Hi Rich,
Here is my wish list (in addition to what
you already have from me on file).
We just completed training of the Help Desk
and Operations staff on how to use InterMapper, along with the Systems and
Communications groups that will actually be maintaining the maps.
FYI: We have 87 Maps with over 1900
devices, and 1891 actively being monitored for status.
I maintain about 80 of those maps, and the
other 7 are maintained by our systems group. The 80 maps are mostly
building maps and a few backbone network equipment, the other 7 are system
server maps.
OK Now for the wish list
-----------------------------------
1) Acknowledge with out the
remote
Always a favorite, everyone I trained
wanted to be able to acknowledge with out using the remote - I would be willing
to pay extra for this feature, just so that everyone would stop dinging me on
that.
2) Web page default reload
Web interface, please, we need to have the
option of changing the default "reload" from "never" to some other value.
In our case we would like the web page reload to default to 1 minute. I
sort of have a work around, for the first time someone loads the map, by book
marking the URL that has the "error" page with a 1 minute reload active.
But once they start navigating to other maps or pages in the InterMapper Web
interface, they have to keep remembering to reset the reload to 1 minute, if
they forget, they may not notice a down condition. (see next item was to
why we are using the web interface to watch for active errors and
outages).
3) Attention Graber when using InterMapper
Remote
Since the server is always at the top of
the list (if you are only using one server), perhaps a large color bar just
below the server that reflects the highest alarm state from any map. So if
all the maps are green, the indicator bar would be green (or blue if you want to
include acked state), if any of the maps had a down that was not acked,
then the indicator bar cold flash red... and so on for the other states between
green and red.
Bottom line is they need a visual attention
grabber that is always at the top of the map list, no matter how long that list
is, and or a way to set up a audible repeating alarm that only operators would
get.
The other thing is this needs to be easy,
since I have 87 maps to maintain, I need a global setting, so that I do not need
to open each map to make changes. I am already tired of editing each map
several times because during our design phase of the project, people changed the
way they want to see things on the maps, how we are polling, and how often we
poll. I will list another request for a better export import
later...
Problem is we have so many maps, they do
not all show up on the screen at one time in the map list, so if one is red at
the bottom of the list, the operator or help desk would not see it. For
that reason I had trained them to also use the web interface to watch the
"errors" or "outages", but that introduces another problem if the page is not
reloading (because they may forget to reset the reload value). Also
several of the operators desired to just use the remote instead of having
to navigate back and forth between the web and remote application. I would
like them to use the remote only also, because the reflects the status change
immediately with out the need for a refresh time.
First, I changed the default notification
from the sounds (because everyone by the operators did not want the sounds, and
I did not see a way of setting up sounds for one user only), so I trained
everyone to use the web interface to view the "errors" or "outages"
Sorry about the length of that last comment
(better to give too much information than not enough)
4) Please, a way to export and import
server settings
Please, please when we make changes (like
adding a group or user) that requires us to change map access for each of the 87
maps,... need I say more
5) Preserving stats when restarting or
going to a new version of InterMapper
I have noticed that when we stop and
restart the InterMapper server, such as when upgrading to a new version, that
the device status windows reset or lose their history of stats and
outages. Would be nice to keep these, and have an option to clear them
some other way.
6) Extracting stats
When InterMapper was shown to the managers,
several of them asked about extracting outage data for reporting. This is
being considered as a future item for us, and I am not trying to implement this
with our initial role out using InterMapper, but this brings up the need to
have data that is preserved between restarts and upgrades, also the option of
setting a time window sort of like that used for notifications, where outages
would not be included in the stats. That way any scheduled maintenance
windows would not affect the stats for production hours.
7) Multiple default
notifications
There is only one default notification, any
other notification, I have to manually added by editing each map. It would
be nice if we could create other notifications that also where considered a
default.
Our managers asked for us to implement
notifications as follows
Monday through
Friday 8 AM through 5 PM
Goes red generate
notification to our on call staff (uses a script to page or text message and
also email).
Still red after 10
minutes - re-notify and also add in 1st level of escalation
Still red after 20
minutes - re-notify and also add in 2nd level of escalation
Still red after 30
minutes - re-notify and also add in 3rd level of escalation (our associate
VP)
Off
hours
same process as
above from the interval is 20 minutes before escalations
I can probably code this with an external
script, but it may be easier of there was a way to do this using the built in
notification process, since you already have the delay and repeat
ability.
The only way I can see to do this is by
having 16 notifications that I would have to add to each map. Being able
to say that these are the default would be better, or even the ability to
export, add the notifications, and then import.
By the way, even with all these requests, I
still wanted to say that InterMapper is great, and everyone I have shown it to
during the project is very impressed.
I just finished training everyone on how we
are going to deploy InterMapper. Next we will KILL Open View (finally) and
move to the final phase of this project where InterMapper goes into
production. After 4-6 months of everyone getting their feet wet with
InterMapper, we will start looking at taking advantage of some other features
that we are note using now.
RIT also uses Patrol, and InterMapper was
not purchased to replace Patrol, only to replace Open View, but I have seen some
of the staff interested in seeing if InterMapper may be able to perform (better)
some of the functions of the Patrol monitoring. The nice that about
InterMapper is that anything you can script or code, can become a custom
probe.
Thanks,
Steve
From: [email protected] on behalf of Richard E. Brown
Sent: Wed 6/1/2005 4:44 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [IM-Talk] Wish List
As promised, here's your chance to tell us what you'd like to
see in future
versions of InterMapper.
Please respond to the list, or
send your suggestions to me privately. Many
thanks!
Rich
Brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dartware,
LLC
http://www.dartware.com
10 Buck Road,
PO Box 130 Telephone: 603-643-2268
Hanover, NH
03755-0130 USA Fax:
603-643-2289
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