One of the more interesting features of CA APM is its ability to send alert details to an external process.
This method was often used with earlier versions of APM to integrate with third-party products, such as SNMP receivers.
While useful, there is one unique quirk with using this alert action that you should be aware of.
When it comes time to add the alert message details, you must pay attention to the order in which they are added! There are no indicators, during or after, noting this order.
Alert details are displayed alphabetically in the UI, so this is of no help to you.
My suggestion to you is to write them down as you choose them and then add them to your alert description. You know that tab no one seems to remember being there?
You'll save yourself and others a lot of headaches if you do this right in the alert (you'll thank me later).
Once you have completed adding your details, finish up by adding the the indexes to your alert command which will then be picked up by your custom script.
The script should be located under the root EM directory or any subdirectory. Your EM process owner must have READ and EXECUTE to properly function.
If you're running on *nix, you'll need to make sure you can fork a process by check your 'ulimit' settings. Also check your 'limits.conf' file. If you start to see messages in your
EM log pertaining to not being able to fork a process, then you'll need to increase the number of file handles your EM can spawn.