You can configure Server Automation
to automatically notify you by email when your Automation Plans have completed. After you have enabled email
notification, you receive an email to the email addresses that you specified. The email notification
includes details about the success or failure of the plan, and optionally provides comprehensive
execution details for each step in the plan. The notification service is disabled by default. To set
up email notification, you must install and configuring the notification service by running BigFix
Tasks.
About this task
To install and set up the email notification feature, you must complete the following short
configuration steps:
- Run a Task to download and install the
notification service, which is the underlying component that Server Automation uses to send automatic email
notification.
- After you have installed the notification service, you must then configure the notification
service, and then configure notification for Server Automation and specify the email addresses to
which you want the notifications to be sent.
Complete the following steps to set up email notification for Server Automation.
Procedure
- To install the notification service, from the Notification node of the
navigation tree in Server Automation, run one
of the following Tasks, depending on
whether you are installing the notification service on Windows or Linux:
- Task 2238 Install Latest
Notification Service to install the notification service on Microsoft Windows. When you run the Task, target the BigFix Server and enter the port
number on which you want the notification service to listen. This Task downloads and installs the notification
service.
- Task 2241 Install Latest
Notification Service (RHEL) to install the notification service on Linux. When you run the Task, target the BigFix server and enter the port
number on which you want the notification service to listen. This Task downloads and installs the notification
service.
If the installation does not complete successfully, check to see if a Task has become relevant in the
Notification > Warnings folder. If there is a Task that is relevant in the
Warnings folder, run the relevant Task. After the Task has completed, run the installation Task again.
- Activate analysis 159 Notification Service Details for Server Automation and
the notification service analysis 2243 Notification Service Details from the
Notification > Activate Analyses folder.
- Run Task 2240 Configure
Settings for Notification Service to configure the settings for the email notification
service. Complete the form, as follows, and then click Take Action:
- Notification Service Port: you can change the value here to update the
port number that the notification service listens on, as set in Task 2238 Install Latest Notification
Service or Task 2241
Install Latest Notification Service (RHEL). If this port number is later changed,
the notification service is restarted.
- From Email Address: you can change the value here to update the default
From email address that is displayed in the From field as
configured in Task 2244 Send an Email Notification, which is the Task that you use to send email notifications. You
can change this value at run time.
- SMTP Method: select an SMTP method for the notification service, either
Plain or None. If you select
None, SMTP authentication is disabled and the User
name and Password fields are disabled. If you select
Plain, authentication with a user name and password is required.
- SMTP Host: enter the IP address, host name or fully qualified domain name
of the SMTP server. This is a required field.
- SMTP Port: accept the default port number value of 25 or enter a
different value for the port number of the SMTP server. This is a required field.
- User name: enter the user name for the email account. This is a required
field if you selected Plain as the SMTP method.
- Password: enter the password for the email account. This is a required
field if you selected Plain as the SMTP method.
- Confirm Password: confirm the password that you entered in the previous
field. This is a required field if you selected Plain as the SMTP method.
- From the Notification node of the navigation tree in Server Automation, select and run Task 152 Configure Email Notification
Settings for Server Automation, as follows:
- Enable global notification: select an option to enable or disable email
notification by default for all plans at a global, system-wide level. If you select
Yes to enable notification, you must enter one or more email addresses in the
Globally defined email addresses field.
- Globally defined email addresses: enter an email address for each
recipient that you want to receive email notification. Use a comma to separate email addresses. Do
not press enter to place email addresses on separate lines.
- Include global recipients: select an option to include or exclude global
email recipients by default.
- Your message: enter a message to send with all email notifications by
default. For new plans, this is the default message that is displayed in the
Message section on the Settings tab.
- Append plan execution detail: select an option to include or exclude the
system-generated execution details with the email notification by default. If you select
Yes, details of name and ID of any timeouts or failures of each step in the
Automation Plan are included in the email
notification.
Note: You can override these global settings for individual Automation Plans from the Notification
section in the Settings tab for each plan.
After you run Task 152 Configure Email Notification
Settings for Server Automation, new, existing, and legacy plans are affected as follows:- New plans
- New plans are populated with the global values. The Use Global Settings
option is selected by default in each new plan. When you save a new plan, the plan is then treated
as an existing plan and the rules for existing plans are applied.
- Existing plans
- For existing plans, only plans with Use Global Settings or
Send to global recipients selected are affected by global value changes in
Task 152 Configure Email
Notification Settings for Server Automation. So when you change values using Task 152, the settings in the plan do not change, it
is the values that the settings reference that are changed. This means the runtime behavior of the
plan in relation to notification is also updated but the plan definition remains unchanged.
- Legacy plans
- Legacy plans are plans that were created before the notification feature was available. All
global settings are applied until the next time the plan is saved. Legacy plans do not have any
plan-specific settings until they are next saved.
- To change any of the configuration settings for the plan, click Settings
and from the Notification section, you can configure the plan-specific
notification settings, as follows:
- From the Enable notification for this plan section, select an option to
enable or disable email notification. There are three options here and these options control whether
email notification is enabled. One option is to use the default settings as configured globally and
the global option displayed, one option to enable notification, and one to disable notification.
This section controls only whether email notification is enabled, it does not control whether
default settings are applied for the plan recipients and message content. So if you select
Use Global Settings, you must set the recipients for the plan and message
content separately.
- In the Recipients section, you can enter email notification recipients
for this specific plan. By expanding the View Global Recipients twisty, you
can view the list of email notification recipients defined globally at the current time. If you want
the email notification for this plan to be sent to the list of globally defined recipients, check
the Send to global recipients box. When this option is checked, the email
notification is sent to the global recipients as well as any email addresses you entered in the
Recipients field.
- In the Message content section, enter a plan-specific message that you
want to be sent with the email notification. By default, the global default message is populated in
this field as set in Task 152.
- To send the system-generated plan execution details with the email notification, check the
Append Plan execution detail check box. The system-generated plan execution
detail includes detailed information of name and ID of any timeouts or failures in the plan.
Note: When Automation Plan settings are configured to
use the global values, any subsequent updates to the global values as configured using Task 152
Configure Email Notification Settings for Server Automation are automatically
applied to the values used in the Automation Plan. New
plans and legacy plans default behavior is to use the global values.
- Run the Automation Plan. When the plan action is
stopped, an email notification is sent according to your settings.
Results
Email notification is set up based on your configuration settings and email notifications
are sent for
Automation Plans for which notification
is configured when the plans complete. If you want email notification to be sent during plan
execution, you can add
Task 2244
Send an email notification at the point in the plan at which you want the
notification to be sent. For example, if you have a 10-step plan and you want a notification to be
sent after step 5, add
Task 165 as step 6
in the plan.
If you want to disable email notification at any point, use Server Automation
Task 152 Configure Email
Notification Settings for Server Automation. If you disable notification, legacy plans and
plans that are configured to use the global settings will no longer send email
notifications.
More information
If you want to change the list of global email
addresses, use Task 152 Configure
Email Notification Settings for Server Automation. If you run Task 152 Configure Email Notification
Settings for Server Automation entering a list of email addresses, the global email
addresses that you enter replace any global email addresses that were configured previously. If you
want to remove the notification service, run Task ID 2239 Uninstall Notification
Service to uninstall the notification service on Microsoft Windows, and run Task ID 2242 Uninstall Notification Service
(RHEL) to uninstall the service on Linux.