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A Heartfelt Thanksgiving Message for Our BMC Helix Customers and Partners
As we celebrate the spirit of Thanksgiving, we want to extend our sincere gratitude to every customer and partner who makes the BMC Helix Community such a vibrant, collaborative, and inspiring space.
Whether you are a long-standing customer or a dedicated partner, your contributions are the heartbeat of the BMC Helix community. This year, we have been incredibly inspired by your willingness to collaborate, your eagerness to share knowledge, and the active role you play in shaping the future of our solutions.
We are thankful for:
- The Problem Solvers: Those who jump into forum threads to help peers troubleshoot and succeed.
- The Innovators: Partners who push the boundaries of what Helix can do.
- The Collaborators: Customers who provide the honest feedback that drives our roadmap forward.
Thank you for your continued support, your thoughtful discussions, and your willingness to share insights that help everyone grow. Your engagement, whether through asking questions, contributing solutions, or collaborating with others strengthens our community every day.
To our BMC/BMC Helix Cross-Functional Teams: Please take a moment in the comments below to @mention the customers and partners you have worked closely with this year. Let's give them a public shout-out in our community and thank them for their incredible cooperation and partnership!
🌟 BMC Solutions Champions: Celebrating Knowledge, Collaboration & Impact!
At BMC Community, our strength lies in the passion, knowledge, and collaboration of our members. Every day, our community members come together to share expertise, solve challenges, and support one another—and it’s their dedication that makes our community a hub of learning and innovation.
Each month, we recognize the exceptional contributors who go above and beyond to provide accurate, helpful, and timely solutions. These are our Solutions Champions—the members who inspire others, drive collaboration, and embody the spirit of what it means to be part of a thriving community.
For November, we are thrilled to celebrate the following members for their outstanding contributions:
Here are our top 7 members whose answers shone brightest this month:
🔗 How to mass unrelate 2000+ CI's from a user profile - Discussion - BMC Community
🔗 How to search the the Active schedule for jobs that will not run - Discussion - BMC Community
🔗 Restart rule to notify agent with countdown - Discussion - BMC Community
4. Anne Brock
🔗 Hi there! When I create a new record, it creates like a new table? Using what? Just curious of how this works at a low level and calculate the possible "cost" of having multiple records or having 1 record with a lot of data. - Discussion - BMC Community
🔗 Do cognitive features in ITSM 25.4 require IBM Watson? - Discussion - BMC Community
7. Adam Lawson
Thank you to all our Solutions Champions for your dedication, your time, and your willingness to help. Your efforts ensure that every member feels supported, inspired, and encouraged to contribute.
Congratulations to our November Solutions Champions! 🌟 Your passion, knowledge, and generosity are what make the BMC Community truly exceptional. Keep sharing, keep inspiring, and keep being the heart of our community—you could be next month’s star! ✨
Shining Stars of November: Celebrating Our Community Champions ✨
Our community thrives because of members who quietly share their knowledge, lend a helping hand, and spark meaningful conversations. From answering questions to sharing practical tips and insights, their contributions keep the community alive and growing.
These incredible individuals are the heart of our forums, nurturing discussions across BMC Helix, Control-M, BMC AMI, Remedy, and beyond. Their willingness to support others doesn’t just solve problems—it encourages everyone to learn, explore, and connect.
We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our top 5 active contributors for this month:
| Dnyaneshwar Nanaware |
| Anne Brock |
| AbdulMoid Mohammed |
| Mohammad Rehman |
| Mun Keong Lee |
Your dedication, generosity, and willingness to support others make our community what it is—a space where everyone feels welcome, inspired, and empowered.
Let’s celebrate them together! 🎉 Drop a comment below to congratulate our November active contributors and share how they’ve helped you. Your encouragement motivates everyone to keep contributing and keeps our community growing stronger!
BMC Helix Community: What's Coming Up in November?
Hello community,
Get ready for an action-packed month! We've lined up some fantastic workshops designed to educate, inspire, and help you connect with your peers. Mark your calendars and prepare to dive into these great opportunities:
Webinars
Thursday 13th November Remedy to BMC Helix ITSM - Featuring Vodafone's Customer Success Story
Wednesday 12th November - Helix Agentic AI in Teams – Ops Swarmer
Workshops
Insight Finder Workshops
Wednesday, 5 November 2025 - Insight Finder (APAC & INDIA)
Friday, 14 November 2025 - Insight Finder (EMEA & AMERICAS)
Service Collaborator Workshops
Wednesday 12th November - Service Collaborator (APAC & INDIA)
Thursday 13th November- Service Collaborator (EMEA & AMERICAS)
Service Catalog Curator Workshops
Thursday 6th November - Ask the Experts Insight Finder Workshops (EMEA & AMERICAS)
Click Here For Announcement
Wednesday 19th November - Service Catalog Curator
Click Here For Announcement
Tuesday 25th November - Ask the Experts Service Collaborator (APAC & INDIA)
Tuesday 25th November - Ask the Experts Service Collaborator (EMEA & AMERICAS)
Register and Educate Yourself!
Don't miss the chance to level up your skills and stay ahead!
❓ Have Questions? Ask Below!
If you have any questions about the content of these events, who should attend, or anything else, please comment below! Our team will be actively monitoring this thread and will address your questions promptly.
Let's make this month a great one!
Announcing the Control-M SaaS October 2025 Release
We’re excited to introduce the October 2025 release of Control-M SaaS, bringing the latest innovations that simplify automation, enhance analytics, and empower users to work smarter. This release focuses on intelligence, usability, and performance - helping you achieve greater control and efficiency across workflows.
🆕 What’s New in This Release
- Jett Documentation Intelligence – AI-driven documentation access and real-time learning.
- Enhanced Analytics & Service Oversight – Easier data access and monitoring through service definitions.
- Expanded Integrations – Continuous integration updates, including new SAP BTP support.
✨ Key Highlights
🔹 Jett Documentation Intelligence
- Expands beyond workflow insights to provide GenAI-powered documentation access.
- Instantly answers questions and offers in-context guidance.
- Includes Sample Questions and Bookmarks for faster learning.
- Delivers enhanced accuracy, recognizing job types and timestamps for precise responses.
🔹 Unlock Analytics & Service Oversight
- Enables seamless access to workflow execution data for analytics and reporting.
- Job log data is automatically extracted to AWS S3 and available via the Automation API.
- Integrates with observability tools like Grafana, Splunk, or Elasticsearch. Introduces Service Definitions that empower both IT and business users to monitor and manage workflows independently.
🔹 Expanded Integrations
- Adds SAP BTP integration and other continuous delivery updates.
- Enhance Control-M’s automation coverage across modern enterprise systems.
📘 Learn More in detail here:
💬 Which new feature or enhancement are you most excited about? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Control-M Expertise Unplugged: Lessons, Tips, and Stories from Mark Francome
As part of our ongoing AMA (Ask Me Anything) series in the BMC Community, we connect with Control-M experts who’ve been hands-on in solving real automation challenges. Through these conversations, members get to hear practical tips, behind-the-scenes lessons, and stories from those shaping the future of workload automation.
Mark Francome is a seasoned Control-M expert with over 20 years of experience in workload automation. He’s known for bringing automation to the “dark corners” of IT enterprises — a phrase his peers know him for. Mark combines deep technical knowledge with practical insights to optimize complex business workflows. He’s also been one of the go-to voices in the BMC Community since 2014, always ready to share a workaround or tip.
He has extensive experience in Control-M administration and in creating batch flows for complex business requirements across High Availability environments on Unix, Linux, Windows, and AIX platforms, including virtual environments. Beyond product expertise, Mark has strong skills in scripting, CLI utilities, DBA aspects, networking, and LDAP — all critical for keeping enterprise automation running smoothly.
When we sat down with Mark to talk about his Control-M journey, he spoke candidly about his early challenges, favorite features, and what keeps him inspired after two decades of automation. Here’s what he had to say:
1. Can you tell us a bit about your journey with Control-M and how you got started in our BMC community?
Back in 2001, I was working for a large organisation that was looking to migrate off the mainframe and go “lights out”. It was assumed that the departing mainframe operators only did mainframe things. But it soon became clear that they did a whole lot more, and that whole lot more turned out to be somewhat complex and often involved hopping between systems and infrastructure areas. I had installed and configured the old mainframe scheduler (CA-7) and was tasked with finding something similar (a “batch job scheduler”, as we used to call them) that could run vital tasks in our new distributed environment. We identified maybe 10 or 11 suitable products, of which Control-M was one. We whittled that down to a shortlist of three and, needless to say, BMC won. The first version of Control-M that I installed was 2.2.4 – the one with ships and containers representing datacenters and job icons. The amount of manuals that were shipped with the product was huge - and not always user-friendly. It was a great relief to find a couple of user websites (one of which was the old Control-X Yahoo group) and, eventually, BMC created the Control-M community website. It took me a while to find it, but I'm very glad I did!
2. How has Control-M helped you achieve success in your work or projects? Any practices or features that make a real difference?
As a consultant I have installed Control-M at many sites, and I'm delighted to say that the majority of customers still use Control-M to this day, in pretty much the same way that they did when we first installed it. People are naturally suspicious of automation, but I like to apply the same phrase to Control-M that people are using for AI today. “Control-M won't take your job, but somebody using Control-M might!” Probably the biggest advances with Control-M have been the addition of all the modules and the API. Regarding the modules, being able to integrate file transfers directly with database jobs or ERP, out-of-the-box, that's great and saves a whole load of effort. And the API is fantastic for creating active and reactive batches.
3. How has the community influenced your work or learning—any surprising insights along the way?
The community is a great reference tool and sounding board. Some of the best bits of advice are really more conceptual, rather than plain technical details. And sometimes you answer a question about the community and then, only days later, end up using the same information when dealing with a problem in your “own backyard”.
4. What’s one tip you would give to someone just starting out in the Control-M field?
Recognise that Control-M is a vast array of small building blocks. Try and make each job as functional as possible and consider how it can be improved. Once you are completely happy with it, use that as a template for future jobs of that kind.
5. What keeps you excited and motivated about your role every day?
That you are really at the heart of the enterprise and are able to positively influence operations in a vital way.
6. What’s your favourite part about being part of the BMC Control-M community?
The Control-M community is a very generous environment. Everybody gets to have their say - and even the “old dogs” can learn something new!
7. What common challenges do you encounter in Control-M workflows, and how do you tackle them?
Complexity and locating workflow redundancy, sometimes the batch is just too dense to see what is happening. BMC has products like Workflow Insights, but sometimes you just need to review the processes manually and make sure the fundamentals are optimized.
8. Can you share a project or accomplishment using BMC Control-M that you’re particularly proud of?
It’s difficult to pick out a highlight. I would say that any time that I’ve worked in an environment where a tangible product is produced, that has always been a good feeling. I once did a project at an electronics manufacturer, and they explained that they needed Control-M to run their warehouse. “Ah, you have a data warehouse, interesting …” No, they responded, they had a real warehouse for the raw materials and components that they used to build domestic appliances. They used Control-M to bridge the gap between their legacy mainframe, Unix, Unisys, and a large array of Windows servers.
9. Outside of work, how do you unwind or recharge after a busy day?
I am lucky that I can still work from home for part of the week. My one-way commute is over 2 hours, which is long by Swiss standards. We have a dog, who always needs a walk, and that is my relaxing time. Now if I can just teach the dog how to roll out Control-M Agent patches
We hope you enjoyed reading Mark’s insights! Which of Mark’s tips or experiences resonated most with you? Share your thoughts or your own Control-M lessons in the comments — we’d love to keep the conversation going.