Abydos Designer Concepts Guide

Abydos Designer Concepts Guide
Version 8.3 June 2011
Abydos Limited 2011 This document is the property of Abydos Limited and the information contained herein is confidential. This document, either in whole or in part, must not be reproduced or disclosed to others or used for purposes other than that for which it has been supplied, without Abydos' prior written permission, or, if any part hereof is furnished by virtue of a contract with a third party, as expressly authorised under that contract. Abydos shall not be liable for any errors or omissions.
Contents
CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................................ 2 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 3 1.1. AUDIENCE AND SCOPE ....................................................................................................................... 3 1.2. RELATED DOCUMENTATION ............................................................................................................... 3 2. PRODUCT OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 4 3. ABYDOS-REMEDY INTEGRATION ................................................................................................. 6 3.1. PROCESS INHERITANCE ...................................................................................................................... 7 4. PROCESS CREATION & MAINTENANCE ..................................................................................... 8 5. REQUEST TRACKING ...................................................................................................................... 10 6. ABYDOS PROCESS WIZARD ......................................................................................................... 11 7. ABYDOS DESIGNER AND ITIL....................................................................................................... 12 8. ARCHITECTURE ............................................................................................................................... 13 9. CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT .............................................................................................. 13 9.1. PROCESS TEMPLATES ....................................................................................................................... 14 9.2. PROCESS TEMPLATE STATES ............................................................................................................ 14 10. PROCESS AUTOMATION .............................................................................................................. 15
Copyright 2011 Abydos Limited.
Version 8.3 Date: June 2011 Page: 2
1. Introduction
The aim of this guide is to give an overview of the basic concepts relating to Abydos Designer and its use with BMC Remedy Service Management applications. This guide relates to version 8.3 and all sub-versions under 8.3 of Abydos Designer unless indicated otherwise.
1.1. Audience and Scope

This document aims to provide an overall understanding of the general concepts relating to the use of Abydos Designer. It is aimed at any end-user that wishes to gain a general understanding of the product and its use with a BMC Remedy Service Management application and does not require any prior technical knowledge. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Remedy Service Management, although they need not be an administrator.
1.2. Related Documentation

The following guides provide additional information about Abydos Designer: Guide Abydos Designer Installation Guide for release 8.x Abydos Designer User Guide Version 8.3 Description Describes the complete installation process with guidelines on linking to an existing Remedy Service Management application. Describes all functionality provided by Abydos Designer release 8.3.
2. Product Overview
Abydos Designer is the quickest and most cost effective way of implementing new processes such as Change and Service requests. Remedy customers can quickly and easily implement processes graphically using Abydos Designer without resorting to customisation or having to update multiple complex templates. This means implementing processes takes a fraction of the time it would without Abydos Designer.
Abydos Designer is a tool for process designers that provides a graphical interface to build processes that can be executed on Remedy without the need to develop new applications or customise existing applications or templates. Abydos Designer is particularly beneficial for systems that require multiple different processes and tasks depending on the type of request such as Change Management, Service Request Management and Incident/Problem Management.
The benefits of using Abydos Designer with Remedy are:
1. Processes that fit the business - Abydos Designer allows you to implement processes that fit the business exactly without having to customise existing bespoke or out of the box applications. 2. Business user get what they want - Business users know what they are getting as they are able to understand and review the process in graphical form exactly as it is implemented. 3. Fast Deployment at lower Cost - Process designers use a simple graphical interface to implement processes without needing to customise Remedy. 4. Reduced Support and Upgrade Costs - Remedy Administrators have reduced time and effort in supporting the Remedy applications as there is no additional development or customisation. Significant effort is also saved in upgrading as Remedy applications are not customised. 5. Streamlined processes Abydos Designer allows the automation of processes through the implementation of automated actions removing the necessity of manual intervention where possible. 6. Adherence to management, compliance and audit requirements Not only is the process diagram a self documenting description of the process as implemented but also the Abydos Request Tracker provides a diagrammatic view of the current status and historical flow of every transaction through the process. 7. Simplified User Interface Abydos Designer enables decision trees to be built quickly to provide a simplified user interface for data required to support processes. This ensures user productivity and consistent quality data. 8. Automated Version Control Abydos Designer includes automated generation of version-stamped processes so that you can easily roll-back to or report on usage of previous versions without the need to get into any workflow development. Abydos Designer provides these benefits through a graphical interface that allows process designers to build processes that can be executed within Remedy based on tasks, dependencies, decisions, rules (such as Task Assignment and SLAs ,actions such as get user data, updates fields and send emails).
Abydos Designer also provides:
a request tracker to view the status and history of each instance of the process; release management with full auditing and roll back capability; decision tree support and data entry wizard; full integration to out of the box Remedy applications including custom-built applications; import and export capability to migrate processes between servers and Pre-built ITIL process definitions.
3. Abydos-Remedy Integration
Abydos Designer consists of a) A Java application which provides the framework for developing and maintaining processes and the exchange of data with the Remedy server through the Remedy Java API or via XML over an http link to a server in the cloud; b) a set of API components run from the Remedy server used to interpret the process rules, generate and assign tasks to application groups; c) a Remedy Application of forms, workflow objects, menus, etc used to handle generic workflow events. Abydos Designer integrates neatly into Remedy by allowing the administrator to define the relationship between different categories of request and individual processes. Once this relationship has been defined, the Abydos-Remedy Integration triggers the automatic creation of process-related tasks and actions whenever a new request for the specified category is created. Typically, the process is related to a combination of the Operational and Product Categorization fields although any combination of one or more fields on the request can be used. Once created, the progression of tasks on the request is then enforced using the business rules from the process definition. The path through the process is driven by the outcome value for each task supplied by the assignee. The Abydos-Remedy integration also facilitates the forced entry of mandatory fields that may be required and the running of pre-defined actions either for sending emails, notifications or other commands that need to be run at specified points in the process.
3.1. Process Inheritance

Abydos Designer functions on the basis of process inheritance whereby a process within the BMC Remedy application inherits workflow rules from a process template defined within Abydos Designer. When a new ticket or request is raised in the Remedy application, the user can select (or the system can automatically select) an appropriate process template. This might be based on the category, type and item fields, or any other field combination that you may wish to define. Once the association with the process has been made, the Remedy C-based API is used to generate a set of tasks, dependencies, SLA targets, actions and related fields validation for that particular request and will assign the tasks to business groups on the basis of the information stored within the process definition. The category, type, task name, description and assignee are copied from each process template task to each corresponding Remedy task record.
4. Process Creation & Maintenance

Abydos Designer provides an easy to use graphical interface for creating process diagrams. Objects are created by dragging and dropping icons from the palette onto the drawing page on the right.
Abydos Designer User Interface
Each object includes a set of attributes which are presented whenever the icon is dropped onto the drawing, or the object is selected for editing. The attributes include the task category, type, name, description, assigned group, SLA target, related actions and related fields in the application that need to be completed for each task. Dependency lines are created in the same way but are used to connect two existing objects together. Dependencies can be conditional (based on an outcome value), or unconditional. The screenshot below shows an example of a task list generated from an Abydos Designer ITIL Change Management process when used in conjunction with the BMC Remedy Change Management application.
Task-List generation from Abydos Designer
Abydos Designer not only generates the task list but enforces task dependency rules within the process based on outcome values selected. It also sets the planned end date based on the task SLA, validates required fields and runs any actions that have been defined for each task. For more information on process creation and maintenance, see the Abydos Designer User Guide.
5. Request Tracking
The graphical tracking of the progress of ITSM and SRM requests is provided through a separate Request Tracking application. This allows the monitoring of process execution through both the Remedy User Tool and the Mid-tier.
Tracking a Change Request or Helpdesk Ticket
6. Abydos Process Wizard

The Abydos Designer process wizard provides a method of entering data for a request and navigating the best practice process flow without the need for specialised training on the ITSM application. The process wizard is generated directly from the Abydos Designer process definition and can therefore be customised to provide whatever data-capture and work-instructions may be required. By using the process wizard to capture data, you can eliminate the need to customise your application, keeping it out of the box and reducing the effort and risk associated with future application upgrades.
Abydos Wizard
The process wizard can be used with any ITSM 7 application including Incident, Problem, Change Management, Work Orders, Service Request Management or custom applications.
7. Abydos Designer and ITIL

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is now widely accepted as a best-practice framework for defining IT service management (ITSM) processes. Abydos Designer includes a set of pre-configured ITIL processes as standard that you can use to directly translate into service management logic within your BMC Remedy application. This allows users to graphically track the progress of requests within the ITIL process on which it is based and allows administrators to modify them as necessary to meet customer-specific business needs without customising the Remedy application.
8. Architecture
Abydos Designer Architecture
The Abydos Designer client can communicate with the Remedy server directly through the Remedy Java API or via XML over an http connection to a server in the cloud.
9. Configuration Management
Abydos Designer makes use of version numbers to provide reliable configuration management of processes. Every process template is automatically assigned a version number that is unique for each process template. This makes it easier to recall previous versions of the template while testing is being performed.
9.1. Process Templates

Processes created within Abydos Designer are stored in the Remedy database. Each process which constitutes a collection of tasks, dependency rules, SLA targets, actions and related fields is called a process template. A Process Template is a combination of a header record and a logical grouping of tasks. The header record holds information on the status of the process, its version number, name, type and SLA. Its called a template because it can be used as the basis for a process that relates to an application record such as a fault, incident or change request within the Remedy Application. Both Processes and tasks have associated SLAs (Service Level Agreements), which define the time that is allocated to the completion of the process and its component task(s).
9.2.Process Template States

The various process template states and the valid transitions between those states are shown in the following diagram:
Abydos Designer Process State Transition Diagram
10. Process Automation

Abydos Designer facilitates the full automation of service management processes thereby eliminating the overhead of manual work and improving the efficiency and accuracy of component activities. This is achieved by defining the business rules required to automate each individual process step. The business rules are then interpreted at run time by the Remedy application and used to automatically process that step without the need for manual intervention. By automating a chain of process steps, whole processes can be automated, leaving resources free to deal with exceptions and/or non-standard requests and providing a step-change in operational efficiency.
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Version 8.3 June 2011