Hi everybody. Raj and I discussed off line a little more and I would like
to share that for the benefit of everybody on the List.
******************
Glad I can help. It sounds like you are on the right track.
1. Your understanding is correct. The one caveat is if you have a
customization that is dependant on a something that changes in Base mode
then it could affect your customization in the Overlay. A few examples
- If a field is deleted by the installer that your Overlay references.
Say the User form has field XYZ created by BMC and you have built custom
workflow that references that field. If BMC decides XYZ is no longer
needed and removes it then it would impact your Overlay. I have not
encountered this scenario yet so I am not sure exactly what would happen.
I assume your workflow would just have a broken field reference in it and
not work as expected.
- A permissions change in Base. Similar to the first bullet if BMC
changes the permission to (configuration) form where you have custom
workflow referencing it can impact how your Overlay/Custom workflow behaves.
2. Correct. You never "have to" create an Overlay for anything. In the
case of an old version of HelpDesk you will not be installing any further
BMC supplied updates to it so at this point I would consider it a custom
app that your organization is solely responsible for. If your
organization's long-term path is to stay on HD 5.6 and continue to upgrade
ARS I recommend converting everything that was built in-house or that BMC
no longer supports to Custom. This will make sure you stay aligned with
BMC's direction regarding how ARS development is supposed to be done.
One thing I know will break on a pre 6.0 HD app is the rapp service. The
rapp service will not be able to connect to an AR Server >= 6.0. In my
past experiences we have found this to be acceptable because we were not
actively using workflow that uses the rapp services. Pre 6.0 SLA app is
dependant on the rapp service as well as a few things in HD. If you find
you do not need the rapp service you can disable any workflow that calls it.
3. There is a white paper that explains the differences between the User
Tool and Mid Tier. I don't think there is an updated version of this
document for 8.x because that is when BMC dropped support for WUT. I think
for the most part our existing forms would work fine in MT. Some of our
form heavily use the Menu Bar (and the buttons that go with menus) on the
top of the form. We would have to update our designs and move those
buttons to navigation fields or individual buttons. This isn't too bad
because you can reassociate where/how the Menu Bar buttons are located.
Besides the Menu Bar we would just need to review each form to make sure
it looks ok in a browser and verify the core functionality of a form. I
occasionally open an old form in MT and it is minor things that don't work.
Some of the forms would just have to save/search buttons or the web
toolbar added, etc.
Macros would be another thing you may have embedded in workflow that will
not work in MT. Since our Help Desk is version 6 (which had MT access in
mind) and we stopped using macros in our custom development many, many
years ago this isn't an issue for us. At one point there was a tool that
could convert Active Links that used macros into the appropriate actions.
Similar to macros we have a number of scripts (.bat, / .vbs) to automate
things that are called within the User Tool. These will work differently
when called from a browser so we would probably have to make some changes
here.
Do you mind if I post this response to the ARSList? I think there are
others that would find value in the answers?
Jason
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 10:36 AM, Ravi <ravi6...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jason,
> Really, appreciate your response.
> Looks like your management is supporting well and is line with what
> you/your team intent to do.
> So in my case, we are still planning on upgrading ARS from v7.6.04 to v8.1
> - in that case :
> 1. Best Practice Mode/Customization to Core forms - As you suggested and
> what I understood from other responses, I have created overlays and
> recreating customizations on overlays with the intent that these
> customizations will be carried over to v8.1 and I do not have to do the
> manual work of recreating Customizations again...is my understanding right?
> 2. HD 5.6 - We do have heavy customizations on HelpDesk, since we not
> planning on upgrading ITSM anytime soon(as most likely we might just
> introduce OOTB ITSM and customize later on). So while on v7.6.04 - do I
> have to create overlay for HPD 5.6, I don't - right ? (as basically we are
> not even sure if this older ITSM HD5.6 would even be compatible with v8.1
> ARS and work but hoping that it will be functional, although we know that
> BMC is not going to support it).
> Also, if we were to customize HD 5.6 later after going to ARS v8.1 - do we
> just do it in Base Development Mode?
> 3. Midtier/Use Tool - I see you mentioned about changing older forms to be
> web-enable - where can I find more information on this?. I would like to
> identify potential issues and any extra work which I might have to do to
> make sure all our older features/functionalities(especially HD 5.6) are
> available and working in v8.1 on midtier as User Tool won't be there...
>
> Once again, thank you so much for your help and valuable information.
> Regards,
> Raj
>
On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Raj <ravi6...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Jason and Kiran. Your response clarified lot of things.
>
>
>
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