Contact/Operator Integrations into HP Service Manager 7 Part 1
June 25, 2009
In Service Manager, personnel information is one of the most important pieces of information that needs to be entered into the system. Maintaining clean information that is synchronized from a single source is crucial. Operator information is important for the entire application, as it controls who has access to the software and also ties to profile information dictating what each logged operator can do. Contact information needs to reflect valid details on a reported tickets.
There are a two primary ways to integrate and import data into Service manager:
Service Manager text delimited file import:
- Pros:
- Can be run on a schedule
- Swift import time
- Data can be manipulated automatically using internal SM functionality
- Easy to configure
- Default configurations are available as templates
- Cons:
- Requires that the delimited file be stored at a specific location accessible by the Service Manager server
Connect-It:
- Pros:
- Can run on a schedule or continuously or ‘real time’
- Swift import time
- Data can be manipulated easily with the application
- Easy to configure
- Can read from many sources (XML files, text files, direct database or application direct)
- Cons:
- Requires additional purchase of the Connect It application and access to required connector types (ODBC, Service Manager, Asset Manager, LDAP, etc)
- Manual configuration is required; there are no OOB scenarios for contacts or operators
Connect-It establishes a client connection to the Service Manager server through a listener and information is routed bi-directionally through it. Connect-It is specifically designed so inbound information must go through Event Services. The input event log file is called eventin. Data passes to Service Manager in a character string using a delimiter character to separate fields.
There are many ways that this application can access the data required. Connect-It can connect directly to an application such as LDAP (Active Directory), connect directly to the database tables holding this data using an ODBC driver or read in from a produced document (XML, CSV etc).
Configuring Event Services requires the creation of an Event Registration record along with a corresponding Event Map record. The Event Registration record identifies information about the event being processed, such as:
- Action to perform on this record (add or update)
- What file will this event act against when processing
- The event map associated with the fields to be updated
- Query to identify the unique record to be added or updated.
The example below shows the Out of Box operator Event Registration record. This is an input event registration which receives operators from outside sources. $axces is a variable that exposes the event record details. $axces.fields is a variable to the field that contains the input mapped fields as a delimited array string.
ServiceManager Event Registration Record for Operators
In Part Two we’ll finish this process
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