
Applies to FootPrints 12 and above.
In FootPrints 12 (or later), individual votes are recorded in the History, where they can be difficult to see. The attached VoteHistory script can be added to the On Vote business rule to record the vote results in a custom field. Generally, this custom field will be a Textarea or Rich Text field with journal enabled.
Attachment: VoteHistory
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In this post I describe how to configure two-click approvals or rejections in FootPrints 12. For the end-user approver, the two clicks consist of:
This post will focus most specifically on the steps needed to generate the two-click links, and assumes a general familiarity with FootPrints 12 administration, the Email Templates functionality, and with configuring approval processes in a Workflow Process.
As a workspace container administrator, open the container in the Administration console, and select the Email Templates tab. Create a new template, or editing your existing ballot template.
If you are creating a new template, enter the Name of the template and select the Item Type that will use this template.
Now we want add an image file on which we will link approval actions. On the toolbar select the Image button.
FootPrints 12 will present an image properties panel.
On the (default) Upload tab select Choose File, choose the appropriate image file from your computer (you may download and use the images below), and select Send it to the Server. The Image Info tab will be automatically selected. Now select the Link tab and enter the following text in the URL field.
mailto:myemail@mydomain.com?Subject=Approval Ticket= [TICKET_NUMBER] ItemType= [ITEM TYPE ID] WS= [WORKSPACE ID]&body=Vote=Approve
You will need to adjust myemail@mydomain.com with an inbound email address used by your FootPrints installation.
Click OK when done.
Insert a white space (such as a space character) immediately after the image. Repeat the above steps in order to generate a rejection link, exchanging the URL with the following. Once again, you will need to replace the email address with your own.
mailto:myemail@mydomain.com?Subject=Rejection Ticket= [TICKET_NUMBER] ItemType= [ITEM TYPE ID] WS= [WORKSPACE ID]&body=Vote=Reject
Your email template may now look something like this:
Now add any verbiage that may be appropriate for your approvers. You can now Save your template and use this template in any approval processes in your Workflow Process. Afterwards make sure you save and publish your configuration.
When the approval process is triggered with an appropriate email notification, your approver will receive an email that may look like this.
When the approver selects the Approve button, a new email will be generated that may look like this.
The approver may now send the email.
I generated these royalty-free images using Graphic for Mac. They may be useful to you.
Ayearon is proud to announce the release of Service Desk Starter v1.0.0.
The Service Desk Starter is a set of FootPrints 12 configuration templates, process diagrams, and a Planbook to help IT departments deploy FootPrints more rapidly across multiple processes:
The Service Desk Starter is released under the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license. You are free to use, mix, and match. You are not obligated to share the any changes you make.
Download link: DEMO Service Desk Starter v1.0.0
I have added some of the most popular content to the Links section, in the right-hand side of the page.
Ayearon Inc is proud to announce the latest update of its Planbook for FootPrints 12 v1.3 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (summary and full license).
The Planbook is the product of years of experience helping customers plan, implement, and improve services and processes using automated workflow tools. The Planbook is designed for the following uses, related to the BMC FootPrints 12 software:
The Planbook is available here: Planbook for FP12 v1.3
One of the most critical of features in v11 missing from v12 is manager approvals. Fortunately, there is a workaround in Microsoft SQL Server that is sufficient for most Windows Active Directory environments.
This post will document how to implement this workaround. Later we will explore some of the limitations of the workaround. The implementation requires three major steps, each of which are described below.
When complete, FootPrints 12 address book queries will be made against LDAP via the ADSI connector in SQL Server, which will also provide the Manager’s login ID in a format (sAMAccountName) that is usable to the FootPrints 12 approval engine.
The blog post How to: Use SQL Server to query Active Directory describes how to perform this step, with a modification. For brevity we will not repeat the details in that post. You will perform these configurations in the database server used by FootPrints 12.
Before attempting this process, you will need a service account in AD whose login ID and password are known to you. Please do not use your own login because that password will probably be changed every 60-90 days. Administrator privileges are not required for this function.
In the Security tab, in the options under “For the login not defined in the list above, connections will:” if you use the choice “Be made using login’s current security context” as per the article, FootPrints will display error messages during contact searches because the Apache Tomcat service used by FootPrints does not have an appropriate security context.
Please choose instead “Be made using this security context” and enter the domain, login ID, and password for the AD service account.
Below is a summary of the settings that will be used in the Linked Server.
Linked server: ADSI
Server type: Other data source
Provider: OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Directory Services
Product name: Active Directory Services 2.5
Data source: adsdatasource
Provider string: ADSDSOObject
In the FootPrints database, generally fpscdb001, you will create a new view. You can paste the following query into the new view. Please note that the LDAP server name and domain names will need to be tailored to your environment. This view includes commonly used fields but additional fields may be required for your environment.
This query / view assumes the primary key of the address book is sAMAccountName (User ID). If you are using another field, such as email address, you will need to make appropriate changes to the upper select and join parameters.
SELECT usr.sAMAccountName, usr.givenName, usr.sn, usr.department, usr.mail, usr.displayName, usr.title, usr.telephoneNumber, usr.physicalDeliveryOfficeName, mgr.sAMAccountName as ManagerId, manager
FROM OPENQUERY
(ADSI, 'SELECT manager, distinguishedName, mail, sAMAccountName, displayName, sn, givenName, userPrincipalName, department, title, telephoneNumber, physicalDeliveryOfficeName
FROM ''LDAP://ldap-server.domain.com/DC=domain,DC=com''
WHERE objectClass = ''Person'' AND displayName = ''*'' ') as usr
LEFT OUTER JOIN OPENQUERY
(ADSI, 'SELECT distinguishedName, sAMAccountName
FROM ''LDAP://ldap-server.domain.com/DC=domain,DC=com''
WHERE objectClass = ''Person'' AND directReports = ''*'' ') as mgr
ON usr.manager = mgr.distinguishedName
You can now save the new view. When you do save the view, SQL Server Management Studio will ask you for the name of the view. You should provide a descriptive name such as v_AddressBook_LDAP.
Below is an example where I broke the view queries into 2 views: v_ADSI_Managers and v_ADSI_Users. The Users view will be used in the Address Book configuration (below) and depends on the Managers view.
SELECT samAccountName, userPrincipalName, givenName, sn, displayName, mail, distinguishedName FROM OPENQUERY(ADSI, 'SELECT manager, distinguishedName, mail, samAccountName, displayName, sn, givenName, userPrincipalName FROM ''LDAP://fp12/DC=footprints12,DC=local'' WHERE objectClass = ''Person'' AND displayName = ''*'' AND directReports = ''*'' ') AS managers
SELECT usr.sAMAccountName, usr.givenName, usr.sn, usr.department, usr.mail, usr.displayName, usr.title, usr.telephoneNumber, usr.physicalDeliveryOfficeName, usr.manager, mgr.samAccountName AS managerid FROM OPENQUERY(ADSI, 'SELECT manager, distinguishedName, mail, sAMAccountName, displayName, sn, givenName, userPrincipalName, department, title, telephoneNumber, physicalDeliveryOfficeName FROM ''LDAP://fp12/DC=footprints12,DC=local'' WHERE objectClass = ''Person'' AND displayName = ''*'' ') AS usr LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.v_ADSI_Managers AS mgr ON usr.manager = mgr.distinguishedName
After confirming in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio that your view runs successfully, you can now configure your Address Book to use a Dynamic SQL source. For this you will require System Administrator access to FootPrints and a mixed-mode account in SQL Server.
Having configured the Address Book with a field Manager ID that maps to the ManagerID attribute in the v_AddressBook_LDAP view, you will now need to configure an identically named field, Manager ID, in the workspace-type record definition, and link the field to the Link Control.
In the Workflow Process you can now configure an approval state to use the Manager ID as a dynamic approver.
The performance of address book searches using this method appears to be equivalent to queries directly against LDAP. However, there are a few caveats and limitations.
One of my customers has gone live recently, and I am working on another at the moment. The feedback is generally positive, with most people preferring the user interface to FP11. In the course of these implementation, I have probably found every bug in the product.
As a result I have earned a few scars and have learned several lessons that will help.
Most importantly I recommend patience, healthy amounts of focus and determination, and some tolerance for the unexpected.
In my experiences with BMC product management and support teams, they are very responsive to feedback and very actively working to improve the product. They have “turned the corner” on the real-world issues we are facing and are observing us closely. I am very encouraged with the product overall and with the pace at which bugs are now being addressed.
In addition the support and development teams are prioritizing showstoppers that prevent you from going live in the near future. If you are almost complete and ready to cut over into production, you can get fairly fast turnaround time from support the escalation teams should any late bugs arise.
The FootPrints 12 platform is now “ready for prime time” but not yet for all existing customers of FP11. The difference is in the maturity and rigidity of the process. Organizations who need predictability and adherence to existing process should stay on FootPrints 11 until the 12 platform matures a bit longer.
My name is Greggory Tucker. Ayearon Inc is the legal vehicle through which I do contracting for BMC FootPrints Service Core v11 and v121.
In this post I want to explain briefly who are my customers and partners.
Contact me at info@ayearon.com if you feel I can help you or one of your customers.
1Ayearon Inc is not an official partner of BMC Software. All products are the copyright and trademark of BMC Software.
In FootPrints Service Core 12 BMC introduced several new themes, in addition to modernizing the user interface and improving performance.
Here are some samples of a demo Service Catalog (Category Browser) using each theme.
For now I am sticking with Dark. Which one do you like?