How to add a Web Context url to an Alarm in Event Management

[Anon Anon]

I am a fairly new uset to Spectrum and i'm looking for information on how to add a web context url into a custom alarm using Event Management, so that our operations team can link directly to the documentation from the alert.
It would be much appreciated if someone could give a guide on how to do this or where to start.

Thanks Rod

[Michiel Helder]

Hi Rod,
If I understand you correctly, you just want to include a static link to the docs in the alarm description. This is pretty easy to achieve by editing the probable cause file related to the alarm. You can do it either with the Event Configuration utility in OneClick or by updating/adding the custom probable cause files directly on the file system in the $SPECROOT/custom/CsPCause directory. You can copy the original probable cause file for an alarm from the $SPECROOT/SS-Tools/CsPCause directory.
If you want something more advanced, like a specific link for a specific instance for an alarm, you should probably look into scripting something to put a URL in the trouble ticket ID or status field. There also is a web context url field for an alarm, which might sound perfect for you. But I think it will conflict with information Spectrum can put there based on the value of a url field from the device, and I'm not even sure if it is a user writable field.
Let me know if you need more detailed information.
Michiel

[Anon Anon]

Michiel, the easiest solution would be to put a url into the probable cause or recommended actions using the Event Configuration utility, but i don't think this will create a link, probably will have to copy and paste the text.
My ideal solution would be to configure the web context url field, the only information i can find on this is the following which is from the Event Configuration User Guide -

You can construct any type of message using event variable IDs. The only requirement is that the variables that you use in the message are of the proper data type. Note: 0x12a63 is a reserved event variable ID that is used for a web context URL.

Have you any idea how to achieve this?

Thanks Rod

[Michiel Helder]

Hey Rod, I can't check it right now because I don't have the docs here or access to a Spectrum install, but I think they did work the option for html content into probable cause files starting somewhere in the 9.x Spectrum version. You could try a quick search in the docs (if it's documented, it could just be buried in previous release notes) or just give it a try.

Like I said before, I'm not sure if the web context url is user writable. They might simply point it out so it is easy to use when building event format files and you want to include the url the device provides (usually the link to the management web interface). As far as I know there is no update alarm (CLI) command to set the web context url. The only updates you can do to add text is the status and ticket. So you could use the ticket field for this if you don't have any other plans with it. If you want to refer to a wiki page for example, you can fix the standard url in OneClick (have a look in your preferences) to something like "http://wiki.company.com/" and then add the pagename in the ticket field to complete the url. You can set the ticket with a script through the command line interface using a command like "update alarm -r aid=1234 ticket='AlarmInfo'". I haven't tested it,since I have no docs or Spectrum here now, but I think this should work.

Hope that helps,
Michiel

[Anon Anon]

Michiel, thanks for your detailed reply i will have a go and inform you how i got on.

Thanks for your help & ideas Rod