Save time by automatically opening tickets for hardware errors, job errors, application errors, security errors, device errors, backup errors, or software errors.

Do your operators or help desk staff open problem tickets manually? Are there situations when opening these tickets automatically to cut time and effort would make sense?

Many companies automatically generate problem tickets for failed jobs, hardware problems, security issues, and critical messages. They use either email (SMTP) or an SNMP trap to open a problem ticket for an event. Robot/CONSOLE, the Help/Systems message management and resource monitoring software, can automate this process to provide management by exception without programming. Robot/CONSOLE uses rules to automate message events at their source. It can suppress unimportant messages, answer common messages, make messages response?required, escalate messages, start programs, and execute commands.

Robot/CONSOLE can place an event in an SNMP trap, using its management information base (MIB) definition to format the information for the problem ticket software. (The help desk administrator compiles the Robot/CONSOLE MIB into the ticketing software so that Robot/CONSOLE and the software can communicate.)

With Robot/CONSOLE's macro language, OPerator Assistance Language (OPAL), users can even build routines to handle multiple message IDs. For example, Figure 1 shows an example of a Robot/CONSOLE table that handles all messages from the QCPFMSG message file related to hardware.

Figure 1: This example Robot/CONSOLE message ID table shows messages from the QCPFMSG message file. (Click images to enlarge.)

Figure 2 shows a Robot/CONSOLE Message Set (SNMPHRDWAR) that uses OPAL code to translate hardware errors into an SNMP trap using the Robot/CONSOLE SNDSNMPMSG operation and Robot/CONSOLE's MIB structure.

 Figure 2: A message set creates an SNMP trap for any hardware error.

This example handles hardware errors, but the same error notification process can work for any category of error message, including job errors, application errors, security errors, device errors, backup errors, or errors from software applications such as MIMIX, BRMS, and UPS. And, with Robot/CONSOLE, you can open problem tickets automatically for error messages from QSYSOPR or any message queue.

Click here to learn more about Robot/CONSOLE or try it for 30 days.

Tom Huntington is Executive Vice President of Technical Solutions at HelpSystems, and has been with the company for nearly 30 years. He works with business alliances, acquisitions and large customer relationships and ensures that the HelpSystems software works with other major software and hardware vendors worldwide.

Tom often speaks on enterprise scheduling, security, automation topics, IBM i technology, and the HelpSystems products, and hosts technical presentations on a variety of automation topics. He is the author of the HelpSystems IBM i Marketplace Survey and has written articles on automated operations, security, cloud computing, and business intelligence for leading trade journals and newsletters. He was named an IBM Champion in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 for over three decades of advocation and thought leadership on the IBM i platform.

Contact Tom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..