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Updated: October 25, 2017
Sending email messages from the Orion Platform to the Trouble Ticket System (TTS) is the most common method used to integrate Orion Platform products with a TTS. This method offers an easy integration with existing systems.
This article provides more information about how this integration works, how to plan and test it.
Other integration options include:
Learn more:
The diagram shows an Orion Platform server integrated with a trouble ticket system:
When an alert condition occurs, the Orion Platform sends an alert email to the SMTP server.
Trouble Ticket Systems (TTSs) use parsers to extract the trouble ticket information from emails and other sources. You must specify the information included in the emails. Consult your TTS vendor documentation for specific requirements to your TTS version.
Possible vendor requirements include:
Variables require a specific format. For example: ${variable}
The following example alert is configured and implemented as a WAN-only alert. It contains both static and dynamic information.
Email Subject: ${N=SwisEntity;M=Caption} at ${N=SwisEntity;M=IP_Address} went down at ${N=Alerting;M=AlertTriggerTime}
Email body:
Impact: 2
Urgency: 2
Priority: 3
ContactType: monitoring service OpenedBy: Solarwinds
Category: network
SubCategory: wan Type: access failure
AssignmentGroupAssignmentGroup: network
The Orion Platform server populates the email subject variables with alert details about the node with issues. The email body contains static text information specific to this alert.
The static text information is intended for the TTS and is unnecessary for a direct Orion Platform email alert.
Specify an alert reset action to clear alerts sent to the TTS. Example:
Email Subject: ${N=SwisEntity;M=Caption} at ${N=SwisEntity;M=IP_Address} returned to service as ${N=SwisEntity;M=StatusDescription}
To automatically clear alerts in email integration, follow these steps:
Create the alert trigger condition and trigger action that sends an email notification to the TTS.
Create an email reset action to communicate the updated node status to the TTS.
Apply TTS logic to clear the ticket or change the ticket status.
In some environments, the status change initiated by the reset can close a ticket. In other environments, the ticket is assigned to an engineer who reviews, verifies, and closes the ticket manually.
After you define all requirements, test the alerting integration. The test plan should ensure that the Orion Platform/TTS tickets are implemented to yield the maximum benefit and cause the least disturbance.
When designing a test plan, consider the following aspects:
There are two groups of alert recipients:
Make these groups complementary so that the Orion Platform server directly alerts on issues that are out of the scope of the TTS requirements.
Both direct Orion Platform product alerts and TTS alerts have unique abilities and so both are used in production environments.
Set the TTS to send alert actions for issues that require a ticket.
Set the Orion Platform products to send direct alerts that do not need to go through the ticket system, such as:
The final test plan should include the following elements:
The following is an example of a test plan flow.
When testing alerts, copy alerts and save them under a new name. Make sure you rename and enable the new copy and disable alerts that are no longer used. You can either retain both an Orion Platform-only alert for a small group and the TTS-enabled alert for a broader audience to keep a backup system to notify critical parties of network outages should TTS problems occur.
After you verify that TTS alerts and actions meet the requirements set out in the planning phase, implement the alerts.
SolarWinds recommends that you test alerts with a limited TTS audience before you roll out all alerts.
Some Orion Platform customers have created script-based solutions for integrating alerts. Script-based solutions can add flexibility, but they are more complex than an email integration. For more information on these integration solutions, see posts on THWACK.
The direction of integrated email information flow is one way, moving from the Orion server to the SMTP gateway to the TTS. You can use the Orion SDK to automatically set the alert status to acknowledged in Orion when a TTS email is sent. The SDK is a special developer tool and is not intended for typical Orion Platform users.
Using the Orion SDK kit requires the know-how to use a Developer’s Tool Kit without tutoring or special instructions. Learn more about the SDK:
Most TTS platforms offer a web interface for creating, updating, or viewing tickets. Orion Platform products offer two widgets, or resources, you can use to display the TTS information in the Orion Web Console: User Links and Custom HTML.
For specific information on your TTSs web abilities, refer to the manufacturer’s documentation.
To display the TTS details in the Orion Web Console:
Include the TTS URL in a User Links resource added to an Orion Web Console view.
Some TTS platforms supply a web ticket status interface you can include in an Orion view as a Custom HTML widget. This web interface might require authentication, but should not interfere with the widget functionality when you enter the credentials.
Some TTS platforms may allow a pass-through authentication within the custom HTML. The example below is a mock-up of a possible TTS Custom HTML resource.
