Forwarding Alerts to Alert Management (ALM) 

Purpose

Alert Management (ALM) provides numerous functions for handling alerts, such as representation rules, escalation, or notification using external communication methods.

Conditions for critical situations are predefined in Alert Management. If an alert is triggered in ALM that meets these conditions, those responsible or interested are identified and are informed about the situation by the immediate sending of alerts. The alerts are displayed to the recipient in one of the following programs:

·        In the Universal Work List (UWL of the Enterprise Portal) as of SAP NetWeaver ’04

·        In the Alert Inbox. The Alert Inbox is an application based on Business Server Pages (BSP), which can be called using the transaction ALRTINBOX or the corresponding URL (http://<host>:<port>/sap/bc/bsp/sap/alertinbox).

There are also a number of external communication methods available. You can configure these in SAPconnect (transaction SCOT) and use them in addition to inform the recipient of an alert about the problem: Internet mail, SMS, and fax.

The auto-reaction method CCMS_Send_Alert_to_ALM, which forwards alerts for assigned monitoring architecture nodes to the ALM, is available in the alert monitor. This method is therefore used in a similar way to the auto-reaction method CCMS_OnAlert_Email, with which you can define an automatic alert notification. A difference is that when you are forwarding alerts to the ALM, you no longer need to specify the sender and recipient in the method definition, and recipients can also be defined using authorizations and roles. More communication methods and additional Alert Management functions, such as escalations or confirming the alert, are also available.

Prerequisites

·        Central system dispatching must be activated in the central monitoring system (CEN). To activate central system dispatching, call transaction RZ21 in client 0 and choose Technical Infrastructure ® Configure Central System ® Activate Central System Dispatching.

·        Background dispatching must be activated for all monitored systems and in CEN. To activate background dispatching, call transaction RZ21 in client 0 and choose Technical Infrastructure ® Configure Local Method Execution ® Activate Background Dispatching.

·        To be able to display alerts in the Alert Inbox (transaction ALRTINBOX or URL), which is based on BSPs, you must activate the corresponding BSP service. To do this choose Default_host ®  sap ®  bc  ®  bsp  ®  sap  ®  alert inbox in transaction SICF. Open the context menu for alert inbox and choose Activate.

 

Process Flow

The figure below represents the route of the CCMS alerts from the system that triggers the alert through the central monitoring system (CEN) and RFC to the central ALM system. The ALM system forwards the alerts in every case to the relevant display program of the recipients (Alert Inbox, UWL) and as an e-mail, fax, or SMS, if these external communication methods are configured in SAPconnect.

 

Note in the following description that settings in ALM and in SAPconnect are client-dependent.

 

To configure the forwarding of CCMS alerts to the ALM, proceed as follows:

Setting Up a Connection Between the Central Monitoring System and the Alert Management Framework

You require an RFC connection to transfer alerts between the central monitoring system (CEN) and the central alert management system. This RFC connection points from client 0 of CEN to the work client of the central AML system and must have the necessary authorizations to log on to the ALM system. Perform the following steps:

·        If no suitable user exists yet, create a user for the RFC connection in the work client of the ALM system (transaction SU01, see User Maintenance).

·        In CEN, create an RFC destination to the work client of the ALM system with a fixed user/password combination (transaction SM59, see Displaying, Maintaining, and Testing Destinations).

·        Specify this RFC destination in transaction SALRT1 in client 0 of CEN, to make the destination for the ALM system known to the monitoring architecture.

You require this RFC destination even if CEN and ALM are in the same system.

Configuring Alert Management

Alerts from the CCMS have the alert classification CCMS ALERTS in Alert Management (ALM). You can specify different alert categories within this classification. These categories can have different properties. The name of the category corresponds to the parameter CATEGORY of the auto-reaction method CCMS_Send_Alert_to_ALM.

Ensure that the Dynamic Text indicator is activated in the Properties of the alert categories, since the text for the alert is determined not in the ALM, but rather in the CCMS.

You can set separate properties for each alert category; these include, for example, the priority of the alert, escalation settings, or the recipients in each case. You can define the recipients in the following ways:

·        Using the name (  Fixed Recipients button)

·        Using the user role (  Recipients Via User Roles button)

·        Using the authorizations (  Subscription Authorization button)

For information about recipient determination in ALM, see Recipient Determination.

Configuring SAPconnect

The alerts are displayed in the UWL, application or in the Alert Inbox in each case. If alerts are also to be delivered using the external communication methods e-mail, SMS, or FAX, these communication methods must be configured in SAPconnect of the ALM work client; see SAPconnect (BC-SRV-COM).

Note that the recipients and the users for the RFC connection between the central monitoring system (CEN) and the ALM system must be assigned the desired communication method in User Maintenance (transaction SU01).

Adjusting and Assigning the Method

Adjust the auto-reaction method CCMS_Send_Alert_to_ALM to your requirements in the work client of CEN, and assign the method to the desired nodes as a local or as a central auto-reaction method (see Configuring the Method for Forwarding Alerts to the ALM). Specify a valid ALM alert category in the CATEGORY parameter in the method definition. If you want to use different alert categories, use different copies of the method definition accordingly.

Result

You have set up the forwarding of selected alerts to Alert Management. If an alert occurs in one of the assigned nodes of the alert monitor, the specified recipients are immediately informed using ALM.

Example

For an example for the configuration, see Example Configuration: Forwarding Alerts to the ALM.