IBM Alert Notification BETA DRAFT. IBM Alert Notification IBM

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1 IBM Alert Notification BETA DRAFT IBM Alert Notification IBM

2 IBM Alert Notification IBM Alert Notification is an easy to use, simple notification system that meets the increasing demand for agility and efficient collaboration among IT operations team members that use multiple monitoring tools. It gives IT staff instant notification of alerts for any issues in your IT operations environment, optimizing your business performance, increasing customer satisfaction, and protecting revenue. Because IBM Alert Notification is provided as a service, the required server infrastructure is installed and managed by IBM, reducing your time-to-value and offering low-maintenance ownership. IBM Alert Notification is offered with IBM Performance Management on Cloud. Easy integrations IBM Alert Notification is integrated with IBM Performance Management on Cloud. The data from the on-premise monitoring agents is the source for the alert data. IBM Performance Management on Cloud can also be integrated with an existing on-premise installation of Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus. You can integrate IBM Alert Notification with any on-premise monitoring tool that can implement and invoke an HTTP API. Supported tools include Netcool/OMNIbus and Netcool/Impact, which are part of the Netcool Operations Insight solution. A default notification policy is provided that generates notifications for all alerts. Custom IT environment monitoring IBM Alert Notification offers easy-to-implement filtering of alerts, for example on the severity of problems, so that you can focus on the real problems and disregard the noise in your IT environment. You can create custom groups of contacts to reflect the structure of your organization, so that the right notifications reach the right staff, streamlining and simplifying the process of determining who to contact when specific problems occur and how to contact them. Notification channels Define the IT subject matter experts who can respond to problems in your environment and store their contact details in IBM Alert Notification so that they can be automatically notified of problems that affect them. Users can be organized into groups and you can send notifications to several users at once. Notifications can be sent by , SMS, and voice. Alert management IBM Alert Notification has the following features for managing alerts and notifications: Policy-based notifications Define which alerts you want IBM Alert Notification to notify you about. Create filters based on the alerts that occur in your IT environment, customize the filters to account for alert frequencies and x-in-y type scenarios, and assign users and groups who are notified when matching problems occur. Unacknowledged alerts can be escalated after a set time period to the appropriate contact. Filters can be created for your IT monitoring requirements, such as the severity and status of alerts. Copyright IBM Corp

3 Alert Viewer Monitor the status of alerts and notifications online, perform actions on alerts and track them in realtime. Alert severities enable you to prioritize easily. The notification state allows you to track alerts from their receipt by the system through acknowledgment to resolution. You can track changes in the Alert History. You can use predefined and real-time filters to change which alerts you want to see. Mobile app Receive notifications and work with alerts via the mobile app on ios and Android devices. Data flow for alerts and notifications How alerts and notifications are processed by IBM Alert Notification. 1. Alerts are received from the alert source. Alerts can be received from IBM Performance Management on Cloud. 2. If an alert matches the rules that are set in a notification policy, a notification is triggered. The notification is sent to the recipients that are specified in the policy. Recipients can be users, groups, or both. Examples of rules include severities and string matches. 3. Acknowledge the alert. This indicates to other users that someone is working on that alert. v By click a link in the notification to acknowledge the alert. v By SMS: copy and past the short ID from the received SMS and reply to the message. 4. Users can log in to Alert Notification and action the alert in the Alert Viewer. An Alert History of information is available for each alert. Mistakenly acknowledged alerts can be unacknowledged. Notification statuses IBM Alert Notification transitions alerts through the following states. You can configure notification policies to trigger notifications in response to alerts being put into the acknowledged or unacknowledged states. Unnotified Alert Notification has received the alert but no notification was generated. Indicates that an alert does not match any existing notification policy. Notified Alert Notification has matched the alert to a notification policy and triggered a notification, which was sent to the users or groups defined in the notification policy. No contact has yet acknowledged the alert. Indicates that no one is working on an alert. Escalated A time period specified in the notification policy has passed without the alert being acknowledged. An escalation notification has been sent to the users or groups defined in the notification policy. Acknowledged Indicates to Alert Notification that the alert is being worked on. A contact has acknowledged the alert, either from the notification or in the Alert 2 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

4 Viewer. Alerts can switch between the acknowledged and unacknowledged states, for example, if an alert was mistakenly acknowledged. Getting started Archived The alert is currently archived. Severity levels Alert Notification has the following severity levels, which are depicted as follows in the Alert Viewer: Fatal A service-terminating condition has occurred. Immediate action is required. Critical A service-affecting condition has occurred, and corrective action is immediately required. For example, a device has gone out of service and needs to be restored. Major A service-affecting problem occurred. Corrective action is urgently required. For example, a severe degradation occurred in the capability of a device and full capability must be restored. Minor A non-service affecting problem occurred; take corrective action to prevent alerts of higher severity. For example, a problem occurred on a device but it does not impair the capacity or performance of the device. Warning Potential or impending problems were detected. Further investigation is needed to prevent alerts of higher severity. Indeterminate The severity level cannot be determined from the device. After you activate IBM Alert Notification, you receive a welcome that contains the URL to access your service. You can use your IBM ID and password to log in. Once logged in, you will find the Getting Started page has some helpful links to basic tasks for using Alert Notification. API key management An API key is required to log in to your instance of IBM Alert Notification from an HTTP requester, or an IBM or external monitoring system, to post alerts to Alert Notification. v Click Manage API Keys on the navigation menu. A table of existing API keys is displayed. v To create a new API key: 1. Click + Create API Key. 2. Enter a description of what the key will be used for (optional). Overview 3

5 3. Click Generate. 4. The name and password for the API key are displayed. Make a note of both of these values. Note: For security purposes the password cannot be retrieved later. If you lose the password you must delete the API key and generate a new one. v To delete an API key, click Delete next to the key. Logging in and accessing IBM Alert Notification After your service is activated, log in to IBM Alert Notification from your browser. v To access your Alert Notification service, in the alerting you that your service is ready click the Launch Service link and enter your IBM ID and password. v In My Products and Services, click Launch. 1. A stand alone subscription will go directly to Alert Notification. 2. For a IBM Performance Management on Cloud subscription, go to the Resource Group Editor to access Alert Notification. Click System Configuration > Resource Group Manager. In the Resource Group Editor, click Configure notification, which is at the bottom of the Resource Group Manager window. What to do next Familiarize yourself with the functions of IBM Alert Notification. You can access the functions by clicking through the navigation menus: In Getting Started page there are helpful links to some basic tasks for using Alert Notification. In Manage Notification Policies: Define which alerts you want IBM Alert Notification to notify you about. Create filters based on the alerts that occur in your IT environment, customize the filters to account for alert frequencies and x-in-y type scenarios, and assign users and groups who are notified when matching problems occur. Unacknowledged alerts can be escalated after a set time period to the appropriate contact. Filters can be created for your IT monitoring requirements, such as the severity and status of alerts. See Creating notification policies on page 7. In Alert Viewer: Monitor the status of alerts and notifications online, perform actions on alerts and track them in realtime. See Monitoring and managing alerts on page 8. In Manage API Keys: Create API keys and generate passwords. In Manage Users and Groups: Define the IT subject matter experts who can respond to problems in your environment and store their contact details in IBM Alert Notification so that they can be automatically notified of problems that affect them. Users can be organized into groups and you can send notifications to several users at once. See Managing users and groups on page 5. 4 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

6 Managing users and groups Define the IT subject matter experts who can respond to problems in your environment and store their contact details in IBM Alert Notification so that they can be automatically notified of problems that affect them. Users can be organized into groups to reflect the structure of your organization and send notifications to multiple contacts at once. For example, UNIX support groups, payroll application experts, customer support teams, and so on. v Login to IBM Alert Notification with your subscription at v For Users, click Manage Users and Groups > Manage Users. 1. Click + Create a User and enter the user's details in the fields provided: Full Name IBM ID Mobile phone (optional) Add a group (optional) Add a role (optional) You can change the notification methods for a user. The default notification method is Click Save. v For Groups, click 1. Click + Create a Group. 2. Enter a name for the new group. Manage Users and Groups > Manage Groups. 3. Select the users to be included in the group. 4. Click Save. v To remove a user or group them from the list, click Delete. Note: You can only delete users that were created in Alert Notification. If the user was created in IBM Service Engage and then subscribed to an instance of Alert Notification, you cannot delete that user from Alert Notification. In those cases, the Delete icon is greyed out. What to do next Create the notification policies that cause the notifications to be sent to the contacts and groups. See Creating notification policies on page 7. Selecting notification methods Notifications methods are individual to a user and can be sent by , SMS, and voice. About this task Complete the following steps to set your preferred alert notification method. Overview 5

7 1. Click User > Edit Profile > Notifications. 2. Select your preferred notification method. You can select more than one option: v v SMS v Voice 3. Click Save. Testing the Alert Notification service You can test your Alert Notification service is working by using the default notification policy and an HTTP requester. As the subscriber, you can have a notification sent to the address that you provided when setting up the subscription. The default notification method is and the default enabled notification policy captures all alerts. 1. Create an API key as described in API key management on page 3. Make a note of the generated API name and password. 2. Provide the HTTP requester with the URL that you are posting the request to: 3. Provide the API name and password for authentication. 4. Use the POST method to send an alert to Alert Notification. For example: { "Identifier": "String", "What": "Test for AN", "Where": "example-server.mylab.com", "Severity": "Major", "Type": "Problem", "Source": "Test", "ApplicationsOrServices": [ "string" ], "URLs": [ { "Description": "string", "URL": "string" } ], "Details": [ { "Name": "string", "Value": "string" } ] } The response status of the HTTP requester indicates whether the alert was successfully posted to IBM Alert Notification. A notification is sent to the subscriber address. Results Log in to Alert Notification and check the Alert Viewer. It now contains a row that matches the alert that you posted. If you used the same information as in the example above, the What Happened column should display Test for AN and the 6 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

8 Where column should display example-server.mylab.com. The same information is displayed in the notification. What to do next Disable the default policy if you do not want receive notifications for all alerts. Related reference: REST Alert API on page 10 The REST Alert API can receive alert requests from any event source to the IBM Alert Notification service to support hybrid cloud deployments. Creating notification policies Not all alerts are of interest. Notification policies define which alerts you are interested in by filtering for the alerts that, for example, are of critical severity, and sending a notification to contacts. You can refine the filters as much as you need and also specify frequencies of occurrence to match patterns in your IT environment. Before you begin Depending on your setup before you subscribed to IBM Alert Notification, you might already have some notification policies in your system. If you have IBM Alert Notification integrated with IBM Performance Management on Cloud, a default notification policy is provided that generates notifications for all alerts. The recipient is the user who set up the subscription. It is enabled by default. You can open the Notifications Editor from within IBM Alert Notification by clicking Manage Notification Policies on the navigation menu. You can also access IBM Alert Notification through IBM Performance Management on Cloud, when you create or edit resource groups. Click System Configuration > Resource Group Manager. In the Resource Group Editor, click Configure notification, which is at the bottom of the Resource Group Manager window. The Notifications Editor is automatically provisioned with a new notification policy. The name and filter are derived from the resource group. If you are satisfied with the name and filter, you can skip steps 1-3 of this task. Complete the following steps to create new notifications policies: 1. Click + Create a Notification Policy. 2. Type a name and an optional description. The policy is disabled by default. 3. Click + Add Rule. Create a rule that identifies the conditions in your environment that you want to monitor and triggers a notification when the conditions are met. A rule can be composed of one or more conditions, which you add in separate rows. You can select from the options of pre-defined rules. You can also click Add Rule where the fields allow you to specify attributes, operators, and values. You can Delay notifications for alerts. For example, until 2 identical alerts occur within 60 seconds. 4. Click + Add User or Group. To search for a particular user or group, begin typing in the name you want then select the search result from the list. 5. Click + Add Escalation to specify in minutes or hours any escalation rules that you want to apply to the alert. Click + Add Contact and search for a user or group to be notified after the specified time period. Overview 7

9 6. Click Save to save the notification policy. 7. To enable the policy, click. Results When alerts are generated that match the conditions in the policy, notifications are sent to the contacts you specified. Further notifications are sent in response to any escalation rules that you specified. What to do next v To modify an existing policy, click Modify this policy in the appropriate row and make the changes as described in the preceding steps. To enable a disabled policy, select Enabled in the appropriate row. v To delete a policy, click Delete this policy in the appropriate row. Example: Creating a notification policy to notify a user of all critical issues This example shows how to create a notification policy that will notify a user of all critical issues. 1. On the Getting Started page, click Create a notification policy. 2. In the Notification Policy Editor, type a name and optional description for the policy. 3. Click Add Rule. a. Select the predefined rule Severity of the alert is critical or above. b. Click Add. 4. Click Add User or Group to specify who will receive the notifications. a. Select Users for individuals, or Groups to add user groups. b. Start typing to search for users or groups by name, or select them from the list. c. Click Add to add them to the policy. 5. Click Save to save the notification policy. 6. Click to enable the policy. Monitoring and managing alerts Select your preferred notification method and monitor and manage alerts in the Alert Viewer. The Alert Viewer shows useful information in the following columns: Column State ID Description The state of the notification in the Alert Notification system; that is, unnotified, notified, acknowledged, escalated, and archived. A unique serial number for the row in the Alert Viewer. 8 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

10 Column What Happened Severity Where When Alert Source Actions Description Contains text which describes the nature of the alert and the affected node. The severity level of the alert, as received from the device. The severity indicates how badly affected the device is. Identifies where the alert originated. Identifies when the alert originated. Identifies the source from which the alert originated. This could be a device name or host name, service name, or other entity. Contains options for responding to an alert, as well as additional information about the alert, such as alert details or URLs. Monitoring and managing alerts in the Alert Viewer The Alert Viewer gives you a real-time view of the alerts in your IT environment. The Alert Viewer screen is comprised of two parts: the list of alerts, and the Alert History section. Because of deduplication, each row in the list of alerts is a unique alert. When you select an alert, it shows changes that were made by you and other operators against the alert. v Click the Alert Viewer navigation menu. v Select All Alerts or select My Alerts to see only Alerts for which you have been defined as a recipient. v IBM Alert Notification supplies default filters for the most common monitoring scenarios. Click filters: Unnotified Notified Escalated Acknowledged Archived Fatal Critical Major Minor Warning Indeterminate Filter and use the check boxes to apply the following v Click anywhere in an alert row to see the journal details for that alert displayed in Alert History. v To sort a column, click the arrow in the column header. You can sort the column into ascending or descending order or remove the sort. An arrow next to the column text indicates the sort order. The following icons depict the status of alerts in the Alert Viewer: Overview 9

11 Status icons in the Alert Viewer : Notified alert. The users or groups defined in the notification policy were notified of the alert. : Acknowledged alert. The notified user has acknowledged the alert. : Unnotified alert. The alert does not match the conditions in any notification policies, so no notification was generated. : Escalated alert. The alert has been escalated to the next contact as defined in the policy. : Archived alert. The alert is currently archived. Use the icons in the Actions column to action an alert: Action icons in the Alert Viewer : Click to change the status of the alert to Acknowledged. : Click to change the status of the alert to Unacknowledged. : Click to open a link such as a runbook. Any links that are included in an alert are defined in the alert payload. : Click to display the alert details. Each time you take an action, the Alert History section of the Alert Viewer is updated. REST Alert API The REST Alert API can receive alert requests from any event source to the IBM Alert Notification service to support hybrid cloud deployments. You can configure the Alert Notification service programmatically through the Alert Notification API: Integrating Alert Notification with other IBM products Events can be forwarded to Alert Notification through a Netcool/OMNIbus trigger or a Netcool/Impact policy. Use these best practice guidelines to configure Alert Notification with other IBM products: v Associate an event to an application or a service. When creating a filter it will make it easier to create notifications based on an application or a service. v Include the associated application or service in the alert. Use the information to route the alert to the right group. For example, if database administrators need to be notified of all critical database alerts, include the relevant component in the application or services field of the alert. Use that information when you create the notification policy to route the alert to the right group. v Always add the event fields that are helpful in the alert details field. 10 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

12 v Apply all of the analysis and event filtering in the Netcool Operations Insight solution. Sending Events with Netcool/OMNIbus Files are provided for download from IBM developerworks that you can use to create a trigger in Netcool/OMNIbus that will forward events to Alert Notification. You can configure this trigger to select the events that you want to be notified of. Before you begin v The ObjectServer must be running under the Process Agent and be configured to execute external automations. For more information, see Using process control to manage processes and external procedures. v The system must have the CURL command line utility installed. v The system must have an internet connection. In particular to notify-prodtest.mybluemix.net. v Decide which events to capture in the trigger if you do not want the default (Major or Critical alarms that occurred in the last 60 seconds). v Download and untar an-omnibus.tar from: developerworks/community/wikis/form/anonymous/api/wiki/95c47b5c-6a77-4ab c4092a745635/page/93f7e444-eecd-486e-a11d-2e89996dc560/ attachment/582e2626-de07-44cf-8e67-d6f744a8c2df/media/an-omnibus.tar. 1. Copy the nco_curl wrapper script to $OMNIHOME/bin. Ensure it is executable by the user running the Process agent. 2. Use the nco_sql command to apply the sendalert.sql file to the ObjectServer: nco_sql -username <username> -password v Configure IBM Alert Notification: 1. Log in to Alert Notification at notify-prodtest.mybluemix.net 2. Click Manage API Keys. <password> -server <servername> < <path to sendalert 3. Click Create API Key and enter a description of what the key will be used for. 4. Click Generate. The name and password for the API key are displayed. Make a note of both of these values. You will add this information to the OMNIbus trigger. 5. Create or modify a notification policy so that you will be informed when an alert is received. See Creating notification policies on page 7. v Example Netcool/OMNIbus configuration: 1. Use the nco_config command to edit the send_alert_to_an trigger. 2. The trigger selects the events that are of interest. By default, this is any Major or Critical alarm that occurred in the last 60 seconds, excluding the OMNIbus self monitoring alarms (Class = 99999). The where clause is: alert.lastoccurrence >= ( getdate() - 60 ) and alert.class!= and alert.severity >= 4 You can change the condition to match the alerts that you want to notify on. 3. Set the API key username and password that you created. Replace the following strings in the trigger with the new credentials: api key name, api key password Overview 11

13 4. Edit the send_res_to_an trigger to set the API key username and password, as described in the previous steps. 5. Test the automation. Insert a test event into the ObjectServer that matches the criteria of the trigger. If you are using the trigger as supplied, the following insert will create an alert that is forwarded to the Alert Notification service and be visible in the Alert Viewer: insert into alerts.status (Identifier, Severity, Node, Summary, Manager, Type) values ( an-test Managing users and groups on page 5 Define the IT subject matter experts who can respond to problems in your environment and store their contact details in IBM Alert Notification so that they can be automatically notified of problems that affect them. Users can be organized into groups to reflect the structure of your organization and send notifications to multiple contacts at once. For example, UNIX support groups, payroll application experts, customer support teams, and so on. Creating notification policies on page 7 Not all alerts are of interest. Notification policies define which alerts you are interested in by filtering for the alerts that, for example, are of critical severity, and sending a notification to contacts. You can refine the filters as much as you need and also specify frequencies of occurrence to match patterns in your IT environment. Sending Events with Netcool/Impact Files are provided for download from IBM developerworks that you can use to create a trigger in Netcool/Impact that will forward events to Alert Notification. You can configure this trigger to select the events that you want to be notified of. Before you begin v Run the following commands to start the Netcool/Impact server: startimpactserver.sh / startguiserver.sh v Decide which events to capture in the trigger if you do not want the default. v Download and untar anexport2.tar from: developerworks/community/wikis/form/anonymous/api/wiki/95c47b5c-6a77-4ab c4092a745635/page/b9bcfea bfb-89af-ce ebf/ attachment/f6351ac1-e351-4a4d-9efa b4ae/media/anexport2.tar. Use the following command to import the contents of the extracted package into Netcool/Impact: $IMPACT_HOME/bin/nci_import NCI /package_contents Where NCI is your Netcool/Impact instance name and package_contents is the location of the extracted package. If a message regarding locks is displayed, you can run the following command to clear locks:./nci_version_control NCI uncoall "" v Import the CA certificates into the Netcool/Impact truststore: 1. Download add_common_certificates.zip from: developerworks/community/files/form/anonymous/api/library/eb3c5ef7-51e0-49bd-b0f4-4ec44de1d7e9/document/e184e2fe-f1ef-4cb4-97dedddd4bc7519c/media/add_common_certificates.zip. 2. On the CLI for your Netcool/Impact system, extract the package contents to a temporary directory. 12 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT

14 3. Edit the extracted add_common_certificates.sh script file and provide the correct values for the variables names at the top IMPACT_HOME, IMPACT_PASS, and NCI server. Save and close the file. 4. Ensure the script has the correct file permissions (chmod u+x add_common_certificates.sh). 5. Run the following command to import the CA certificates into your Netcool/Impact truststore: add_common_certificates.sh 6. Stop and restart the Netcool/Impact servers. v Configure IBM Alert Notification: 1. Log in to Alert Notification at 2. Click Manage API Keys. 3. Click Create API Key and enter a description of what the key will be used for. 4. Click Generate. The name and password for the API key are displayed. Make a note of both of these values. You will use this API Key and password in your Netcool/Impact policy. 5. Create or modify a notification policy so that you will be informed when an alert is received. See Creating notification policies on page 7. v Configure Netcool/Impact: 1. On the Netcool/Impact toolbar, select Alert Notification from the project drop-down list. 2. On the Policy tab, open the SendAlertsToAlertNotification Javascript policy. 3. Set the API key username and password that you created. Update the following lines with the new credentials: 10. /* Update your apikey and password */ 11. var an_apikey = ; 12. var an_apikeypass = ; 4. On line 23 (an_host), ensure the correct Alert Notification URL is set: 21. // Environment Configuration 22. var an_protocol = https ; 23. var an_host = ibmnotify.mybluemix.net ; 24. var an_port = 443; 25. var an_path = /api/alerts/v1 ; 5. Note lines 1-8. These lines map the event fields to the Alert Notification Alert API: 1. // Event to Alert field mapping 2. var mapping = { 3. Summary: What, 4. Node: Where, 5. Severity: Severity, 6. Identifier: Identifier, 7. Manager : Source }; 6. Save the SendAlertsToAlertNotification Javascript policy. 7. On the Services tab, open the AlertNotificationService event reader. 8. Select Starts automatically when server starts. 9. Click the Event Mapping tab. Here you can customize which events are sent to Alert Notification. In the table at the bottom, select New. 10. Create a filter based on your criteria. In the Policy to Run field, select SendAlertsToAlertNotification. Click Active > OK. Overview 13

15 11. Save the AlertNotificationService event reader. Then right-click on it and select Start. Results When the service is started and running, new events that match the criteria you specified will be sent into Alert Notification. IBM Alert Notification Mobile App Managing users and groups on page 5 Define the IT subject matter experts who can respond to problems in your environment and store their contact details in IBM Alert Notification so that they can be automatically notified of problems that affect them. Users can be organized into groups to reflect the structure of your organization and send notifications to multiple contacts at once. For example, UNIX support groups, payroll application experts, customer support teams, and so on. Creating notification policies on page 7 Not all alerts are of interest. Notification policies define which alerts you are interested in by filtering for the alerts that, for example, are of critical severity, and sending a notification to contacts. You can refine the filters as much as you need and also specify frequencies of occurrence to match patterns in your IT environment. The mobile app offers a subset of Alert Notification functions on ios and Android devices. You can receive notifications and work with alerts via the app. Configuration tasks, such as requesting API keys and creating and editing notification policies, can be performed only from the desktop version of Alert Notification. Introduction The IBM Alert Notification mobile app synchronizes with an instance of Alert Notification that you are subscribed to. You can tab between My Alerts and All Alerts, filter alerts by notification status, and tap any alert to view the Alert Details. Logging in for the first time Complete the following steps to authenticate your subscription on the mobile app. 1. Download the mobile app onto your device. You can download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play. 2. Log in to IBM Alert Notification in your mobile browser by following the instructions at Logging in and accessing IBM Alert Notification on page Click Add subscription to mobile app. This will launch the mobile app. 4. Add a name for the subscription in the field provided. The name will be used in future for this subscription on your device. 5. Click Save. The subscription is available for login under Available subscriptions. Alerts Overview 14 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT v The Alerts Overview screen has two tabs, one for My Alerts and one for All Alerts.

16 v Alerts are categorized by the following notification states: Notified Alert Notification has matched the alert to a notification policy and triggered a notification, which was sent to the users or groups defined in the notification policy. No contact has yet acknowledged the alert. Indicates that no one is working on an alert. Escalated A time period specified in the notification policy has passed without the alert being acknowledged. An escalation notification has been sent to the users or groups defined in the notification policy. Acknowledged Indicates to Alert Notification that the alert is being worked on. A contact has acknowledged the alert, either from the notification or in the Alert Viewer. Alerts can switch between the acknowledged and unacknowledged states, for example, if an alert was mistakenly acknowledged. Tap the menu to show only alerts with a particular notification status. v Swipe left on an alert to acknowledge or unacknowledge, depending on the notification state of the alert. v Alert severity levels are depicted with the following icons: Fatal A service-terminating condition has occurred. Immediate action is required. Critical A service-affecting condition has occurred, and corrective action is immediately required. For example, a device has gone out of service and needs to be restored. Major A service-affecting problem occurred. Corrective action is urgently required. For example, a severe degradation occurred in the capability of a device and full capability must be restored. Minor A non-service affecting problem occurred; take corrective action to prevent alerts of higher severity. For example, a problem occurred on a device but it does not impair the capacity or performance of the device. Warning Potential or impending problems were detected. Further investigation is needed to prevent alerts of higher severity. Indeterminate The severity level cannot be determined from the device. Alert Details You can tap an alert to open the Alert Details screen to display more information for an alert. Here you can acknowledge or unacknowledge the alert. You can also Overview 15

17 Troubleshooting scenarios see the alert history and any links that are defined in the alert payload. Tap the back button to return to the Alerts Overview. Use this information to troubleshoot integration and other issues. Integrating a Netcool Operations Insight ObjectServer with Alert Notification on AIX If you are integrating a Netcool Operations Insight ObjectServer with Alert Notification on AIX you must complete these additional steps: 1. Download a curl executable for your system. 2. Download a set of CA certificates in PEM format. 3. Edit nco_curl to use the curl utility and CA certificates. The following example assumes curl is located in /opt/freeware/bin, that the certs have been downloaded into /home, and the bundle is called ca-bundle.pem. Changes to the default syntax are in italics. LIBPATH=/opt/freeware/lib:${LIBPATH} exec /opt/freeware/bin/curl -X POST --capath /home/ --cacert /home/ca-bundle.pem Content-Type:application/json -d "${DATA}" \ -u ${OMNIUSERNAME}:${OMNIPASSWORD} ${URI} --header 16 IBM Alert Notification - BETA DRAFT