Request for Post


Do you want a post about something in particular? Do you want a deeper development of one post, or a second part of it? Do you want me to analyze a product? If the answer to the above questions is yes, please add a comment ... Read the complete post

Estimating the required number of licenses


Sometimes when starting a new BMC Remedy implementation project, the customer, or your boss, demands an estimation cost of licenses and maintenance. If you have a reduced number of users, you can figure the number of required licenses. But if your case is more ... Read the complete post

What is new in BMC Remedy ITSM 8.0


WWRUG12 is just about closing the paper submission, and today has arrived a very big one: What's new in BMC Remedy ITSM 8.0. So Now it's completely official, the new version will be presented to public during the WWRUG12. In this post I will review the submitted ... Read the complete post

Adding custom permission groups to ITSM foundation


When starting to customize ITSM applications is easy to arrive at one point where it is important to differentiate between users, for privileges or different workflow behavior. Two main approaches appear: to use support groups or ARS permission groups. The first solution is easy ... Read the complete post

Understanding the Request Id field in BMC Remedy


ARS identifies fields by a number id. Some id's are retated to special functions. Maybe the most important of all is the field id '1', often called the Request Id or Entry Id. Understanding how this special field works is very important for any ... Read the complete post

Functions in BMC Remedy ARS


We all know that Remedy's developing paradigm is very different from traditional programming. We have no code, no loops, no functions nor any other classical element. But, classical programming has a long way and a lot of minds thinking about it. So there are ... Read the complete post

Operational Categorization for BMC Remedy


In a recent post I covered how the different categorizations for BMC Remedy Service Desk should be interpreted. The operational category is maybe the most important of all. In this post I will review the most important facts that an operational categorization must accomplish and ... Read the complete post

Naming convention for BMC Remedy Action Request System


Let's talk seriously, Remedy has one of the worsts code organization systems in the world. Also, BMC has not published any best practice guide for developing (apart of the best practice customization mode). So, any developing company must establish a set of best practices ... Read the complete post

BMC Remedy Incident Management Categories


One of the main best practices to focus when implementing the BMC Remedy Service Desk is the correct use of categorization tools. Each element can be categorized in order to obtain the next main advantages:In this line, the difference between a correct and wrong ... Read the complete post

Case Insensitive mid-tier login


In a previous post, I explained how to switch your complete ARS instance to case insensitive. But, is it really complete? No. Definitely not. There are some hidden functionalities that remain case sensitive, like the login system. To turn the Remedy login system to case insensitive is something impossible ... Read the complete post

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» Oracle

Oracle Epoch converter function for Remedy

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Jose Huerta in Database, Developing solutions, Tricks | Leave a comment

It’s not a secret that Remedy stores dates using the epoch date format in number fields. The date is referred to the Greenwich reference time, or Zulu time. So a little adjustment must be made to translate this time to you time zone. This offset is composed by a fixed value and a variable value that depends on Daylight Time Savings (DTS).

If using Analytics or simply want to do some trick at the database level, a conversion utility between epoch a Oracle date format is very useful.

In this post I will cover this problem and I will provide you with the PL/SQL code of the conversion. … Read the complete post

Case Insensitive in Remedy

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Jose Huerta in Database, Featured | 6 Comments

I’m convinced that the case sensitiveness of Remedy is one of its major flaws. It can look like a minor issue, but believe me when I say that it can be the greatest source of incidences for your Remedy support team. Also for other languages that uses accents, the accent insesitiveness is a must, when sorting elements. So, changing your ARS instance to Case insensitiveness must be an objective. To have a Case Insensitive or Accent Insensitive instance of ARS is not difficult, but it isn’t straightforward. The best solution is to have the full text search enabled, but this is an extra cost in licenses. Sometimes you don’t have these licenses (or you don’t have enough for everybody), so another strategy is needed. Remedy bases all its comparisons and sorts in the database engine, so if we change the database engine, we change Remedy. That means that we must achieve that any ORDER BY or WHERE clause to be case insensitive. The solution then implies case insensitive sessions and indexes. If you control both, then you control your case sensitiveness. … Read the complete post