File Trigger Suggestions

[Sharon Lancaster]

We have the need to monitor files on a Windows server that will use a wildcard as the names could be a bit different but all are delivered in the same folder and there could be hundreds of them throughout the day. Looking for a good way to handle this by passing the filename to let's say 3 different connect direct jobs in a round robin fashion so you would have a file trigger on file 1 passing the filename to Job1, file 2 goes to Job2, file 3 goes to Job3, file 4 goes back to Job1, etc.

 

Another option that may work for this requirement is to have the file trigger job keep kicking off the same connect direct job continuously and passing the filename where multiples of the same job can run.

 

Looking for suggestions.

 

Thank you.

Sharon

 

[Lucy Zhang]

Hi Sharon,

 

Can you use WOBTRIG in event definition? If yes, then you can use it for the FILE_TRIGGER, and every time one match is found, one generation can be created.

For #1, in ESP Proc, you can use one global variable to store the sequence of the FILE_TRIGGER; based on the number, select JOB?;

 

Hope this helps,

 

Lucy

[Sharon Lancaster]

Thanks Lucy, question around WOBTRIG, if the agent goes down for some reason, let's say the server gets rebooted or maybe there's another reason it goes down, isn't there an issue with the WOBTRIG connecting back to that agent? Also how would we know the WOBTRIG is not monitoring when at the event level?

 

Thank you.

Sharon

[Lucy Zhang]

Hi Sharon,

 

After the WOBTRIG is defined on agent side, ESP will just wait for the update from agent side. If the agent goes down, then it won't send any status update to ESP on WOBTRIG. The related file activity may not be detected by the agent. But the WOBTRIG definition is still on agent side, and after agent is started, it will continue monitoring the status.

 

This behaviour is similar to FILE_TRIGGER wob. WOBTRIG is not monitoring can be shown as:

- related AGENT_MON is inactive;

- WOBTRIG has State(Failed). Note: WOBTRIG needs to be redefined to get it working again.

 

And you may find following topic helpful:

CA WLA TechTalk: Wobtrigs and File Triggers: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 

 

Hope this helps,

 

Lucy

[Rick Romanowski]

Webcast

https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-workload-automation/blog/2016/04/29/webcast-recap-wobtrigs-and-file-triggers-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

 

PDF

https://communities.ca.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/4799-1-136391/CA%20WLA%20ESP%20-%20Wobtrigs%20and%20File%20triggers_Final.pdf

[Sharon Lancaster]

Thank you.

[Sharon Lancaster]

Thank you, I'll look into this and do some testing.

[Sharon Lancaster]

Lucy, with the MAILBOX feature does that only send e-mails or send messages to TSO users? Basically what we need is the ability to use the SEND2OPS command to send the failure over to OPS/MVS who will in turn send the failure to SOI and then over to ServiceNow to cut an incident. Any of this possible?

Thanks,

Sharon

[Lucy Zhang]

Hi Sharon,

 

MAILBOX can only be used to send TSO messages or Emails. If you want to use the SEND2OPS feature, you will need to use the monitor events, like NOTIFY xxxx EVENT(prefix.event_name).

 

If your question is related to the WOBTRIG failure on the event level, unfortunately you can't set the monitor event for it. You may capture the output of L command, and find out the ones with WOBTRIG failure, then issue proper SEND2OPS command. With ESP REXX code, this can be done.

 

If you need any help on the coding, you can open a support case.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Lucy

[Sharon Lancaster]

I believe I found a way to do what we need, on a WOBTRIG failure you get these messages.

 

ESP6907E Definition of event ESPT.B35209K failed. Scan Failed

ESP6970E The /home/****** does not exist or not a directory  

***  

OPS/MVS can grab these messages and send over to SOI and then it will forward to ServiceNow.

 

Thank you.

Sharon

[Lucy Zhang]

Hi Sharon,

 

That should work!

 

You may already know, the two messages will show in auditlog. You can use SELECT with LOADESPL to get the messages to JESMSGLG.

 

Lucy

[Sharon Lancaster]

Thanks Lucy, these 2 are already going to the JESMSGLG so we should be good.

 

ESPT6907E Definition of event ESPT.B35209K failed. Scan Failed

ESPT6970E The /home/****** does not exist or not a directory

[Rick Romanowski]

One thing that I would like to discuss is a topic that seems to affect many users and recently came to light with us.  The dreaded "Scan failed".  We get this during Linux maintenance.  After logging on to watch what they do I noticed they unmounted a file system that contained a directory that ESP was scanning.  A simple update to the process to stop the ESP Agent before unmounting the file system prevents the manual intervention.

[Tatevik.Stepanyan]

Rick, thank you so much for your engagement and recommendations. Yes, we have idea opened for the same: 

https://communities.ca.com/ideas/235730550 

 

We are aiming to plan it after our coming PI, so I will be able to communicate with you expectations during June.

 

Thank you 

Tatevik