4 Installing and Configuring the Siebel Connector

Auto Ticketing

Whenever an alert is triggered in Enterprise Manager, the Siebel Connector can automatically open or update a service request. You can specify the set of alerts for which tickets must be opened and the alert severity for which this should happen.

This can be done in Notification Rules, the user-defined rules that define the criteria by which notifications should be sent for alerts.

After the ticket is opened, any subsequent update of the alert, such as a change in alert severity, causes an annotation to the ticket. After the alert is cleared (severity is set to Clear), the ticket can be optionally closed.

Manual Ticketing

From the Enterprise Manager Grid Control, you can choose to manually open a Siebel HelpDesk service request based on an open alert in Enterprise Manager. The Siebel Connector populates the ticket with details based on the alert and the ticket template.

Ticket Templates

Ticket templates are transformation style sheets in XSLT format that transform Enterprise Manager alerts to ticket format before the requests are sent to Siebel HelpDesk.

These templates specify how Enterprise Manager alert attributes can populate the fields of a Siebel service request.

In Auto Ticketing, a notification method is created for each registered ticket template. The selected notification method determines which ticket template is used when a notification is sent out to the Connector. For manual ticketing, you have to select a ticket template before submitting a request to create ticket.

Grace Period

The grace period provides you with a configuration to prevent the creation of a large number of tickets for frequently reoccurring alerts. For alerts that occur frequently within a relatively short time interval, it is often desirable to open and maintain one trouble ticket that tracks each occurrence of the alert instead of separate tickets each time.

For recurring alerts, the Grace Period is a time period during which reoccurrences of the same alert cause an existing ticket for the alert to be updated (or re-opened) instead of causing a new ticket to be opened.

For example, an alert triggers and a ticket is opened for it. If the Grace Period is one hour and the alert is cleared at 10:00 am, then if the same alert retriggers before 11:00 am (one hour grace period), the ticket that had been originally created for the alert is updated/reopened rather than creating a new ticket.

General Settings

The following sections explain how to provide various configuration details.

Working with Ticket Templates

The following sections provide information about viewing, removing, replacing, and adding ticket templates. Use the Configure Management Connector Ticket Templates page (Figure 4-2) to perform any of the activities mentioned in the following sections.

Adding New Templates

To add templates, you should define new templates and register them using emctl.

See Also:

"Customizing Ticket Templates"

Figure 4-2 Configure Management Connector Ticket Templates Page

Re-registering Removed Connectors

The Siebel Connector is automatically registered when Enterprise Manager is installed. However, you may remove this connector at some point and then want to subsequently re-register it.

To re-register a connector that has been removed:

1. Run the following command on all Oracle Management Servers:

   emctl extract_jar connector EMHelpdesk.jar Siebel_Connector $ORACLE_HOME
   

   Files are extracted from the jar file to the following directory:

   $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/connector/Siebel_Connector
   

2. From the Oracle Management Server (OMS) host command window, run the following emctl command from the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory:

   emctl register_connector connector $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/connector/Siebel_Connector/SiebelDeploy.xml host port database_SID username password  $ORACLE_HOME
   

3. Run the following emctl command from the same directory:

   emctl register_ticket_template connector $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/connector/Siebel_Connector/siebelTemplates/SiebelHelpdeskTemplate.xsl host port database_SID username password connector_type_name connector_name template_name template_description
   

Creating Service Requests Automatically

Perform the following steps to create a ticket automatically:

1. From Enterprise Manager Grid Control, click Preferences.

2. In the left pane, under Notification, click Rules, then Create.

3. In the Create Notification Rule General page, specify the rule name, description, and the targets for which this rule should apply.

4. In the Create Notification Rule Availability page, select the availability states for which you want to create tickets.

5. In the Create Notification Rule Metrics page, select the metrics and their associated alert severities for which you want to create and update tickets.

   Ensure that you select all relevant alert severities if you want to update the ticket when the alert severity changes. For example, to open a ticket for a critical alert on the CPU Utilization(%) metric, and the ticket to be updated if the CPU Utilization(%) changes to warning or clear severity, then in the notification rule select Critical, Warning, or Clear severities for the CPU Utilization(%) metric.

6. In the Create Notification Rule Methods page, choose the ticket template from the Advanced Notification Methods table (Figure 4-3).

   In the table, registered ticket templates appear as Java Callback type notification methods under the same name as the ticket template's file name. This ticket template opens tickets for all availability and metric alerts specified in this notification rule.

   This makes the ticket templates available for use to open tickets.

   See Also:

   "Configuring Notifications" in Oracle Enterprise Manager Advanced Configuration Guide

The following process occurs after you create the notification rule for your alerts:

• A notification is sent to the Siebel Connector when a metric alert that matches your rule triggers.

• The Siebel connector creates/updates a ticket according to the ticket template as set in the notification rule.

• In Enterprise Manager, the alert annotation is updated. A comment is added to the Metric Details page of the alert to indicate that a ticket was created or updated, along with the ticket ID and ticket page URL.

A ticket is updated if there is an existing active ticket for an alert. In Figure 4-4, the first screen shows the ticket in the Siebel HelpDesk page, and the second screen shows the alert as it is displayed in Enterprise Manager.

Figure 4-3 Notification Methods

Figure 4-4 Siebel Service Request and the Alert as Displayed in Enterprise Manager

Creating Service Requests Manually

Perform the following steps to create a ticket manually:

1. After a metric alert occurs, go to the associated metric details page for the alert. To access this page, click the alert message in Enterprise Manager Grid Control (Figure 4-5).

2. Click the Create/View Ticket link in the Related Links section.

   The Create Ticket page appears if no active ticket exists for the alert.

3. Select a ticket template and then click Submit (Figure 4-6).

   If you do not see the desired template, you can register one using the emctl command. See "Registering Ticket Templates".

   If creating or updating the ticket is successful, the ticket ID appears in the Last Comment column of the Alert History table for the metric alert.If the Web console settings are configured and enabled, the ticket ID appears as a link to the ticket page in the Siebel Help Desk. If there is no annotation, the ticket creation fails and error information is logged in the file emoms.log.

Figure 4-5 Metric Details Page

Figure 4-6 Create Ticket Page

Navigating from Enterprise Manager to Siebel

1. In Enterprise Manager Grid Control, click the alert message to go to the metric details page for the alert.

2. In the Alert History table, locate the ticket ID link in the Last Comment column.

3. (If not found) Click the icon in the Details column to get more information about the alert.

4. On the page that appears, locate the ticket ID in the Alert Details table.

5. Click the ticket ID link. You are forwarded to the Siebel HelpDesk login page.

6. Provide valid Siebel account details.

   The service request associated with this alert is displayed.

Navigating from Siebel HelpDesk to Enterprise Manager

1. From the HelpDesk Service Request page (Figure 4-7), go to Description and copy the Event Page URL.

2. Search the URL using a Web browser.

   The Enterprise Manager Grid Control login page is displayed.

3. Specify the Enterprise Manager username and password.

   You are forwarded to the alert related to this service request.

Figure 4-7 Alert Details in Siebel HelpDesk Service Request Page

Generating a Certificate Request File

Generate a certificate request file for the Siebel Help Desk and send it to the Certificate authority; for example, VeriSign.

Importing the Certificate from the Certificate Authority

After you get the certificate, import it to the Web server Siebel uses. The import mechanism varies depending on the Web server used by Siebel Help Desk.

Adding Signed Certificates to Wallet Manager

Do the following in Enterprise Manager:

1. As Super Administrator, create a wallet by entering the following orapki utility command at the OMS host:

   orapki wallet create -wallet client -auto_login

   Note:

   orapki is available at $ORACLE_HOME/bin on OMS.

2. Add the trusted certificate to the wallet by entering the following command:

   orapki wallet add -wallet client -trusted_cert -cert verisignCert.cer

3. To view the content of the wallet, enter the following command:

   orapki wallet display -wallet client

   Ensure that ewallet.p12 is available.

4. In Oracle Wallet Manager, open the client certificate ewallet.p12.

5. Go to Select Trusted Certificates and select Operations on the main menu.

6. Select Export All Trusted Certificates.

7. Save the file as certdb.txt.

8. Place the file certdb.txt in the connector home root directory ($OMS_HOME/sysman/connector).

   If the file certdb.txt already exists in the root directory, open the file and add the contents of your certdb.txt file to the existing content.

Now the Java SSl can use this file for communication between Enterprise Manager and the Siebel server in HTTPS mode.

Recommended Protocol

Oracle recommends that you use HTTPS as the protocol for the communication between Enterprise Manager and Siebel HelpDesk.

Use HTTP only if a secure connection is not required and the data can be transferred in clear text between the two systems.

Supported Alerts

This release supports the following types of alerts:

• Metric alerts

• Availability alerts

Notification Failure

Notification is blocked for processing if the notification device is down due to any issues. For instance, the Siebel HelpDesk server is down, the Siebel HelpDesk configuration on Enterprise Manager is wrong, or the service request is removed in Siebel HelpDesk.

Notification failure on one target impacts all other targets of the same target type for which the rule applies. That is, subsequent notifications are blocked until the issue is fixed or the maximum retrials fail.

Customizing Ticket Templates

If the Siebel ticket templates do not satisfy your requirements, you can modify them. To do this, Oracle recommends that you use SiebelHelpdeskTicketTemplate.xsl as the base template. Copy this ticket template to a new file, modify, and register the new ticket template.

For example, to change the mapping or add more severity attributes based on Enterprise Manager Alert's severity, modify the following attributes:

<xsl:choose>
                <xsl:when test="normalize-space(ns0:Severity) = 'Critical'">
                  <data:Severity>1-Critical</data:Severity>                  
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:when test="normalize-space(ns0:Severity) = 'Down'">
                  <data:Severity>2-High</data:Severity>              
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:when test="normalize-space(ns0:Severity) = 'Warning'">
                  <data:Severity>3-Medium</data:Severity>                 
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:otherwise>
                  <data:Severity>5-Question</data:Severity>               
                </xsl:otherwise>
              </xsl:choose>         

The template is highly customizable. Oracle recommends that only users with advanced knowledge of XSLT make complex changes. You can use notification rules as a filter to associate proper ticket templates with alerts. You can have as many tickets templates as desired. One notification rule can have only one ticket template.

Customizing the Connector Descriptor

You can customize the connector descriptor. You can modify the URL that navigates from Enterprise Manager to the Siebel application User Interface. This might be required, for instance, when you do a non-English deployment. The default URL to the Siebel application User Interface is for an English language deployment and therefore, for other languages, you have to modify the default URL.

To customize the connector descriptor, do the following:

1. Modify the connector descriptor XML file SiebelDeploy.xml.

   1. Modify the bookmark URL.

      For instance, in the following sample URL, modify eai_enu for a non-English deployment.

      http://hostname/eai_enu/start.swe?SWEExtSource=WebService&SWEExtCmd=Execute

   2. Based on the format of the URL, parameterize the information that you want to configure using the Connector Configuration page. For details, refer to the section "Defining XML and XSL Files" in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Integration Guide.

2. Register the new connector descriptor.