character, Diary, Attachment or Table field. Set the
Entry Mode property to Optional or Required.

Verify that the forms you are registering are Regular, Join, or Vendor forms.
(Audit, Display-Only, and View forms cannot be registered.)

NOTE
When you register a searchable item as a source, existing Multi Form Search (MFS)
and FTS values are cleared. To keep existing MFS values, you must re-enter them
in BMC Remedy Development Studio. To keep existing FTS values, either enter the
values in Registration Wizard content fields, or re-enter in BMC Remedy
Development Studio.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Registering knowledge base items

This section provides descriptions, registration sequences, a Best Practice example,
and prerequisites for registering file system paths and AR forms as knowledge
sources.

Registering file system paths

Registering a File System Path enables searching for files in a specified directory
and is used for sources that are retrieved from an external file system. When you
register this source type, you define the path to the folder that contains the files that
you want to index for searching. The folder can be stored on the AR Server
computer or on a remote computer to which you have access. BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management stores and manages the metadata of this source.

File system path sequence

The Registration Wizard uses the following panel sequence when you register file
system paths as knowledge sources:
Welcome > Source > Organization > Categorization > Accessibility > Completion

Best Practice example

Scenario—You have a directory that contains a mixture of files types.
1 Open the Knowledge Management Console.
2 Under Functions, click Manage Knowledge Sources.
3 Click Add.
4 In the Welcome panel, select Knowledge Base Item > File System Path and click
Next.
5 Enter the full path of the directory on a remote computer using Universal Naming
Convention (UNC) name syntax, or enter a local path on the AR Server computer.
6 Provide a name for this source.
7 Enter the file extensions that are to be indexed and managed by BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management, (for example, pdf;doc;txt).
8 Define whether to include subfolders.
9 Enter the Owner and Owner Group.
10 Enter the Description and Language, as required.
11 In the Organization and Categorization panel, enter information in the appropriate
fields.

To add visibility groups to the source, select a company and a visibility group
from the lists and click Add.

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 Registering knowledge base items

The visibility group is assigned to all the articles from that source.

You can add more than one visibility group for each source.
12 In the Accessibility panel, selects the Companies to which this source belongs.
13 Click Finish in the Completion panel.
14 (optional) Follow the registration status in the Status column of the Manage
Knowledge Sources page.

Prerequisites for file system path registration

Fulfill the following list of prerequisites before you register file system paths as
knowledge sources.

For Organization and Categorization field mapping only—Set the Entry Mode
property for Character fields to Optional or Required, and the Permission
property to Public.

Before you register file system paths as knowledge sources, verify that the
account, which runs the AR server process on the computer on which the AR
Server resides, has permission to the directory (remote or local) that contains the
files that need to be indexed.

If the file system folder resides on a Windows computer and BMC Remedy
AR System resides on a UNIX computer, you must allow access to the folder. To
allow access, install a product that allows file and print services to SMB/CIFS
clients, such as Samba, on the UNIX system.

Before you register knowledge sources that reside on a remote computer, verify
that the AR server has been started with a special domain user, to enable access
to the files. This user must have read permissions for the file system folder that
contains the knowledge sources. If BMC Remedy AR System is installed on a
UNIX computer, you must start the AR server process using the special domain
user.

To start the AR server service with a special domain user

1 Stop the BMC Remedy AR Systems service.
2 Right-click on the service and select Properties.
3 Open the Log On tab.
4 Select This Account and enter the name of the special domain user with the
permissions for the remote directories and sub-directories.
5 Enter and confirm the user password.
6 Click OK.
7 Start the BMC Remedy AR System service.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Registering AR forms
Register AR forms as sources that are retrieved from an existing AR form that you
define. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management stores and manages the metadata,
and optionally the life cycle, of this source. When you register a new knowledge
source in the Registration Wizard, you have the option to define whether a life
cycle is managed for the source. For more information, see “Source panel” on
page 69.

NOTE
Registering new knowledge sources of type AR form can put heavy load on the
server.
When registering Knowledge Base Items of type AR Form, a display only character
field z1D_RKM_Char01 (ID 302298901) is added to the source form. This field does
not belong to any view.

AR form panel sequence

The Registration Wizard uses the following panel sequence when you register AR
forms as knowledge sources:
Welcome > Source > Relevancy Fields > Mapping Type > Organization >
Categorization > Content Fields > Accessibility > Completion

Best Practice example

Scenario—You are defined with a Knowledge Admin role, and have an AR form
that you want to register to BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. The form
name is FAQ, and the form has only two fields: Question and Answer. You want
the question field to be shown as the title of the search results, and you want BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management to manage the life cycle of the articles within
this form.
The following are the steps that you would typically perform to implement your
scenario:
1 Open the Knowledge Management Console.
2 Under Functions, click Manage Knowledge Sources.
3 Click Add.
4 In the Welcome panel of the Registration Wizard, select Knowledge Base Item >
AR Form and click Next.
5 Perform the following steps in the Source panel:
a Select the FAQ form.
b Enter the form’s view.
This is the form’s view that will be displayed when the form is opened from
search results, Knowledge Management Console, and Create (new article).
c Select the Life Cycle option.

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 Registering knowledge base items

d Enter information in fields, as appropriate.

e Click Next.
6 In the Relevancy panel, choose Question from the Title field menu.
You have mapped the Question Field to the BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management Title. The Question field is now the title of the FAQ articles, and will
be shown as the search results title.
7 Select the Answer fields to be indexed in the content field.

NOTE
The Question field is indexed automatically because it was mapped to Title.

8 Enter the appropriate information in the Organization and Categorization panels.

To add visibility groups to the source, select a company and a visibility group
from the lists and click Add.
The visibility group is assigned to all the articles from that source.

You can add more than one visibility group for each source.
9 In the Accessibility panel, select the companies to which this source belongs.
10 Click Finish in the Completion panel.
11 (optional) Follow the registration status in the Status column of the Manage
Knowledge Sources page.

Prerequisites for AR form registration

Fulfill the following list of prerequisites before you register searchable items as
knowledge sources.

In addition to the Knowledge Admin permissions, you must have permission to
update the Relevancy, Content, Organization, and Categorization fields.

Verify that the Title Relevancy field has Public permissions.

For Relevancy fields, select a Character, Diary or Attachment field and set the
field’s Entry Mode to Optional or Required.

For Organization and Categorization fields mapping, select a Character field.
Set the Entry Mode property to Optional or Required and the Permission
property to Public.

Verify that you have access permission to forms and fields that the Registration
wizard provides for selection during the registration process.

For Content fields, select a Character, Diary, Attachment or Table field. Set the
Entry Mode property to Optional or Required.

Verify that AR form knowledge base items contain a character field with ID 179
(GUID), and that the appropriate users that use the source have permissions to
this field.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Verify that the default value property is defined for required fields in the source
form.

Verify that the forms you are registering are Regular, Join, or Vendor forms.
(Audit, Display-Only, and View forms cannot be registered.)

Remove the web toolbar from the default view, so it does not appear in the
article's content area.
To remove the web toolbar from the default view:
1 Open the form in Developer Studio.
2 Click anywhere in the form area to open the View property.
3 Under Appearances, select the Web Toolbar property and verify that the
value is set to Hidden.

Running the Registration Wizard

When you add or modify a source, the Registration Wizard opens. Table 5-1
provides a list of the tasks that are available for managing knowledge sources.

Table 5-1: Tasks for managing knowledge sources

Task Action
Add a knowledge source. Click Add, and follow the instructions for
completing the Registration Wizard. For more
information, see “Registering new knowledge
sources” on page 74.
Modify a registered knowledge source. Click Modify and make changes in the
appropriate panel. For more information, see
“Modifying knowledge sources” on page 74.
Perform ad hoc indexing. Click Rebuild Index. For more information,
see “Indexing on demand” on page 76.

NOTE
Tasks cannot be simultaneously performed by multiple users on the same source.

You can follow the progress of the registration process in the Status column of the
Manage Knowledge Sources page. For more information, see “Viewing
registration and indexing statuses” on page 75. When the status of the registration
process is Ready, you can use the knowledge source.

NOTE
After you add or modify a source, you do not have to wait until the indexing or
registration process is complete before you re-run the Registration Wizard.

68 Administration Guide
 Using Registration Wizard parameters

Using Registration Wizard parameters

Table 5-2 on page 69 through Table 5-8 on page 73 present the fields that are
available for each panel. The Modify Enabled column depicts the fields that are
available for modification when you modify an existing source.

Table 5-2: Source panel (Sheet 1 of 2)

Parameter Value Source Type Modify Enabled
Form Name Enter the form for displaying the
Searchable Items No
knowledge source.
Knowledge Base Item
Note: Forms can only be registered - AR Form
once.
View Name Enter the form’s view that will be
Searchable Items Yes
displayed from when the form is
Knowledge Base Item
opened from search results, - AR Form
Knowledge Management Console,
and Create (new article).
Full Path Using UNC name syntax, enter the Knowledgebase Item - No
full path of the source on a remote File System Path
computer, or enter a local path on
the AR Server computer.
Note: You can create only a single
file system source per folder.
Source Name Enter a unique name for this source. All source types No
This name is displayed in the
Sources section of the Advanced
Search page.
File Extensions Use either of the following Knowledgebase Item - Yes
methods: File System Path

Type all file types to be used. If
you have more than one file type,
use a semicolon (;) as a separator,
for example, doc;pdf. For more
information about file types, see
the BMC AR System 7.6.03
Configuration Guide.

Use a Regular Expression phrase
to qualify file names for searching
on. Regular Expressions must
begin with an asterisk (*)
Example
To search all .doc and .pdf files
with UTF-8 support:
[\\p{Space}*||\\p{L}+||\
\p{Digit}*||\\p{Punct}*&
&[^\\.]]+\\.(doc||pdf)
Include Select this if you want the search to Knowledgebase Item - Yes
Subfolders include sub directories. File System Path

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Table 5-2: Source panel (Sheet 2 of 2)

Parameter Value Source Type Modify Enabled
Description Enter a free text description of the All source types Yes
source.
This information is intended for use
as a referential aid when modifying
the source.
Owner Group Select the Owner Group for the All source types No
form.
Owner Select the owner for the form. All source types No
Note: The owner must have a
Knowledge Admin or Knowledge
User role.
Article Language Select the language of the source.
Knowledgebase Item - No
File System Path

Knowledgebase Item -
AR Form
Life Cycle Check this if you want BMC Knowledgebase Item - No
Management Remedy Knowledge Management AR Form
to manage the life cycle of the
source.
For more information, see “Article
life cycle” on page 21.
Indexing Interval Enter the indexing interval for the
Knowledgebase Item - Yes
source. AR Form
Note: More frequent indexing
Searchable Items—
provides better access to article Join or Vendor forms
updates but may affect system only.
performance.

Table 5-3: Relevancy Fields Panel

Parameter Value Source Type Modify Enabled
Title Enter the name of the field to be used
Searchable Items Yes
as the title for the source. This is the
Knowledgebase Item
content that will be used as the title - AR Form
for searching.
Keywords Enter the name of the field to be used
Searchable Items Yes
as the keywords for the source. This
Knowledgebase Item
is the content that will be used as - AR Form
keywords for searching.

70 Administration Guide
 Using Registration Wizard parameters

Table 5-3: Relevancy Fields Panel

Parameter Value Source Type Modify Enabled
Environment Enter the name of the field to be used
Searchable Items Yes
as the environment for the source.
Knowledgebase Item
This is the content that will be used - AR Form
as the environment for searching.
Displayed ID Enter the name of the field to be used Searchable Items No
as the Displayed ID for the source.
This is the content that will be used
as the Displayed ID for searching.
If nothing is entered, the Request ID
(core field 1) value is displayed.

Table 5-4: Mapping Type Panel

You can select either fixed values for categorization, or dynamic values that will be taken from the AR
form and which require that you map existing fields to the fields on the AR form, as follows:

Searchable Item—Mapping To Existing Fields only

Knowledgebase Item - File System Path—Used Fixed Values only

Knowledgebase Item - AR Form—Used Fixed Values and Mapping To Existing Fields
Parameter Value Source Type Modify Enabled
Mapping To Specify the corresponding fields for Knowledgebase Item - No
Existing Fields each Organization and AR Form
Categorization field.
Organizational information and
BMC Remedy ITSM categorization
is copied from the AR form that you
chose as the knowledge source to
the article’s Categorization and
Organization fields
Use Fixed Values Specify organizational information Knowledgebase Item - No
and BMC Remedy ITSM AR Form
categorization for copying to the
article’s Categorization and
Organization fields.
Note: All source articles contain the
same Organization and
Categorization data

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Table 5-5: Organization panel

Parameter Task Source Type Modify Enabled
Company Enter the Character field to be All knowledge
Searchable Items—Yes
Region mapped or the fixed value to be sources
AR forms—No
used.
File System Path—No
Site Group
Note: Set the Entry Mode property to
Site
Optional or Required, and the
Permission property to Public.
Article Visibility Select a company and a visibility
AR forms Yes
Groups group form the lists to assign to the
File System Path
source and click Add.
Left table Displays selected visibility groups
for the source

Table 5-6: Categorization panel

Parameter Task Source type Modify Enabled
Operational Tier 1 Enter the Character field to be All knowledge
Searchable Items—Yes
Operational Tier 2 mapped or the fixed value to be sources
AR forms—No
used.
File System Path—No
Operational Tier 3
Product Tier 1 Note: Set the Entry Mode property to
Optional or Required, and the
Product Tier 2
Permission property to Public.
Product Tier 3
Product Name
Manufacturer
Model/Version
Business Service

Table 5-7: Content Fields panel

Parameter Value Source type Modify Enabled
Field Select a Character, Diary,
Searchable Items Yes
Attachment or Table field, and click
AR forms
Add Field.
Note: Set the Entry Mode property to
Optional or Required.

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 Using Registration Wizard parameters

Table 5-8: Accessibility panel

Parameter Value Source type Modify Enabled
Company Enter the companies for which their All knowledge sources Yes
defined users or members are
allowed to use this specific
knowledge source and click Add
Company.
Form Permissions Perform one of the following steps
Searchable Items Yes

Select a form permission that is
AR forms Note: Form
defined for the AR form you Permissions
selected as a source. Click Sync functionality is
Permissions to add these enabled only when
permissions to the source you are modifying an
registering. existing source.

Select a form permission in the
Registered Permissions table and
click Remove Permissions to
remove the permissions.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Registering new knowledge sources

Perform the following procedure to add and register a knowledge source.

NOTE
The source type that you select during registration cannot be modified.

To register a new knowledge source

1 In the IT Home page, click Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Console.
2 Under Functions, click Manage Knowledge Sources.
3 Click Add.
4 On the Welcome page select the knowledge source type for registration.
5 Click Next.
6 In each page, enter the appropriate information as shown in “Using Registration
Wizard parameters” on page 69, and click Next.
7 In the Completion screen, click Finish.

Modifying knowledge sources

If registration fails or you want to modify registration settings that are available for
modification, for example, the list of file extensions, you can run the Registration
Wizard and make the appropriate modifications. Modify functionality is enabled
for registered knowledge sources only with the following source statuses: Ready,
Failed, Update Failed, and Sync Failed. For more information, see “Viewing
registration and indexing statuses” on page 75.
After you click Modify, the Registration Wizard opens and displays the
registration data that was previously entered. BMC Remedy Knowledge
Management performs a rollback process before the re-registration of a failed
source begins.
Clicking Finish in the Registration Wizard resets the status to In Progress. If an
error occurs during the rollback process, the status is reset to Failed, and the
modification process can begin again.
Run the following procedure to modify a knowledge source.

NOTE
Knowledge sources cannot be simultaneously updated by different users.

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 Viewing registration and indexing statuses

To modify a knowledge source

1 In the IT Home screen, click Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Console.
2 In the Functions section of the Knowledge Management Console, click Manage
Knowledge Sources.
3 In the Manage Knowledge Sources screen, select the source to modify and click
Modify.
4 In the Knowledge Registration Wizard, enter the appropriate information as
shown in “Using Registration Wizard parameters” on page 69, and click Next.

NOTE
Not all fields are available for modification.

5 In the Completion screen, click Finish.

Viewing registration and indexing statuses

The Status column displays the registration or indexing status, and the Modified
Date column displays the date and time that the status was previously modified.
To view the current status, you must click the Refresh icon. Statuses display in the
following sequence:
1 In Progress—Source is being registered or re-registered. This step is skipped when
you rebuild an existing index.
2 Indexing—Source is being indexed.
3 Updating—Source is being updated.
4 Any of the following final statuses, as appropriate:
a Ready—Source is ready for use and the knowledge can be used, for example,
managed, created, searched on, and to which update requests can be added.
b Failed—Registration failed. For more information, see “Modifying knowledge
sources” on page 74.
c Sync—For external files. Registration is synchronizing between external files
and the system.
d Sync Failed—Synchronization failed between File System Path source and BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management. For more information, see Chapter 7,
“Configuring indexing intervals.”
e Update Failed—Source update failed.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Indexing on demand
You can override defined indexing intervals by performing ad hoc indexing of a
knowledge source and rebuilding the index for the source, as required. For more
information, see “Indexing interval parameters” on page 89
After the indexing is successfully completed, the source becomes immediately
available for searching.
To perform ad hoc indexing, click Rebuild Index.
The Status column displays the following status sequence: In Progress > Indexing
or Failed > Ready.

Viewing the log file

For details about the registration process and results, see the arjavaplugin.log
file in the appropriate following location:

Windows—\defined directory\BMC Software\ARSystem\Arserver\Db

UNIX—/defined directory/bmc/Arserver/Db
For more information, see “Configuring system settings” on page 88.

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 Managing knowledge article templates

Managing knowledge article templates

This section describes procedures and best practices for creating new knowledge
article templates. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides the following
knowledge article templates out of the box:

Decision Tree

How To

Known Error

Problem Solution

Reference

Creating knowledge article templates

You can create new knowledge article templates that suite your company
requirements. For example, if your knowledge base includes articles in the format
of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), you may want to create an FAQ
knowledge article template.

Best Practice example

Scenario—Your knowledge base contains an existing FAQ form that is not one of
the out of the box templates. You want to turn this form into a knowledge article
template, so knowledge users can create new FAQ articles using a pre-defined
template. You also want to be able to manage the form’s records as knowledge
articles with metadata and life cycle management.
1 In Developer Studio, open the existing FAQ form.
2 Modify the form’s layout for better display as a knowledge article.
You can create a new view and modify the layout as required. Verify that required
fields are set with default values or set them to optional.
3 Register the form as described in “Registering AR forms.”
a Before registering, make sure the form complies with the prerequisites for
registering AR forms. See “Prerequisites for AR form registration.”
b In the Welcome panel, select Knowledge Base Item > AR Form.
c In the Source panel, specify the View Name and select Life Cycle Management.
After registration, all the form’s records automatically become FAQ type
knowledge articles with metadata and life cycle management.

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To create a new template

1 In Developer Studio, create a new Regular AR form.

TIP
You can quickly create a new form by opening the regular form of one of the
templates provided out of the box and saving it under a new name. For example,
open the RKM:HowToTemplate to create a new how to form.

2 Add fields and design the template as required.

TIP
To avoid unnecessary scroll bars, copy the form’s measurements from one of the
templates provided out of the box.

3 Register the new form as described in “Registering AR forms.”

a Before registering the new form, make sure it complies with the prerequisites for
registering AR forms. See “Prerequisites for AR form registration.”
b In the Welcome panel, select Knowledge Base Item > AR Form.
c In the Source panel, select Life Cycle Management.
After registration, you can change the form’s user interface, but if you add new
fields and mark them for indexing or as relevancy fields, or change the form
permissions, you will need to modify the knowledge source as well. For more
information, see “Modifying knowledge sources.”

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Chapter

6 Configuring approvals

This section is intended for the application administrator who configures

approvals to work with BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. Configuration
tasks are performed from the Application Administration Console.

NOTE
You must have Knowledge Config permissions to configure approvals in BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management.

The following topics are provided:

Approval process overview (page 80)

Configuring approval chains for Global company (page 81)

Configuring approval mappings (page 82)

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Approval process overview

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management requires approval for the following status
transitions:

before an article status is set to Published.

before an article status is set to Retired.

before an article is Cancelled. A user with Knowledge Admin role can move
articles to Cancel from any status and without an approval process.
For the Global company, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides a set of
predefined approval chains for each status transition that requires an approval
(Published, Retired, and Cancelled).

Auto approval—The default approval chain configured in system installation.
The system provides an automatic approval for every request.

Level approval—The following options are available:

Level all—All the approvers from the approvers list must approve the article
for each level. The article moves to the next approval level only after all the
approvers have approved. If the approvers include a group, one member of
the group is enough.

Level one—At least one approver from the approvers list must approve the
article for each level. The article moves to the next approval level after one
approver has approved.

Ad-hoc approval—The first default approver is the owner of the article. Each
approver can decide to further submit the request to other approvers.
Based on the configured approval chains, the system determines whether approval
process is required and when it is required who are the approvers.

Approval workflow
At the beginning of an article life cycle, the article enters the pre-publish review
process. The following workflow describes the Published approval workflow and
applies to Retired and Cancelled statuses.

Step 1 The designated approvers can view pending requests and approve or reject them
in Approval Central that is available from IT Home > Quick Links or from
Knowledge Management Console > Consoles > Approval Console.

For more information on Approval Central, see the BMC Remedy Approval Server
Guide.
During the approval process and before the article is set to Published, Knowledge
users can withdraw articles from the approval workflow by opening the article
and modifying it.

Step 2 The approvers approve or reject the article.

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Step 3 The article status changes to Published, Retired, or Cancel depending on the
request that initiated the approval process.

If the request is rejected, the article status reverts back as follows:

For Publish Approval to Draft status

For Retire Approval to Published status

For Cancel to Published status.

Configuring approval chains for Global

company
For every status transition, define one of the four predefined approval chains.

To configure approval chains

1 From the IT Home page, choose Application Admin Console > Custom
Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Approvals Configuration > Approval Chains.
2 For every status transition (Publish, Retire, and Cancel), enable the approval chain
that you want:
a Select an approval chain from the list and click Modify to open the Approval
Chain Definition page.
For example, if you want to enable Level one approval for Publish, select the
LevelOneForPublish approval chain.
b To enable the approval chain, select Enabled in the Status list.
Only one chain can be enabled for each status. Disable a chain that you do not use.

Configuring approval chains for a specific

company
You can configure the predefined approval chains for other companies by creating
new approval chains.

To create new approval chains

1 From the IT Home page, choose Application Admin Console > Custom
Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Approvals Configuration > Approval Chains.
2 Click Create to open the Approval Chain Definition page.
3 Enter the approval chain name and select the company that you want.

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4 Configure the approval chain properties.

a In the Form field, select RKM:KnowledgeArticleManager.
b In the Order field, enter a value less than 20.
c In the Process Name field, select one of the predefined approval processes.
d In the Selection Criteria field, click the expand box icon to open the Advanced
Qualification Builder and define the run if condition, which triggers the
selected process, to use the selected company:
‘ArticleStatusEnglish’=”Publish Approval” AND ‘Company’ =
“[company name]”

TIP
You can copy the selection criteria string from the predefined processes configured
for the Global company.

e Click Select to save and close the Advanced Qualification Builder.

5 Click Apply to add the process to the new approval chain.
6 Define an action for all the possible results of the process Approved, Rejected,
Cancelled, and Error.
a Select a status in the approval chain tree (for example, Approved).
b Click the Add Set Fields Action panel header (on the right side), and click
Apply.
c Select the new Set Field in the approval chain tree, and click Add.
d In the Set Field Value dialog box, set fields and values as defined in process
provided out of the box.
e In the Value field, enter the value that you want to set in the field.
f Click Save.
7 Click Save to save the approval chain.

Configuring approval mappings

Approvers are people with the authority to approve or reject a request. Define
approvers and approval groups for your company. The approval process
automatically routs approval requests to the people you define based on their level
in the process.

To create approver mappings

1 From the IT Home page, choose Application Admin Console > Custom
Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management
Approvals Configuration > Approval Mappings.

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2 Enter the required information in the following fields:

Field Action
Approval For Select the type of approver.

Individual—If you select this option, enter the individual’s last
name and press ENTER. The Approver ID (or login name) is
automatically filled.

Group—If you select this option, the First Name, Last Name, and
Approver ID fields are replaced by Support Company, Support
Organization, and Support Group Name.
Select values for each field. The items that appear in the Support
Organization list depend on the option you select for Support
Company. The items that appear in the Support Group list
depend on the option you select for Support Organization.
Note: If you select the Group option, all people who belong to the
support group and have the Knowledge Management Approver
functional role are set up as approvers. By default, only one
approver in the group must sign off on the approval before it can
move to the next level.
First Name (Approval For Individual) If you select Approval For Individual,
this field appears.
Note: As you begin typing the first name of the approver, the field
automatically fills in with possible selections. Press ENTER
when you are able to identify the required person.
Last Name (Approval For Individual) Use auto-fill to enter the approver’s last
name.
Approver ID (Approval For Individual) The Login ID of the approver. this field
is automatically filled when you select the approver by first or last
name.
Assignment Select Yes or No to indicate if the individual or group is available
Availability for the assignment.
Status For the approver mapping to be available, select a status of
Enabled.
Approval Indicator Select Knowledge Management.
When you select this option, the RKM Criteria section appear
under Additional Mappings. This enables you to map specific
approvers to specific articles based on operational categorization
and product categorization filters.
Phase Company Phase company for this approver mapping.
Automatically filled when you select a Phase Name.
Phase Name Select RKM Approval.
Level Specify the level of approval for the individual or group.

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Field Action
Description (optional) Enter a description for this approver mapping.
Additional (optional) Enter additional mappings that are based on product and
Mappings operational categorization. Product and operational categorization
are used to categorize different products or configuration items
and operations. Available values depend on the company and the
value selected for the previous tier.

3 Click Save.

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7 Configuring general settings

This section describes how to configure general application, system, and feedback
string settings. Configuration tasks are performed by configuration administrators
from the Custom Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console.

NOTE
You must have the Knowledge Config user role to configure application settings
for BMC Remedy Knowledge Management.

The following topics are provided:

Configuring application settings (page 86)

Configuring feedback strings (page 87)

Configuring system settings (page 88)

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Configuring application settings

Perform the following procedure to configure general settings.

To configure application settings

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Configuration > Application Configuration, and click Open.
3 Enter the Company you are configuring in the Company field, and click Search.
The Application Configuration page displays configuration settings if any exist, or
notifies you that you must begin to enter configuration settings.
4 Proceed to enter configuration settings as provided in Table 7-1 on page 86

Table 7-1: General application settings (Sheet 1 of 2)

Parameter Description Value
Company Name of the company for which you are configuring settings
Search section
Words Around Hits Configuration for displaying
None—Displays only the article title.
search results
Excerpts—Displays the words that surround
the first few instances of search terms. This
enables users to easily recognize whether the
document is relevant to their search.
Search Result Chunk Number of search results displayed per page.
Size
Relevancy section
Note: When recalculated for a Published article, the boost parameter is also recalculated for any Draft article
that has been created from the Published article. Therefore, the relevance of the Draft remains identical to
that of the Published article.
Boost Use Relevancy Configuration for increasing For more information, see the BMC Remedy
relevance when users click Use AR System Configuration Guide.
on an article.
Boost View Relevancy Configuration for increasing
relevance when users click View
on an article.
Knowledge Article section
View Related Article Defines which article version is
Latest version—Most recently updated article
displayed when viewing a version
related article.
Related version—Article version that was
originally related to the article

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Table 7-1: General application settings (Sheet 2 of 2)

Parameter Description Value
Knowledge Defines the method that the
Knowledge Assignment Round Robin
Assignment Method Assignment Engine selects an
Knowledge Assignment by Number
assignee from a support group.
Knowledge Assignment by Capacity
For more information, see the BMC Remedy
AR System Configuration Guide.
Notifications Enables or disables notification
Enable—All notifications
definitions of all types that are
Disable—All notifications
defined per user in BMC For more information, see the BMC Remedy
Remedy AR System. AR System Configuration Guide.
History Recording section
Record Article View Enables you to turn the history N/A
recording functionality on or off.
Search History Level Defines the volume of search
None—Record no search requests.
requests that are recorded as
All—Record all search requests.
search history, to enable you to
No Hits—Record only search requests that
control the amount of history yield no results.
items in your database.
Search History Defines the number of days that N/A
Retention a search is saved.
Article History Defines the number of days that N/A
Retention information about changes made
to an article is saved.

Configuring feedback strings

Users submit feedback on an article to indicate the level of the content and its
usefulness to them. The more feedback that is available for an article, the easier it
is for users to make that decision. Feedback can be submitted and viewed by all
users that have permission to see that article.
Feedback is rated by number and description. The following feedback ratings are
available:

1—Not Usable

2—Poor: Inaccurate

3—Fair: Insufficient

4—Good: Usable but needs improvement

5—Excellent: Effective and accurate
The Feedback Configuration page enables you to define localized strings per
rating number for languages in addition to the localizations that are supported by
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management user interface.

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To configure feedback strings

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Configuration > Feedback String Configuration, and click Open.
3 Click Search, with or without entering search criteria, to open Modify mode.
The rating table displays strings that match your search criteria.
4 In the Company field, enter the company for which the localized rating description
is applicable.
5 In the Locale field, enter the locale for the rating your want to localize.
6 In the Rating field, enter the rating number.
7 In the Rating Description field, enter the localized string and click Save.

Configuring system settings

Perform the procedures provided in this section to configure system settings

To access system settings

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Configuration > System Configuration, and click Open.
3 Click Search to open Modify mode.

Configuring Plugin Log Levels

Plugins are the internal structure of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management that
enables certain workflows. The object of the plugin log level is to enable BMC
Customer Support to fix workflow issues from within the system.

To configure plugin log levels

1 Select one of the following log levels in the Plugin Log level field:

ALL—Has the lowest rank and is intended to turn on all logging.

DEBUG—Designates fine-grained informational events that are most useful to
debug an application.

ERROR—Designates error events that might still allow the application to
continue running.

FATAL—Designates very severe error events that will presumably lead the
application to abort.

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INFO—Designates informational messages that highlight the progress of the

application at coarse-grained level; default value.

OFF—Has the highest rank and is intended to turn off logging.

WARN—Designates potentially harmful situations.
2 Select Yes next to the workflows for which you are defining this log level, and click
Save.

NOTE
You can also click Select All to select all the workflows, or Deselect All to clear all
selections.

Configuring indexing intervals

Indexing intervals define the intervals that occur between automatic indexing
instances of registered knowledge sources. The indexing interval parameters in the
Indexing section are the global interval values.
To configure indexing intervals, set the interval for the following parameters and
click Save.

Table 7-2: Indexing interval parameters

Parameter Description
File System Polling Interval Common global value for all knowledge sources that
are registered as file system paths. After indexing is
complete, external articles are available for
searching.
Note: This value cannot be changed per knowledge
source in the Registration Wizard.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management runs the
synchronization between new, updated, and deleted
files and article metadata that exists in BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management. This process runs
automatically according to the configured interval
value.
For more information see the BMC Remedy
AR System Configuration Guide.
Default AR Form Indexing Interval Default value for all knowledge sources that are
registered as AR forms.
This value can be overridden per knowledge source
by setting the value in the Registration Wizard. For
more information, “Running the Registration
Wizard” on page 68.

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90 Administration Guide
Chapter

8 Configuring status transitions

This section provides an overview of status groups, types, workflows, and user
permissions, and describes how to localize status strings and configure status
transitions. Configuration tasks are performed by configuration administrators
from the Custom Configuration tab of the Application Administration Console.

NOTE
You must have the Knowledge Config user role to configure status configuration
settings for BMC Remedy Knowledge Management.

The following topics are provided:

About status transitions (page 92)

Status groups and types (page 92)

Status transition workflows (page 95)

User permissions for changing statuses (page 95)

Localizing status strings (page 96)

Configuring status transitions (page 97)

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

About status transitions

Statuses are used to denote the current phase of an article within the article’s life
cycle. Each phase determines factors such as:

Type of work the article requires

User or group to whom the article can be assigned

Status transition options for the article

User viewing permissions

Whether the article is searchable

Status groups and types

Article statuses are divided by status group and type. The types compose the
workflow phases. See “Status transition workflows” on page 95.

Status groups
Table 8-1 presents a description of the status types and divides them into the
following groups:

Article status group—Group containing either Published or Not Published
articles. For more information, see “Roles and privileges” on page 22.

Status bar group—Group of similar statuses that is displayed on the status bar.
Table 8-1: Status groups and types
Article status group Status bar group Status type
None In Progress In Progress
Not Published Draft Draft
In Review SME Review
Optional Review 1
Optional Review 2
Publish Approval
Published Published Published
Retire Approval
None Closed
Closed Version

Retired

Cancelled

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Status types
Table 8-2 provides a description of article status types.

Table 8-2: Status descriptions (Sheet 1 of 2)

Status type Description
In Progress Initial status that is automatically assigned to all articles at the time
of creation.
Articles are visible only to the author until they are promoted to
Draft status. The author can update and save the article an
unlimited number of times before promoting it.
Draft The first status in the workflow. The author promotes articles to
this status after creating the article. Draft articles contain content
that has not undergone a formal review or has not been approved.
Articles with this status are designated for internal use by Support
only, and are not accessible to external users, also known as Self
Help users.
SME Review Typically the next step after Draft. The SME Reviewer reviews and
optionally edits the article, and can promote it to one of the
following statuses:

Another review status for additional review

Publish Approval status (only if the reviewer is a member of the
support group)
Optional Review 1 Additional, optional review status that is subsequent to the SME
Review status. A reviewer reviews and edits the article, and
promotes it to either an additional review of a different type or to
Publish Approval status. By default, Optional Review 1 is
intended for content review.
Note: The name of this status is configurable.
Optional Review 2 Additional, optional review status that is subsequent to the SME
Review or Optional Review 1 status. A reviewer reviews and edits
the article, and promotes it to Publish Approval. By default,
Optional Review 2 is intended for proofreading.
Note: The name of this status is configurable.
Note: The following information is relevant for all review status types:

Only the assigned reviewer and Knowledge Admin can update the article.

Members from the reviewer's support group can assign the article to themselves.

Reviewers can add an update request and edit the article.
Publish Approval Mandatory status before being Published. The article is sent for
approval pending publication.
Note: BMC recommends that you change the initial settings of
automatic approvals to manual approvals and set up approvers
for the approval process. Not changing the initial settings will
result in continued automatic approvals. Changing the settings
and not setting up approvers will result in the failure of the level
approval processes. For more details on configuring approval
processes and approvers, see the Approval section of the BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management Administration Guide.

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BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

Table 8-2: Status descriptions (Sheet 2 of 2)

Status type Description
Published The article is published and becomes available to all users.
Note: Self Help users can view only Published articles, if the articles
are not marked for internal use only.
Retire Approval Mandatory status before being Retired. The article is sent for
approval pending its retirement.
Note: BMC Software recommends that you change the initial
settings of automatic approvals to manual approval and set up
approvers for the approval process. Not changing the initial
settings will result in continued automatic approvals. Changing
the settings and not setting up approvers will result in the failure
of the level approval processes. For more details on configuring
approval processes and approvers, see the Approval section of
the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Administration Guide.
Retired The article is no longer relevant for use but remains searchable.
Closed Version An earlier version of an article that is not searchable. This status is
automatically assigned when a new article version is created and
becomes Published.
Cancelled Cancelled status is displayed as an item on the Status drop-down
list to Knowledge Admin users only.
Setting this status renders articles not usable or searchable;
however, they are not deleted from the database. Administrators
can filter for cancelled articles in the KM Console. See “Roles and
privileges” on page 22 for more information.
This status can be set from any other status (for example, Draft).
The exception to this rule is that Published articles can never be
promoted directly to Cancelled status, and Knowledge Users must
first send a Cancellation Request for approval. See the BMC
Remedy Knowledge Management Administration Guide for more
information.

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 Status transition workflows

Status transition workflows

Table 8-3 presents the default status transition workflows that are available in
accordance with user roles and permissions. Status transitions are configurable
parameters.

Table 8-3: Status transition workflows

Status In Draft SME Optional Optional Publish Pub- Retire Retired Can- Closed
From/To Progress Review Review Review Appro- lished Appro- celled Version
1 2 val val
In x
Progress
Draft x x x x x
SME x x x x
Review
Optional x x x x
Review 1
Optional x x x x
Review 2
Publish By
Approval appro-
val
Published x x
Retire By
Approval approv-
al
Retired x
Cancelled
Closed
Version

NOTE
When an article is in one of the approval statuses (Publish Approval or Retire
Approval), it is possible to request a cancellation of the Publish Approval or Retire
Approval process. This reverts the article status back to Draft or Published.
If a draft has a previously published version, only the draft version is retired. If the
published version is requested for Retire Approval, the draft must first be deleted.

User permissions for changing statuses

Statuses are displayed in accordance with your user and company permissions,
which are defined by user role, as follows:

Chapter 8 Configuring status transitions 95

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.6.04.

NOTE
See “Roles and privileges” on page 22 for more information.

Knowledge Admin—Can access and update all articles, view articles that are
assigned to others, change Assignee, change article status, and publish and
cancel articles.

Knowledge User—Can perform the following tasks:

Create and update articles.

Update all Draft articles.

Move articles to one of the review statuses. In this case, the Support Group
value changes to the group to which the new assignee belongs.
Knowledge Users cannot change article status to Published or Retired, and
must submit the article for Publish Approval or Retire Approval, as
appropriate.

Knowledge Submitter—Can create articles and update them while they are in
the In Progress status.

Knowledge Viewer—Can view articles of the companies to which the
Knowledge Viewer has access, including articles with Draft or one of the review
statuses.
Users belong to one of the following categories:

Current assignee—Responsible to handle the current article.

Author—Internal or external author of the article.

Owner—Responsible for managing the article.

Localizing status strings

The Localized Status Strings page enables you to define localized strings per status
for languages in addition to the localizations that are supported by BMC Remedy
Knowledge Management user interface.
To see localized texts properly, the BMC Remedy AR server must be defined as
Localized Server in BMC Remedy AR System Administration Console > System >
General > Server Information > Advanced.
Perform the following procedure to localize status strings.

To localize status settings

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Status Configuration > Status Localization, and click Open.
3 Click New Request to create a new string or Search to modify an existing string.

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4 Enter the article status for localization in the Article Status field.
5 Enter the language in the Language field.
6 Enter the localized string in the Article Status String field, and click Save.

Configuring status transitions

The Status Transition page enables you to add status transitions to the default
ones, thus customizing the status transition workflow for your organization. For
each added status, you can optionally:

Define operational and product categorization information.

Define Knowledge Admin-only accessibility, meaning that the status is visible
to Knowledge Admin users only.

Enable the status or select an option that describes the status (for your private
use).

Protect the status from deletion.
Perform the following procedure to customize the status workflow.

To configure application settings

1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Status Configuration > Status Traansition, and click Open.
3 Click New Request to create a new transition or Search to modify an existing
transition.
4 Enter the status transition information in the From Status and To Status fields.
5 Enter the Company for which the status is defined.
6 Enter operational and product information, as required.
7 Select the Knowledge Admin Role Required to enable accessibility only to users
with this role.
8 Select a status description for your private use, or Enable to enable the status.
9 Select Out Of The Box to denote that a status is a default status.

NOTE
This option enables you to differentiate between the default statuses and new ones
you have created.

10 Select Protected to prevent deletion of the status.

11 Click Save.

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98 Administration Guide
Chapter

9 Enabling notifications

This section describes how to enable and disable notifications. This tasks is
performed by configuration administrators from the Custom Configuration tab of
the Application Administration Console.

NOTE
You must have system System Administrator permissions to modify notification
settings.

The following topics are provided:

About notifications (page 100)

Event types (page 100)

Working with the Watch List (page 101)

Disabling notifications (page 102)

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About notifications
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses the BMC Remedy Email Engine to
send notifications to specified users based on specific events that occurred during
the life cycle of articles. You can configure the notification engine to select the
notification type (email, alert, or pager) for each event, notification language, and
other notification engine configuration options. Please refer to the BMC Remedy
Notification Engine Guide for details.

NOTE
You should be familiar with the notification engine configuration to ensure that
notifications used by BMC Remedy Knowledge Management work properly.

The notification engine has several configuration levels. System administrators can
set defaults for the message texts and the notification types in the locations listed
in Table 9-1:

Table 9-1: Configuration locations

Form Action
SYS:Notification Messages Create and modify notification message texts
NTE:CFG-Notifications Events Creating and modifying notification event types

Users can configure the notification language that is sent and received by them, the
notification type, and disable notification for certain events in the Notifications tab
of the People form.

Event types
Users receive notifications depending on the event type according to the
information contained in Table 9-2:

Table 9-2: Notification event list(Sheet 1 of 2)

Notification Description Message tag Recipients
event
Knowledge Article assignment changes RKM-KAM-AssigneeAssignment Article Assignee
Assignment
Knowledge Article ownership changes RKM-KAM-OwnerAssignment Article Owner
Ownership
Assignment
Knowledge Request to cancel an article is RKM-KAM-CancelRequest Article Assignee
Cancel Request sent Watch List subscriber
Knowledge Request to cancel an article is RKM-KAM-CancelRejection Article Assignee
Cancel rejected Watch List subscriber
Rejection

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 Working with the Watch List

Table 9-2: Notification event list(Sheet 2 of 2)

Notification Description Message tag Recipients
event
Knowledge Request to retire a published RKM-KAM-RetireRejection Article Assignee
Retire Rejection article is rejected Watch List subscriber
Knowledge Request to publish an article RKM-KAM-PublishRejection Article Assignee
Publish is rejected Watch List subscriber
Rejection
Knowledge New version of a published RKM-KAM-NewVersion Watch List subscriber
New Version article is created
Knowledge Update request is received RKM-KAM-UpdateRequest Article Assignee
Update Request Watch List subscriber
Knowledge Number of days before article RKM-KAM-ExpirationDate Article Assignee
Expiration Date expiration is sent out (as Watch List subscriber
configured)
Knowledge Feedback is received RKM-KAM-Feedback Watch List subscriber
Feedback
Knowledge Article is created RKM-KAM-NewArticleCreated Article Assignee
New Article Watch List subscriber
Knowledge Article review is required RKM-KAM-ReviewRequired Article Assignee
Review
Required
Knowledge Article is changed RKM-KAM-ArticleChanged Watch List subscriber
changed
Knowledge Article status is changed RKM-KAM-StatusChanged Article Assignee
Status change Watch List subscriber
Knowledge Article is changing to Draft RKM-KAM-AutoCancel Article Assignee
Auto Cancel status because of low usage Watch List subscriber

Working with the Watch List

The Watch List enables users to subscribe to an article in the Watch List. The
recipients of the notification messages are the article owner, article assignee, and
users who are subscribed to this article. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management
scans the RKM:WatchList forms and sends notifications to the recipients who are
relevant for the current article.
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management supports the following Watch List modes:

User of a specific article

User of a group of articles (grouped by categorization)

Support Group users of a specific article

Support Group users of a group of articles (grouped by categorization)
For more information, see the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management User Guide.

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Disabling notifications
Perform the following process to disable the notification functionality for all
articles and all users:

To disable notifications
1 From the Application Administration Console, click the Custom Configuration
tab.
2 From the Application Settings list, choose Knowledge Management > Knowledge
Management Configuration > Application Configuration, and click Open.
3 Enter the Company you are configuring in the Company field, and click Search.
4 In Knowledge Article > Notifications select Disable.
5 Click Save.

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Index

A about 12
application components 15
Access Restrictions dialog box 32 components 13
accessing the Application Administration configuration prerequisites 31
Console 30 reports 55
administrators, defining application 31 BMC Software, contacting 2
application administrators, defining 31 browser compatibility matrix 31
application documentation 10
approval chains
configuring for a specific company 81 C
configuring for Global company 81 categories
approval mappings operational, creating 42
configuring 82 product, creating 40
approval process overview 80 companies
approval workflow 80 creating 35
architecture 13 locations, creating 35
Article Conversion Tool organizations, creating 35
converting for default or modified templates 52 regions, about 36
converting new templates 53 site groups, about 36
managing conversions 51 structure 35
overview 49 Company dialog box 35
remote access 50 compatibility matrix, browser 31
troubleshooting 54 components, BMC Remedy Knowledge
viewing conversion details 51 Management 13
article status group 92 configuration
Assignment form 43 application settings 86
assignments defining application administrators 31
auto-assignments, individual 44 disabling notifications 102
group 43 feedback strings 87
individual 44 history recording 87
routing 42 indexing intervals 89
audience 9 knowledge assignment method 87
modifying standard 46
B notifications 87
plugin log levels 88
best practices for creating knowledge article related article display 86
templates 77 search relevancy 86
best practices for knowledge management 10 search result parameters 86
BMC Remedy AR System licenses 31 support staff, defining 37
BMC Remedy AR System, integrations 13 system settings 88
BMC Remedy Knowledge Management viewing standard 46

Index 103
 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Configure Assignment form 43

configuring approval chains
K
global company 81 knowledge
specific company 81 lifecycle management 17
configuring approval mappings 82 Knowledge Admin 23
configuring approvals 79, 80 knowledge article templates
configuring visibility groups 45 creating, best practice example 77
converting articles, default or modified templates 52 managing 77
converting articles, new templates 53 knowledge articles
creating knowledge article templates 77, 78 about 20
Custom Configuration tab life cycle 21
working with 30 Knowledge Config 23
customer support 3 Knowledge Management Console 13
knowledge sources
accessing knowledge source management 62
D default 62
data modifying 74
modifying standard configuration 46 registering 74
viewing standard configuration 46 Knowledge Submitter 23
defining Knowledge User 23
application administrators 31 Knowledge Viewer 23
dialog boxes
Access Restrictions 32
Company and Organization 35
L
Permission Group 32 licenses
Product Category 41 BMC Remedy AR System 31
documentation, application 10 Location form 36
locations
creating 35
F site groups 36
forms structure 35
Location 36
Operational Catalog 42
People 38, 39
M
Support Group 36 managing conversions 51
Update Support Group Memberships and managing knowledge article templates 77
Roles 33 managing knowledge sources
about 62

G
groups
N
assignment to 43 non-support staff
site 36 defined 37
notifications
about 100
I event types 100
integration with BMC Remedy ITSM applications 13 Watch Lists 101
IXGEN_DONT_EDIT_THIS! 87
O
Operational Catalog form 42

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operational categories 42 related documentation 10

organizations remote access, Article Conversion Tool 50
company 35 Reporting Console
creating 35 about 55
structure 35 reporting console 58
reports
about 56
P generating 56
People form predefined 56
creating non-support staff records 38, 39 tasks 59
creating people information from Standard roles 22
Configuration tab 37 routing, creating assignment 42
Permission Group dialog box 32 running new conversions 51
permissions
changing status 95
user 95
S
privileges 22 self-service search interface 13
product site groups, about 36
categories 40 source types
categorization structures 40 searchable items, knowledge base items 62
Product Category dialog box 41 special domain users
product support 3 starting AR server process 65
standard configuration
Application Administration Console 30
Q company, creating 35
quick start data, viewing and modifying 46
overview 19 locations, creating 35
operational categories, creating 42
organizations, creating 35
R people information, creating 37
performing 34
Read license, and Submitter Mode Locked option 40
product categories, creating 40
regions, about 36
support groups, creating 36
registering
Standard Configuration tab
searchable items 63
about 34
Registration
accessing 34
running the Registration Wizard 68
working with 30
registration
starting AR server process
AR form panels 66
special domain users 65
AR form prerequisites 67
status
AR forms 66
bar group 92
file system path panels 64
group 92
file system path prerequisites 65
transition workflows 95
file system paths 64
type 92, 93
knowledge base items 64
status transitions
new knowledge sources 74
about 92
searchable item panels 63
structures
searchable item prerequisites 63
location 35
Registration Wizard
organization 35
about 62
product categorization 40
parameters 69
support group 36
running 68
Support Group form 36

Index 105
 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

support groups
creating 36
role description 37
structure 36
support, customer 3

T
technical support 3
transition workflows 95
troubleshooting Article Conversion Tool 54

U
Update Support Group Memberships and Roles
form 33
URLs
compatibility matrix 31
user privileges, table 23

V
viewing
standard configuration data 46
viewing conversion details 51
visibility groups, configuring 45

W
website compatibility matrix 31

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