A Review of Remedy Knowledge Management 7.0

I just had the opportunity to learn about BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7 and meet with the people who created it. Remedy Knowledge Management was formerly known as KMXperts, until the small start-up was purchased by BMC. RKM, as it is known for short, has its own web interface that can be used completely separate from the ITSM suite, or one can integrate it into Incident and Problem Management as well as self-service. It is compatible with every version of ITSM going back to 5.6, and can be made to work with any Remedy product given some customization.

Installation
Installation is fairly complicated. First, you have to install Hummingbird Search Server. Then, you install Remedy Knowledge Management. Finally, depending on your version of ITSM7, you must do a few customizations to integrate it with Remedy. This involves importing forms and workflow, copying fields from a temporary form to your ITSM forms, and importing the workflow. In some cases, an administrator may have to make additional customizations.

Hummingbird Search Server is the same product used for full text search. It searches the XML documents where the Knowledge articles are stored.

The system requirements for Remedy Knowledge Management are key, and may affect some company's decision to use the software. For example, it requires a database and a web server, though not necessarily the same ones that BMC Remedy ARS is using. Keep in mind that if you are using Apache Tomcat as your web server, you will need the appropriate version of the JDK. For Tomcat 5, you will need JDK 1.5, and for Tomcat 4, you need JDK 1.4.

Features

Each knowledge article contains several fields, separating the problem/error description from the solution. There are different types of knowledge articles, including how-tos, problem solutions, and errors. Each has different fields that can be used. Each text field can contain rich-text elements such as colored text and images. In addition, attachments can be added. These editing features represent a huge improvement over the rather simplistic HPD:Solution form.

Another feature allows articles or parts of articles to be limited to internal support staff, or visible to Self-Help. I personally have repeatedly customized a similar feature into the OOTB solutions, so I was glad to see that the rights/permissions are included in the Remedy Knowledge Managemenet package.

In addition, there is a review workflow for each knowledge article, as well as a revision history and a way to request updates. This allows companies to set up a technical reviewer, business reviewer, and a grammatical/spelling review by a technical writer.

The search tool is also excellent. It can search for a single or multiple words in the article, search by Category, and even search by relevance. Included in the ITSM integration are 7 different levels of searching, and of course you can do an advanced search from the web interface.

There is a survey feature included, allowing knowledge consumers to rate the article and submit their comments.

Remedy Integration
The Remedy integration is two-fold. For support staff, a Knowledge Management tab is added to the Incident or Help Desk form. On this tab, they can search for relevant articles. Once a useful article is found, the staff member can use it, which retrieves information from the article and inserts it into the Resolution/Solution pane. However, unlike the OOTB Solutions feature, it does not resolve the case. From the Solution/Resolution pane, support staff can submit knowledge articles, just as they would have submitted solutions.

For self-help, Knowledge Management replaces the Solutions table on the Remedy Requester - New Request form. However, the end-user cannot use the knowledge. By default, the integration does not submit a resolved case when a knowledge article is used. This was a feature of the OOTB Solutions.

Customers may want to change the Remedy ARS side of the integration to suit their needs. However, the lack of the two features listed above can be considered a problem.

In Short

Remedy Knowledge Management 7 improves over the OOTB Solutions feature in a number of ways.
Pros
* Easy rich-text authoring
* Workflow for reviewing and approving knowledge
* Easy searching of knowledge articles
Cons
* Limited Remedy ITSM integration
* Touchy configuration - one mistake in the configuration can make the system inoperable