Symantec® ServiceDesk Customization Guide 7.0
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Migrate Knowledge Base (KB) Content
Migration of KB content is performed by running a KB Migrator executable found in the
Service Catalog. Out of the box, the migrator is configured to migrate Help Desk 6.5
HTML files, however the process can be modified to import content from another
document repository. The project that performs the migration is SD.KBMigrationProcess.
Prerequisites:
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Before you run the KB Migrator, you must copy the directory that houses the KB
files to the ServiceDesk server. This is required due to .NET restrictions at the
command-line level.
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The directory structure for the KB content to copy must follow this format:
C:\Libraries\another directory\Articles. This is the directory structure of HelpDesk
6.5 Knowledge Base content by default. The “another directory” folder represents
the individual libraries.
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You must also grant the Network Service account access to the directory
After migration, you can delete the copied directory (unless there were failures and you
want to run the migrator again for the .failed content).You can run the migration tool
multiple times, however do not run the migrator against content that is already
migrated. This is due to high risk of duplication of articles.
Be advised that the migration process takes a long time to complete (testing against the
average-sized KB of a few thousand entries took approximately 8 hours). You can check
the Configuration Logging Utility for Symantec Workflow to make sure it is still running.
(In the tool, right-click the KB migration process, turn on logging, and go to the Log
View tab.)
The migration wizard sends notifications throughout the migration process to the e-mail
address specified in one of the wizard screens. You are notified each time a KB category
successfully migrates, and if there’s a failure (down to the specific article that failed).
If a directory fails migration multiple times, you should remove the articles from the
source directory, delete the source directory, then try to migrate smaller subsets of
those articles to help identify a problematic article. There is a “visual” setting you should
turn on in the migration wizard that will provide more detail. The process tries 3 times
before it deems a true failure.
Note that the numbering of the migrated articles is new, and is based on the order of
import. You could retain your old numbering, however that would also require modifying
SD.KBMigrationProcess to get the current number of the article.
After migration is complete, the original source directory can be deleted. Migrated KB
articles are stored to the Process Manager database (however images used in articles
are saved to the server drive).
Versioning Processes
Before making changes to the Symantec Workflow processes that ship with
ServiceDesk, it is important to determine a versioning process. Versioning enables you
to return to a prior working state if necessary, and to track the origin of a change.
By default, each time you click Save in Symantec Workflow, a copy of the project is
automatically stored in the C:\Program Files\Altiris\Workflow
Designer\WorkflowProjects\Backup directory. Up to ten copies are saved.
