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Guest
Guest
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 Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 6:50 pm Post subject: Profiles and actions need a makeover |
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I'm getting frustrated. I'll tell you why.
I want to send an E-mail to a special E-mail address when a status changes. That's when the first fun starts, because I can't have nested profiles, so now I have to enter all these entries for E-mail by hand for every profile. Lots of works, so I decided to do it with an external program. I created a batch file called send_alert.bat with parameters %time% and %testname% that I use in the batch. It's a solution, but not the one I prefer. I also wanted to add a report to this E-mail, so I add the action 'generate report'. Now I'm outta luck, since the order of the actions is always:
Excecute External program
Generate Reports
I need it the other way around! I found some kind of solution for this on this board, but again, not one I prefer. All these 'tricks' make the whole process of maintaining profiles very cumbersome and it's not very clear what exactly is happening. Someone else but me would have a hard time to understand what is going on! It should be possible to have all this possible in the 'action profiles' section and not hidden in some scripts and batch files. Alex, it's a great program, but the action profiles really need a makeover! I'm really considering to buy a different program. I don't like that thought, because I really like Hostmonitor, but that thing with actions and profiles is driving me nuts! |
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KS-Soft
Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Posts: 12793
Location: USA
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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Come on.. why do you want to use external program to send e-mail?
Just because each test has different recipient? So, why you don't use macro variables, such as %CommentLine2%? In this case you just need to specify e-mail address in the Test Properties dialog and use single action profile for all tests.
Second problem is easy to fix as well. Remove both actions, add "Generate reports" action, add "Send E-mail" action.
Regards
Alex |
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John
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| KS-Soft wrote: | | Come on.. why do you want to use external program to send e-mail? |
Because a paste of send_alert.bat %...% %...% several times is much easier than going through the parameter screen for the send mail action all the time. Try to do that for 40 tests with both good and bad conditions what makes it a total of 80 updates.
It shouldn't be necessary to repeat something 80 times, but that's just my opinion as a programmer. By moving most of the variables to the batch file, I'm more flexible; I only need to update the batch file.
| KS-Soft wrote: |
Second problem is easy to fix as well. Remove both actions, add "Generate reports" action, add "Send E-mail" action.
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Yes indeed, but that is when I use the send mail action, but that's exactly what I don't want to use Alex.
Give me one good reason why I should enter the following 80 times for every E-mail action;
- 'from' field
- 'to' field
- subject (which contains macro's)
- body template
- select attach file
- enter location of report file
If I notice repetitive actions like this (and now I'm talking as a programmer), then I know that some programming has to be done.
Either by using templates or making it possible to have nested profiles.
It would make the system much more flexible, easier to understand and it would take less time to maintain it. Please don't tell me that I can avoid to update the 6 fields in the mail action for 80 actions by creating 6 comments lines...
Templates or nested profiles are for me the most elegant solutions and not the spreading of parts of rather simple profiles in scripts and comment lines, but that's just my opinion.
Hostmonitor is great program Alex, honest, but I would really prefer more flexible actions and profiles without me turning to scripts.
Hey, I leave it all up to you and maybe my post is some food for thinking. |
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KS-Soft
Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Posts: 12793
Location: USA
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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John,
Have you read my post?
I still do not understand why you want to create so many alert profiles instead of using SINGLE alert profile and macro variables.
Regards
Alex |
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Marcus
Joined: 18 Nov 2002
Posts: 367
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| Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:24 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Give me one good reason why I should enter the following 80 times for every E-mail action;
- 'from' field
- 'to' field
- subject (which contains macro's)
- body template
- select attach file
- enter location of report file
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You are able to create 80 different e-mail actions. But when using comment lines, you can reduce them to one. It gives you the right setting at the right place: e-mail configuration is set on the test level, which makes it very flexible to use one profile and have every test (when required) a different configuration for the e-mail.
When starting from scratch with comment lines, you can use the HM editing function. Otherwise you could use the HM script capabilities to change a comment line. And of course you could delete all tests and create an import file with a windows script (that's how we modify multiple tests).
So I agree: HostMonitor is a very flexible tool  |
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timn
Joined: 20 Nov 2003
Posts: 184
Location: United States
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| Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:13 am Post subject: |
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By using the %CommentLine#%, I have implemented just 28 action profiles for 3,457 tests. My alerts go to many different people.
For example, on each test:
| Code: |
%CommentLine1% = 'Friendly' Machine Name
%CommentLine2% = Machine's Internal IP Address
%CommentLine3% = Machine's External/Public IP address
%CommentLine4% = Email Subject Line
%CommentLine5% = Email Recipient List
%CommentLine6% = Description of services impacted by this failure
%CommentLine7% = Internal Severity Level
%CommentLine8% = Phone number to call in order to escalate
%CommentLine9% = Name of Responsible Engineer
%CommentLine10% = Short Msg used to send to Pager
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Thus, I can send a highly detailed message to whomever I choose and the recipients are determined at the TEST level, not the ACTION PROFILE level. |
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Wooltown
Joined: 22 May 2002
Posts: 115
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:26 am Post subject: |
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Good idea how to handle actionprofiles, I will try to make y own version of this.
Sven  |
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