BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 Planning and Configuration Guide

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 Planning and Configuration Guide December 2007 www.bmc.com

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Contents Preface 9 Audience................................................................. 9 About the integration with ITSM............................................. 9 Related documentation.................................................... 10 Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 11 Knowledge Management overview......................................... 12 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management..................................... 12 Features and benefits.................................................. 12 Goals................................................................ 13 Best practices in knowledge management.................................... 13 Organizational alignment............................................... 13 Issue resolution....................................................... 14 Knowledge base quality................................................ 15 Rights and visibility................................................... 18 Performance assessment................................................ 19 Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 21 System architecture....................................................... 22 System components.................................................... 23 Functional architecture.................................................... 25 Functional components................................................. 25 Chapter 3 Planning your implementation 31 Security................................................................. 32 Authentication........................................................ 32 Content segmentation..................................................... 34 Access control groups.................................................. 34 Visibility groups...................................................... 36 Partitioning........................................................... 37 Categorization........................................................ 40 Document templates................................................... 40 Solution workflow........................................................ 41 Searching for solutions.................................................... 42 Search features........................................................ 42 Ranking algorithms.................................................... 43 Contents 5

Customizing templates.................................................... 44 Email templates....................................................... 44 Document templates................................................... 46 Creating themes.......................................................... 55 Extending the editor and viewer............................................ 55 Sample custom code................................................... 56 Declaring custom control in the templates................................. 58 Retrieving XML data...................................................... 59 Chapter 4 Configuring options in the configuration settings screen 61 Configuration settings overview............................................ 62 Accessing the configuration settings screen................................... 63 Modifying configuration parameters........................................ 64 General settings....................................................... 64 Database connection settings............................................ 65 Hummingbird SearchServer connection settings........................... 65 Authentication settings................................................. 66 Remedy settings....................................................... 66 File paths............................................................. 67 Search results......................................................... 67 Notifications.......................................................... 68 Load balancing........................................................ 68 System configuration password.......................................... 68 Chapter 5Configuring options in the configuration file 69 Configuration file overview................................................ 70 Editing the configuration file............................................ 70 Configuration options table............................................. 71 RKM_boot............................................................... 73 Application element.................................................... 74 SearchEngine element.................................................. 80 Database element...................................................... 81 i18n element.......................................................... 81 RKM_global.............................................................. 82 Security element....................................................... 83 Visibility_groups element............................................... 84 Search element........................................................ 85 DateFormat element....................................................... 85 Appearance element....................................................... 86 Categories element........................................................ 86 CTI element........................................................... 86 Indexing element......................................................... 88 Table element......................................................... 89 FilePaths element......................................................... 90 Email_templates element................................................... 91 DocumentTemplates element............................................... 91 Document element..................................................... 92 6 Planning and Configuration Guide

Workflow element........................................................ 92 Status element........................................................ 93 Queries element.......................................................... 93 Query element........................................................ 95 EventTypes element....................................................... 97 Event element......................................................... 98 Reports element.......................................................... 98 Report element........................................................ 99 Chapter 6 Managing your system with the System Settings tool 101 System Settings options................................................... 102 Accessing the System Settings tool......................................... 103 Defining access control groups, visibility groups, and users................... 104 Adding and editing access control groups............................... 105 Adding visibility groups.............................................. 105 Adding users........................................................ 106 Editing users......................................................... 106 Updating system files and tables........................................... 107 Resetting AR System cache files........................................ 107 Building Hummingbird SearchServer tables............................. 108 Initializing database tables............................................. 109 Updating system files................................................. 109 Chapter 7 System administrator tasks 111 Backing up and recovering data........................................... 112 Default installation folders............................................. 112 Backing up your data................................................. 112 Backing up application files............................................ 113 Recovering your system............................................... 113 Building the Hummingbird SearchServer tables............................. 114 Updating the spell checker dictionary...................................... 115 Adding dictionary files................................................ 115 Modifying an existing dictionary file.................................... 116 Using a thesaurus........................................................ 116 Creating a thesaurus source file........................................ 116 Compiling the thesaurus.............................................. 119 Testing the thesaurus................................................. 120 Using a stop file......................................................... 120 Modifying the stop file................................................ 121 Changing the solution ID number.......................................... 121 Adding general legacy data............................................... 122 Implementing multiple language support................................... 123 Using AR System workflow............................................... 125 Mixed mode......................................................... 125 Black box............................................................ 125 Workflow filter....................................................... 126 Implementing automatic reset of AR System cache........................... 127 Ranking solutions by usage............................................... 128 Contents 7

Using the search summary option.......................................... 129 Indexing AR System forms................................................ 131 Adding indexes to the configuration file................................. 131 Configuring AR System to update the indexes............................ 134 Indexing external sources................................................. 136 Adding the external index to the configuration file........................ 136 Configuring load balancing............................................... 137 Configuring for multi-tenancy............................................. 139 Enable multi-tenancy in the configuration file............................ 139 Defining companies in the RKMConvert configuration file................. 140 Running the RKMConvert utility....................................... 140 Index 143 8 Planning and Configuration Guide

Preface Audience The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 product is a knowledge base application that you use from within BMC Action Request System (AR System) or from a stand-alone web environment. If you integrate BMC Remedy Knowledge Management with BMC Remedy IT Service Management (BMC Remedy ITSM), you can use either the web interface or the AR System interface, or both. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management is installed with a default configuration that you can modify after the installation is complete. You can edit the configuration file directly to configure parameters, such as file paths, boot information, and workflow. You can use the configuration settings screen in the user interface to define system settings, and enable certain features. This document contains detailed information for planning your BMC Remedy Knowledge Management implementation, and includes important considerations and guidelines for configuring your system. It also describes the concepts of knowledge management and provides the best practices for establishing a knowledge management strategy for your organization. This document describes how to configure BMC Remedy Knowledge Management using the options in the configuration file and the configuration settings screen in the user interface. This document is intended for system and knowledge administrators who are responsible for configuring the knowledge management system. You must have BMC Remedy Knowledge Management installed before performing any of the configuration tasks in this document. About the integration with ITSM BMC Remedy Knowledge Management integrates with BMC Remedy ITSM Suite version 6.0 or 7.0. The BMC Remedy ITSM Suite includes several applications that run in conjunction with AR System and share a common database. Several differences exist between the ITSM versions and how they interact with BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. Preface 9

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management BMC Remedy ITSM 6.0: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management integrates with the BMC Remedy Help Desk application. The underlying form is the Help Desk form in BMC Remedy Administrator. You modify the Help Desk form to include knowledge management functionality. The form appears as the Help Desk form in BMC Remedy User. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management supports the single-tier categorization structure of ITSM 6.0 and uses Category, Type, and Item (CTI) lists throughout the application. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can also be integrated with the Requester console. BMC Remedy ITSM 7.0: BMC Remedy Help Desk has been replaced with the BMC Remedy Service Desk solution, which contains the BMC Remedy Incident Management and BMC Remedy Problem Management applications. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management integrates with both Incident Management and Problem Management. The underlying forms are the Help Desk and Problem Investigation forms in BMC Remedy Administrator (the Help Desk form appears as the Incident form in BMC Remedy User). You modify both of these forms to include knowledge management functionality. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management supports the multi-tier categorization structure of ITSM 7.0 and uses Product and Operational category lists throughout the application. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can also be integrated with the Requester console. Related documentation The following table lists the documentation available for BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2. The documentation is available on the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management product installation CD and on the Customer Support website at: http://www.bmc.com/support_home. Title Description Audience BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 Release Notes New features and differences. Administrators, Users BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 Installation and Integration Guide BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 Planning and Configuration Guide BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 User s Guide Procedures for installing BMC Remedy Knowledge Management and integrating with your system. Knowledge management concepts and best practices. Explains how to plan for and configure BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. Information about using BMC Remedy Knowledge Management from the AR System interface and the stand-alone web interface. Administrators Administrators Users 10 Planning and Configuration Guide

1 What Chapter is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? This section describes knowledge management concepts and best practices. The following topics are provided: Knowledge Management overview (page 12) BMC Remedy Knowledge Management (page 12) Best practices in knowledge management (page 13) Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 11

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Knowledge Management overview Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of identifying, gathering, managing, and using knowledge within an organization. Ideally, this knowledge is stored in a single repository where it can be maintained, managed, and retrieved when needed. Knowledge Management has become increasingly adopted in the service center industry due to the value it provides to service centers, their customers, and the companies the service centers represent. In a call center environment, effective Knowledge Management can provide the following benefits: Increase in first contact resolution Lower cost per support contact Improvement in analyst productivity Consistent set of answers Decrease in the number of escalated tickets Central repository of knowledge Accelerated learning curve for new analysts Reduction or elimination of duplicate efforts BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Features and benefits The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application allows users to author and search for solutions in a knowledge base. It includes a comprehensive editor with extensive editing tools and a robust search engine that allows users to search for solutions using natural language or Boolean searches. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can also be integrated with ITSM to allow analysts to manage incidents and knowledge from the same interface. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides the following features and benefits: Rich text authoring: Solution authors have access to extensive rich text HTML editing tools. Searching and security: Users can search across multiple sources. The powerful search engine allows for simple searching with natural language query. Self-help environment: Users can search for their own solutions and create their own trouble tickets. 12 Planning and Configuration Guide

Best practices in knowledge management Enforceable authoring process and notifications: Solution authors follow an authoring process. This guarantees that knowledge is consistent, meets corporate standards, and is published in a timely manner. News flashes and watch lists: Users can see important notices and be notified of changes or new solutions created in their category of interest. Goals Use BMC Remedy Knowledge Management to achieve the following objectives: Reduce training costs throughout the enterprise. Provide consistent and accurate answers through a single point of access. Reduce call length by making solutions easily accessible. Provide self-service to reduce call volume. Capture valuable knowledge to reduce turnover costs. Best practices in knowledge management According to the Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) strategy developed by the Consortium for Service Innovation, best practices for Knowledge Management include the following five areas: Organizational alignment Issue resolution Knowledge base quality Rights and visibilities Performance assessment Organizational alignment When you are considering a knowledge management initiative, the organization must first understand and accept the Knowledge Management premise. The following groups are the stakeholders in the KM arena: Executives: Executives in your organization should be advocates of KM. At the very minimum, the executive-level person over the service center must understand the following concepts: How KM affects the bottom line of the company. How KM increases customer satisfaction. How KM improves employee job satisfaction. Short-term and long-term affects of KM. Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 13

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Issue resolution Management: The service center manager typically initiates the KM effort. In this role, the service center manager is responsible for the KM implementation. That person must understand the following concepts: How KM improves the service center performance as a whole. How KM improves the performance of each analyst. How to implement KM. How KM affects the service center culture. Analysts: Analysts are largely responsible for the success of the KM implementation. They are the users of the system and must endure the process, policy, and cultural changes. For analysts to be successful in their efforts, they must understand the following concepts: How KM affects their performance. How their individual performance affects the success of the service center and organization. How KM affects their job satisfaction. The main objective of KM is to increase the analysts ability to resolve issues quickly, accurately, and consistently. Issue tracking tools are designed to track history, not resolve issues or solve problems. Knowledge, however, resolves issues and solves problems. When creating a knowledge base, make sure that the knowledge in your knowledge base is current and that it reflects the collective knowledge in your organization. To accomplish these objectives, implement the following best practices: Capture knowledge in the workflow. Search the knowledge base early and often. Use legacy knowledge effectively. Capture knowledge in the workflow Capturing knowledge within the workflow allows you to discover new knowledge as it occurs. The best place to discover this knowledge is while you are on the call with a customer. This is where an analyst can uncover the most current and relevant knowledge about an issue. The knowledge that analysts capture in their normal workflow increases the knowledge of the organization and keeps the knowledge base current. As analysts capture knowledge within their normal workflow processes, they are also able to capture that knowledge in the customer's context or terminology. If analysts try to capture that knowledge after completing the call, at the end of the day, or once a week, they lose the original context. Describing the issue in the customer's terminology makes that solution easier to find, especially when that solution is on a customer self-service site. 14 Planning and Configuration Guide

Best practices in knowledge management Search early, search often The key to maintaining a viable and valuable knowledge base is to encourage and train analysts to search the knowledge base early and often for resolutions to customer issues. Searching helps to identify knowledge gaps in your content, and facilitates your ability to fill those gaps. Analysts should search the knowledge base for a resolution to a customer issue even if they already know the problem resolution. This might seem counterintuitive, but, if an analyst chooses to provide a resolution without searching the knowledge base then one of two results can occur: If the solution does exist in the knowledge base for that specific issue, the value of that solution is not augmented by the analyst reusing the solution. If the solution does not exist in the knowledge base, it remains absent from the knowledge base even after the analyst resolves that customer's issue. Searching early and often reduces the collective time it takes for your analysts to resolve customer issues and identify knowledge gaps. Using solutions in the knowledge base assures that your analysts provide accurate and consistent resolutions to your customers which increases customer satisfaction. Use legacy knowledge effectively Pure best practices suggest that you should remove legacy knowledge from your knowledge base and allow only workflow to generate all knowledge for your knowledge base. The other extreme is to rely only upon legacy content to resolve issues. BMC Software recommends a middle-ground approach where you use a combination of both legacy content and workflow generated content. Knowledge base quality The first obstacle for most people embarking on KM is the belief that KM is clean, that solutions are perfect, and that only pristine and perfect content should enter the knowledge base. The reality is that KM is not about perfection; it is about evolution. Consider the following basic principles: Knowledge Management is messy: Perfect solutions do not exist. Solutions should be improved continuously and analysts should always feel a sense of ownership for every solution they view. Knowledge is a work in progress. Complete solutions are obsolete solutions: A complete solution is one that is no longer being refined. When a solution reaches that state, it is no longer being viewed, modified, or used. As long as a solution in the knowledge base is being used, analysts should review and refine the solution to make it better. Content review should be demand-driven: Your whole service center is based on a demand-driven model. Analysts resolve issues as customers present them. Your KM review process should be the same. You should review only those solutions that are reused. Your solution review process should be seamlessly integrated into your analysts' normal workflow. Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 15

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Knowledge base quality is based on the following KM best practices: Define quality for your organization. Establish a content standard for authoring solutions. Adopt a solution structure. Identify workflow states. Implement a demand-driven review model. Invest in education and coaching. Defining quality To attain quality solutions, you must first define quality. Without a formal definition of what quality means for your organization, each analyst defines it for themselves, and the result is less than quality solutions. The quality of a solution is influenced by the intended audience. For example, a solution that is accessible only by internal analysts does not need to be in the same quality state as a solution accessible by external customers. Misspellings can be permissible for one audience but not the other. Establishing a content standard When defining quality for your organization, you must also establish a content or authoring standard. This content standard should include authoring issues regarding solution text format and style. Solution format Consider the following items when establishing a standard solution format: Solution title: How the solution title is constructed and the information it should include. Issue description and resolution: What information should be included in the description and resolution fields. Bullets and numbered lists: How and when to use lists (instead of paragraphs). Text formatting: When to use character formatting, such as bold, italic, and underline. Solution style Consider the following items when establishing a solution style: Preferred vocabulary and voice Use of acronyms Use of graphics Use and format of links Key words 16 Planning and Configuration Guide

Best practices in knowledge management This standard gives authors a set of rules to work within. When establishing your content standard, keep it simple. Simplicity increases compliance, accuracy, and speed from your analysts, and assures consistency, accuracy, and speed for your customers. Adopting a solution structure You must also adopt a solution structure and then provide actual solution examples that illustrate your organization's definition of quality within the framework of that structure. Your KM tool should provide you with solution templates to simplify this part of the process. Minimally, the structure of your solutions should include the following sections: Issue description Environment description Resolution description Identifying workflow states Mandated review processes define activities or steps that a solution must go through before it is allowed in the knowledge base. KM best practices direct you to establish a workflow process that is simple and effective for your organization. For example, the following steps make up a simple workflow for solution review: Draft Approved Publish Implementing a demand-driven review model Your review process should be demand driven, rather than mandated. The basic concept behind a demand-driven review model is to review only those solutions that get reused. In a mandated review process, every authored solution must go through each step in the review process before it can be included in the knowledge base. An analyst creates an article and submits it to the next step in the workflow. The next person reviews the solution, performs the tasks for that review level, and promotes it to the next step. This continues through each step of the workflow until the solution is published in the knowledge base. A mandated review workflow requires more resources and time when compared with a demand-driven model. Industry statistics state that 80 percent of all solutions are not reused and, therefore, forcing all solutions through a review process is wasteful. Mandated review processes also inherently create bottlenecks. Bottlenecks equate to latency between authoring a solution and when it is available for reuse. This translates into a knowledge base that is not current. Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 17

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Rights and visibility In a demand-driven review model, you review only the solutions that are reused. As analysts research and resolve customer issues, they view solutions and evaluate whether a given solution resolves the customer's issue. When analysts view a solution, they are able to check accuracy, compliance, and applicability to the customer issue. If that solution needs to be fixed, enhanced, or refined, they should have the rights to either modify the solution or submit an update request to someone who has rights to modify it. To achieve this level of review, each analyst must have a sense of ownership for each solution they view, whether they authored the solution or not. This collective ownership fosters a customer-centric focus, and enables your knowledge base to evolve faster and remain relevant. Investing in education and coaching KM best practices promote the concept of education and coaching. Educate your organization about KM, train coaches, and allow coaches to mentor analysts. Teach the analysts the content standard and how to author quality solutions. Then, instead of investing in an elaborate, mandated review process, invest in coaching. You must establish roles and permissions for your users, for those who can author solutions and those who can view them. KM best practices define roles with associated rights and visibilities. These roles are: Author: Searches the knowledge base to find solutions to customer issues, authors new knowledge solutions, and has a coach to help adhere to content standard. Approver: Searches the knowledge base to find solutions to customer issues, authors (to content standard) and approves new knowledge solutions, modifies and approves others' solutions. Coach: Similar to approver, but the primary responsibility is to move authors to be approvers, thus increasing the number of quality solution authors. Knowledge expert or administrator: Similar to approver, but the primary responsibility is to maintain the vitality of the knowledge base by retiring obsolete solutions, checking for duplications, and maintaining the overall knowledge base. Except for the knowledge expert or administrator, you can have authors, approvers, and coaches in each tier of your organization. Ideally, you should have more approvers than authors, which increases your authoring capacity. 18 Planning and Configuration Guide

Best practices in knowledge management Performance assessment KM best practices also address the issue of performance assessment. When you implement a KM strategy, the responsibilities of the analysts change. To assess and reward performance, best practices dictate rewarding results or outcomes. The following criteria are examples of results that you can measure and reward: Author-to-approver accomplishment (for coaches and analysts) Time to resolution Cost per resolution Customer satisfaction Although you do not want to set quotas on activities, you should track activities to have a clear understanding of what is happening within your service center. Chapter 1 What is BMC Remedy Knowledge Management? 19

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 20 Planning and Configuration Guide

2 BMC Chapter Remedy Knowledge Management architecture This section explains the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7.2 architecture. The following topics are provided: System architecture (page 22) Functional architecture (page 25) Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 21

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management System architecture The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application consists of several basic components that work together to provide a comprehensive knowledge management solution. The user interface (UI) is the user's window into the system and is typically delivered using AR System. The AR System server hosts the forms and active links required to control and retrieve information from BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management may reside on the AR System server or its own server and includes the Hummingbird SearchServer indexing engine. Finally, the documents themselves are stored as XML files on the HTTP server. 22 Planning and Configuration Guide

System architecture System components BMC Remedy Knowledge Management is a Java Server Pages (JSP) 2.0 compliant application delivered as a single Web ARrchive (WAR) file. The application is written in Java to provide cross-platform deployment capabilities. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management consists of the following components: HTTP server SQL database File system Hummingbird SearchServer Java mail service Browser interface Remedy Application Programming Interface (API) HTTP server You can install BMC Remedy Knowledge Management on any HTTP server that provides a JSP container. You can use your existing mid tier server or a similarly configured server. The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application is supplied as a WAR file for deployment to that server. SQL database BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses an SQL database to store log information used for producing reports. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management can also use the database to store user tables and authentication information. The following databases are supported: Oracle Sybase Microsoft SQL Server MySQL File system BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses the file system to store knowledge base solutions, which are individual files that reside in folders on the server. Solution folders are organized under the main data folder and include attachments, draft, general, news, publish, retired, and versions folders. The solutions are stored in XML format to provide greater flexibility and accessibility. The file system also stores BMC Remedy Knowledge Management templates and configuration files. Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 23

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Hummingbird SearchServer The Hummingbird SearchServer engine also runs on the knowledge base server. Hummingbird SearchServer is a powerful enterprise search engine that provides real-time document indexing. It performs all indexing operations on knowledge base documents and supports more than 200 native document formats. Java mail service The Java mail service sends email notifications during the workflow process. Notification processing is an optional component of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. The Java mail service is not included with the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management installation CD. If the Java mail service (JavaMail) is not on your system, download it from Sun at: http://java.sun.com Browser interface BMC Remedy Knowledge Management has both a browser interface and an AR System interface. You can use the browser interface regardless of whether you integrate BMC Remedy Knowledge Management with AR System. If you run BMC Remedy Knowledge Management with the AR System, you maintain users and authentication within AR System. Remedy API When you integrate BMC Remedy Knowledge Management with AR System, the Remedy API helps you perform the following functions: Manage users and authentication. Obtain category information. Obtain user lists for workflow. Provide data exchange between AR System and BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. Configure solution workflow (beyond the supplied default). Store BMC Remedy Knowledge Management solutions within AR System to allow Distributed Server Object (DSO) functionality. 24 Planning and Configuration Guide

Functional architecture Functional architecture The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application is written in JSP. The web pages it delivers are rendered in Java Script and HTML. The solution documents, document templates, and configuration files are XML based. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses XSLT to transform document solutions into their various forms for editing and viewing, and also provides field-level security on solution documents. Functional components BMC Remedy Knowledge Management consists of the following functional components: Templates Documents Document editor Document viewer Search engine System security ITSM integration Customization XML data retrieval Globalization Templates BMC Remedy Knowledge Management uses a different template for each knowledge solution type. Each template contains the solution fields and their attributes, the location of the fields when displayed in the editor and viewer, and the visibility required for those fields. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management supplies default templates for the following solution types: How to Problem solution Error message Reference Decision tree You can create your own templates or edit the supplied template files. The clean and readable schema for templates makes them easy to edit and manipulate. Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 25

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management NOTE When integrated with AR System, standard AR System groups are used to define the privileges for each field. When running stand-alone, the equivalent of AR System groups can be defined in the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management database. Solution documents BMC Remedy Knowledge Management solution documents are templates filled with data. These documents can be opened in either the editor or viewer. Like an AR System form, a document can have permissions assigned by group. This creates a document that not only has field-level security, but document-level security. Document permissions, known as Visibility Groups (VG), are assigned to a document in the document editor. Document editor The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management document editor is produced from an XSL transformation against the XML document it is opening. When you open a solution in the editor, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management transforms it through XSLT and returns the result as a complex dynamic HTML page that uses functionality within the browser. The resulting HTML page is an editor that allows authorized users to create and edit documents. In the editor, the document is a form that conforms to the definition in its corresponding template. For example, the default How to template includes the following fields: Title Question Answer Environment Categories Visibility groups Authoring notes Users can edit the document through the user interface (like most document editors), and use standard formatting functions, such as bold, underline, italic, paragraph indenting, bullet points, tables, images, and links. The transformation process evaluates the permissions of each field against the groups of the current user to determine which fields to display. The resulting transformation produces a page that contains only the data the user has permission for. The user does not have access to fields they do not have permission to view. NOTE The document editor is a browser-based application. It is supported only on Internet Explorer browsers. 26 Planning and Configuration Guide

Functional architecture System administrators can extend the functionality of the editor and viewer by writing custom XSL templates. This XSL code becomes part of the transformation process and is inserted into the document at the indicated point within a template. This allows the functionality of the editor or viewer to be extended without making changes to the core code of the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management application. NOTE The transformation is done on the server. The user never has physical access to the original XML document. Document viewer The BMC Remedy Knowledge Management document viewer is similar to the document editor. When you open a solution in the viewer, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management transforms it through XSLT and returns an HTML formatted solution. Like the editor, the transformation evaluates the permissions of each field against the current user's groups to determine which fields to display. This allows content within a solution document to be segmented by user group. For example, a document viewed by self-help users might contain Problem and Solution fields, while that same document viewed by a service technician might contain Problem, Solution, and Internal Notes fields. A service technician might need additional information that is inappropriate for a self-help user to see. Search engine When you create a solution, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management instructs Hummingbird SearchServer to index that solution so that it can be found when users query the knowledge base. The Hummingbird SearchServer index contains information about each solution, including the solution s permissions. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides a user-friendly interface for performing searches against the indexed data. When a user searches the knowledge base, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management translates the request and passes it to Hummingbird SearchServer through the JDBC driver. Hummingbird SearchServer returns the results and passes them back to BMC Remedy Knowledge Management in the same manner. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management also evaluates the user's groups and builds the request so that only documents in that user's permission group are returned from the search. A user never sees any documents returned in the request that they do not have rights to view. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management returns the search results to the user for selection. When the user selects a document from the search result list, BMC Remedy Knowledge Management opens the document in the document viewer. Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 27

BMC Remedy Knowledge Management System security Users must first log in or authenticate to the system to use BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. Three levels of authentication are defined in the configuration file: None (Unsecure): This mode allows users to access the system by entering their name only. This mode is provided primarily for legacy type access and for organizations that do not feel any need for their users to log in to the system. Internal: Authentication is performed at the knowledge management application level. Users must be defined in the BMC Remedy Knowledge Management database (rkm) by the system administrator. Users must enter their ID and password to gain entry to the system. This mode is typically used in stand-alone environments. Remedy (Secure): This mode uses the Remedy API to authenticate users. User management is performed inside of AR System. All requests for data in the system are authenticated through the configured mode. When a user is initially authenticated, a session ID is established. This ID and other criteria are evaluated with each request. If a request does not conform to the authentication rules, the user is denied access to the data and a new login screen is displayed. The user can reauthenticate against the system to access the data. All security validation is performed on the server and only data conforming to the rights of the user are returned. A special case authentication is defined for self-help users. Typically, self-help users are not required to authenticate to access data. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management provides a user interface with limited access where users can perform searches without authentication. Only those documents marked as selfhelp are returned in the result list. Multiple self-help groups can be set up to segment data. ITSM integration BMC Remedy Knowledge Management integrates with ITSM through two mechanisms: The Remedy API AR System forms AR System communicates with BMC Remedy Knowledge Management by making URL requests through a view field. BMC Remedy Knowledge Management communicates with AR System through data returned in a view field, on the URL to that view field, or through the API. Large amounts of data can be exchanged in either direction by passing data to a form that is accessed by both AR System (through workflow) and BMC Remedy Knowledge Management (through the API). 28 Planning and Configuration Guide

Functional architecture Customization You can customize BMC Remedy Knowledge Management for your environment by modifying the options and variables in the configuration file. You can make the following customizations: You can configure the look and feel by modifying cascading style sheets and creating themes. You can create any number of themes. The system administrator selects the theme of choice. You can customize solution documents and define permissions on any field within the document template. You can customize BMC Remedy Knowledge Management workflow using AR System filters. You can modify AR System workflow objects to change behaviors of BMC Remedy Knowledge Management. You can write your own XSL templates to extend the functionality of the editor or viewer. You can use XML data retrieval to change the look and feel at the data level instead of at the user interface level. XML data retrieval BMC Remedy Knowledge Management allows you to incorporate self-help pages into your own portal with XML data retrieval. For example, you might want to manage access to self-help data by your own portal authentication method. Or, you might want to exhibit full control over the look and feel of the search results window and the solution document. With XML data retrieval, the search request is passed on a URL (from the user to BMC Remedy Knowledge Management) and BMC Remedy Knowledge Management returns XML data instead of returning the search result page. The data returned conforms to the self-help authentication mechanisms. You can display the resulting XML on your portal, however you choose. You can also process selected documents in a similar fashion, allowing you to create your own viewer and display documents according to your needs. Any XML returned is already prefiltered according to permissions. In other words, you can use BMC Remedy Knowledge Management as an engine, and use custom applications or HTML pages as the interface. For more information about configuring XML data retrieval in your system, see Retrieving XML data on page 59. Chapter 2 BMC Remedy Knowledge Management architecture 29