BMC HelixGPT 25.x: Fundamentals Administering for Service Management (ASP)

Launching self-paced video course in multiple languages for administrators!

Available Languages: English, French, French (CA), Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Portuguese (BR), Spanish (MX)

Course Abstract

Course Registration

BMC HelixGPT Learning Track

Learn how to configure, build, manage, and customize AI Agents using BMC HelixGPT Agent Studio with hands-on labs and real-time use cases. This self-paced, hands-on course guides learners about the fundamental concepts of Agentic AI and the customization use cases. We focus on the Employee Navigator and Service Collaborator, citing these as examples to explain the basic concepts and use cases for all AI agents. Learners are presented with real-world tasks and the information and necessary tools to complete each task, which will develop basic BMC HelixGPT skills. Materials are provided that can be referenced during and after the class. 

For any additional details, post a comment, or contact us at [email protected]. We will be happy to help you!

At BMC Helix , great customer experiences don’t happen by accident, they’re built by people who combine deep technical expertise with genuine care for customer success. One such person is Akshata Rathod, a long-standing BMC Software team member whose work behind the scenes plays a critical role in helping customers confidently start their Helix journey.

Every successful customer journey begins with a strong start—and that’s exactly where Akshata Rathod makes her mark.

A valued member of the BMC Software family since 2016, Akshata is currently part of the BMC Helix Platform Onboarding Team, where she plays a pivotal role in shaping the first experiences of customers on the platform.

Driving Seamless Onboarding Experiences

Akshata specializes in end-to-end technical onboarding, ensuring that customers transition smoothly from initial setup to a successful go-live. She brings a unique blend of technical expertise and customer empathy, making complex processes feel structured and achievable.

Her day-to-day impact includes:

• Solving complex technical challenges with precision
• Managing critical customer escalations with confidence
• Deep-diving into logs, integrations, and system behavior
• Partnering closely with engineering teams to resolve product issues
• Contributing to knowledge articles and documentation that empower the wider community
• Continuously enhancing support processes to elevate customer experience

For Akshata, onboarding isn’t just a phase. It’s about building trust, setting the foundation for success, and ensuring customers feel supported every step of the way.

🌈 Life Beyond Logs and Launches

Beyond her professional role, Akshata brings the same energy and creativity into her personal life.

• 🏡 She has a passion for home organization, creating spaces that are both functional and calming
• 💃 A true dance enthusiast, she enjoys exploring different styles as a form of fitness and self-expression
• 🍰 An avid baker, she loves experimenting with recipes and sharing her creations
• 👶 And most importantly, she is embracing the beautiful journey of new motherhood, cherishing every moment of bonding and growth

From the lens of an onboarding expert, here’s Akshata’s perspective on her day-to-day journey—shared through the questions she answered for this blog.

1. In technical support, resolving issues quickly is important—but so is customer trust. How do you balance both during critical incidents? 

Providing regular and authentic updates on the issue while actively working toward a quick resolution helps maintain transparency. This approach reassures customers that their concern is being handled with priority and helps build and sustain their trust during critical incidents.  

2. What is one challenging case or ticket that taught you something valuable about troubleshooting or customer support?  

Being a part of the Onboarding Helix Team, every case is a challenge and they have taught me the importance of discussing the issue thoroughly with the customer before making assumptions. By understanding their environment, recent changes, and exact symptoms, we can focus on the right problem from the beginning. This approach avoids unnecessary troubleshooting steps and leads to faster and more accurate resolutions while improving customer experience. 

3.What does a typical day look like in your role supporting enterprise customers? 

 A typical day involves monitoring and responding to support tickets from enterprise customers, especially critical or escalated issues. I start by reviewing open cases and prioritizing high-impact incidents, then work on troubleshooting, coordinating with internal teams if needed, and providing regular updates to customers. I also focus on root cause analysis, documenting solutions, and knowledge sharing to help improve future support and resolution times. 

4. How do you keep your technical knowledge updated in such a rapidly evolving environment?  

 I keep my technical knowledge updated by regularly attending trainings, completing certifications, and exploring new product features and documentation. I also learn a lot through real customer cases, collaboration with colleagues, and knowledge sharing within the team, which helps me stay current in a rapidly evolving environment  

5.Are there any challenges women may face in tech roles, and how can they overcome them?  

 Women in tech may sometimes face challenges such as underrepresentation or the need to constantly prove their technical capabilities. The best way to overcome this is by staying confident, continuously improving technical skills, speaking up, and supporting one another. With persistence, learning, and strong collaboration, women can build successful and impactful careers in technology.  

6. Many women juggle multiple responsibilities outside work. What practices help you stay organized and manage both professional and personal commitments?  

 It is always challenging to balance both. I make sure to give my 100% focus during work hours, staying organized and prioritizing tasks effectively. Once work time is done, I shift my focus to home and personal responsibilities, which helps me maintain a healthy balance between professional and personal commitments.   

Lightning Round ⚡

1) Root cause found quickly or long debugging journey?  Root cause found quickly.

2) Incident bridge calls or deep-dive debugging sessions?  Incident bridge calls or

3) Slack/Teams messages or email threads? Slack/Teams messages

4) War room collaboration or solo investigation? War room collabration

Akshata’s story reflects the spirit of the BMC Helix Community—technical excellence, customer-first thinking, and people who bring their whole selves to what they do. Her work may often happen behind the scenes, but its impact is felt by customers every time they achieve a successful go-live.

We’re proud to spotlight Akshata and grateful for the energy, empathy, and expertise she brings to BMC every day.

✨ Here’s to Akshata and the incredible impact she continues to make—both within the BMC Helix community and beyond.

In our March AMA Series, we’re excited to feature George Lau, a seasoned Control-M professional whose career spans decades of hands-on experience across platforms, industries, and evolving automation landscapes. George has also been an active member of the BMC Community since 2016, consistently engaging, sharing insights, and contributing his expertise to fellow members. 

From OpenVMS to UNIX/Linux, from scripting in Perl to working with Automation API and Python - George’s journey reflects deep technical expertise, adaptability, and a commitment to continuous learning. 

We recently sat down with George to discuss his career journey, industry insights, community experiences, and lessons learned along the way in his own words. 

1. Could you share a little about your career journey - how you started, and how you became part of the Control-M family and what drew you into workload automation? 

I was educated as an engineer but ended up some years later as a system admin on OpenVMS and Windows NT. (Both names pre-date many readers here 😊) As the robust OpenVMS gave way to the more flexible UNIX/Linux, I was offered an opportunity to take on a project replacing DECscheduler on OpenVMS with Control-M on UNIX. It was Control-M 6.0 at that time when EM was still ECS. Over the next few years, I went through a few versions of Control-M. Then I moved on to a consulting firm servicing Control-M customers across US and Canada, and eventually on my own until now. 

2. When you think about your work with Control-M, what excites you the most, and is there a moment or experience that made you feel the difference? 

Control-M is the platform that connects tasks across various OSes with various applications for various business units to complete an entire process step by step. We need to be accommodating to support many unique requirements at each step into the framework of Control-M. Every time visualizing an entire process implemented in Control-M completing from its starting point to its finishing point is very satisfying. A big picture also gets people think beyond individual tasks and beyond boundaries of business units. You know you win them when the design of a new task has the consideration of how it will be launched in Control-M. 

3. Automation is always evolving - are there any trends or upcoming changes in the industry that you’re particularly excited about? How do you see them shaping the way teams work in the near future. 

Automation is evolving as the world of IT is evolving. In the early days of scheduling and automation, it was the rich graphical interface and its ability to bring tasks operating in silos together that brought Control-M to the forefront. We are now moving into automating the automation and we continue to see Control-M bringing Automation API to fill in the gap. It was an exciting moment seeing the introduction of Automation API for Control-M. As it has been slowly developed to the current state over the past few years, AAPI is comprehensive to be an important and indispensable tool working with Control-M. 

4. What’s a challenge in workload automation that’s stood out to you, and is there a story or example of how it was addressed that stayed with you? 

Control-M works across multiple platforms interacting with many distinct applications and systems. While it is impossible to know all the technologies in use for Control-M jobs, it is critical to keep a solid understanding of Control-M features and functionalities, and the underlying infrastructure supporting Control-M architecture. Stand on what you know and engage admins of their specialty areas to identify solutions. 

5. Has there been a moment in the Control-M community that really stuck with you - something that made you go, "this is why I love being part of this community”? 

Control-M offers a platform to manage process flow. I was helping a customer using Control-M to replace an existing scheduler that had very basic functionalities. After converting all the jobs into Control-M for them to form workflows, additional parameters were added to jobs to provide tighter execution control such as QR, CR, On-Do conditions as many seasoned Control-M admin would do. When Control-M was in full production use and before I left the site, an unscheduled outage of a database occurred on which many jobs depended. The additional parameters in Control-M jobs demonstrated in a real-life situation how job submissions could be contained thereby eliminating unnecessary job failures. Upon database back online, just a handful of failed jobs were handled to get the remaining flow back to normal execution. A previously chaotic situation had been turned into a controlled operation under Control-M. As a Control-M admin exercising your expertise, you may be a hero one day. 

6. How do you personally engage with the community, and what would you suggest for someone wanting to really get value out of it? 

I see the community an extension of my work in Control-M. Reading the messages let me think through each situation and it proposed suggestions. We see members in the community helping one another, from newcomers not able to navigate through the product, to seasoned professionals providing suggestions on one-of-a-kind situations. I often reconstruct situations and validate solutions. When a similar situation hits you at work, you may already have an idea how to tackle it. We gain experience by going through situations. There is an old saying that someone letting you know his/her experience is putting money in your pocket. 

7. Looking back, what’s a milestone or accomplishment in your career that you’re particularly proud of, and why did it stand out for you? 

Every step along my way in Control-M has been significant. My sys admin experience gave me the foundation to handle Control-M across multiple platforms. With my foot in Control-M, I realized getting to know more on SQL would be essential. Then AFT jobs got me into the nitty gritty of various types of file transfer servers. Control-M management scripts had been heavily on Perl so time to brush up the skill with this language. Before you know it, there came a task to convert a competitive product into Control-M. While BMC has general conversion utility to do the initial heavy lifting, job definitions still need to be massaged to meet specific customer requirements. It was handy and necessary using Perl scripts to handle XML definitions for thousands of jobs for the conversion. Of course, the focus now has turned into Python script, AAPI and JSON data structure. All small steps added up to where I am at. The takeaway: escalate yourself from those small tasks coming through every day, to ready yourself for something big appearing one day. 

8. Your role has evolved over time - if someone is navigating similar transitions, what’s one lesson or strategy you would share from your experience? 

Nowadays a faster way to get to an answer on everything is to do Google search or ask AI. Even with an answer, I would still go through Control-M documentation on the provided solution. Documentations let me understand better on the provided solution and may lead to discover/reiterate other features. I always keep the manual handy, whether PDF files or web links, especially older versions that allow me to correspond between new names and old names. I have to admit that I am still entrenched with old names. 

9. After a busy day, how do you usually unwind or recharge? 

Parks and gardens are pockets of serendipity in a bustling city. Whether it is just a few minutes’ walk from home to a neighbourhood garden or couple hours’ drive to a national park, immersing in nature is the best way to get myself away from any stress. Sit down, relax and look over to the sky, to the trees, to the flowers, and to wild animals unexpectedly coming to greet you. 

10. What’s your biggest source of support or inspiration in your work, and if you could give one piece of advice to your younger self or someone starting workload automation, what would it be? 

My boss at one point told me, “Don’t just make it work; make it scalable as well!” This was the days when I was a sys admin handling IT infrastructure, and I found this applicable working with Control-M too. It has become my motto to remind me always consider the issue on hand with scalability and repeatability, looking further and looking beyond. 

We sincerely thank George for taking the time to sit down with us and share his journey, experiences, and wisdom with the BMC Community. 

As part of our March AMA Series, we’re proud to spotlight experts like George who continue to shape the future of workload automation through their knowledge, leadership, and willingness to give back. 

Have a question for George or want to dive deeper into any of the topics discussed? Share your thoughts in the comments below - we’d love to keep the conversation going and will be happy to take your questions forward. 

We are excited to share several enhancements across BMC AMI Ops, focused on improving visibility, diagnostics, and operational efficiency.

This Product Connect post highlights key updates and opens the floor for discussion with our product teams to better understand how these updates can help in day-to-day operations. Let's dive in!

1. IMS Visibility + Faster Root Cause 

Keep IMS running smoothly - find issues earlier and fix them faster. BMC AMI Ops Insight strengthens AI/ML-driven anomaly detection and root-cause identification for IMS workloads. 

Learn more: January 2026 Release – IMS Visibility 

Let us know in the comments - what IMS scenarios are you most interested in improving visibility for? 

2. GenAI Recommendations + Recommended Next Steps 

Solve problems faster with plain-language root cause guidance and action. BMC AMI Ops Insight provides deeper diagnostic findings, enhanced with GenAI explanations and next-step recommendations from BMC AMI Assistant. 

Learn more: Monitoring with GenAI Assistance 

Let us know in the comments - Where would GenAI recommendations save you the most time? 

3. In-Workflow Knowledge Expert Chat 

Less searching, faster resolution - expert answers without leaving the workflow. The new BMC AMI Assistant Knowledge Expert Chat delivers trusted, contextual guidance directly inside the BMC AMI Ops UI. 

Learn more: October 2026 Release – Knowledge Expert Chat 

Let us know in the comments - What questions would you want answered instantly in-chat? 

4. OpenTelemetry + Enterprise Observability 

 Connect mainframe operations into modern observability platforms. BMC AMI Datastream for Ops streams z/OS operational telemetry into tools like Splunk and Elastic using OpenTelemetry. 

 Learn More: October 2025 Release – OpenTelemetry 

Let us know in the comments - Are you integrating mainframe telemetry with enterprise observability tools today? 

5. Modern Ops UI + Interactive Dashboards

 See more, resolve faster with enhanced dashboards and a modern web-based experience. The BMC AMI Ops UI continues to deliver richer dashboards, KPI visibility, and customizable views across different quarterly releases. 

Learn more: 

Jan 2026 

Oct 2025

Let us know in the comments - What dashboards or KPIs matter most for your team? 

Have questions, feedback, or scenarios you’d like to explore further? Drop them in the comments below - we’ll bring the right AMI Ops experts to answer your queries. Your input helps us shape future updates and ensures the Product Connect Series continues to deliver value for you. 

Our community thrives because of the incredible people who share insights, support, and spark meaningful conversations. This month, we want to shine a spotlight on top five members whose contributions truly stood out and helped our community grow stronger.

🌟 This Month’s Active Contributors:

These contributors remind us that a community is only as strong as the people who actively shape it. Thank you for your dedication, enthusiasm, and the positive energy you bring to BMC Community!

💡 Every voice matters! Let’s keep building a community where everyone can learn, contribute, and grow together.

Hey everyone!

Our community thrives on sharing, learning, and helping each other tackle challenges. 💛

Some Knowledge Articles have proven especially useful, offering practical tips and insights that spark discussion and learning among members.

Here are the topmost-viewed Knowledge Articles this month:

🔗 How to use the BMC Control-M Usage Reporting Tool? - INCLUDES VIDEO

🔗 Configuring Control-M for SAP to work with Secure Network Communications (SNC)

🔗Control-M/Agent Jobs fail with "failed to write submit message to AM data pipe number 0. error 232"

🔗 Best Practices for Control-M/Enterprise Manager performance tuning for Small/Medium/Large environments

These articles highlight what the community found most helpful this month. Whether you’re troubleshooting an issue, fine-tuning performance, or exploring best practices, we hope these resources support you in your day-to-day work.

👉 Have a favorite article or a topic you’d like to see next? Join the discussion and let our community know in the comments!