Exception handling in Maximo automation scripts with try except

For the longest time, I thought that try/except blocks didn't work in automation scripts. A colleague asked me about them yesterday, so I figured I would try it out again, and found that they work. It's really just like normal Python exception handling. Here's a script I used to test it, with an Object Launch Point on Save for the SR object:

from psdi.server import MXServer

import sys

try:

  mbo.getMboValue("FOOBAR")

except:

  print "an error was encountered"

  e = sys.exc_info()[0]

  print(e)

The expected behavior is that a message will be written to the log file, but that an SR will be created, and that's exactly the behavior I observed. Here's what was in the log file:

[6/12/20 9:25:50:961 EDT] 000021c4 SystemOut     O 12 Jun 2020 09:25:50:961 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO] [] an error was encountered

<type 'psdi.util.MXApplicationException'>

Happy scripting!

One solution for VMMSyncData has no values

Background

During an IBM Control Desk (also applies to Maximo) implementation, we found a problem with the VMMSYNC cron task. Specifically, it didn't appear to pull any data from Active Directory. Or if it did, the data wasn't processed.

Symptoms

We had ChangePolling set to 1 in our cron task instance. We enabled DEBUG level logging for the VMMSYNC cron task and saw the following in SystemOut.log:

[3/25/20 19:28:06:374 EDT] 000001ba SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 19:28:06:374 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0c1] [CID-CRON-1618] Synchronizing VMM Users: vmmSubject Subject:

        Principal: defaultWIMFileBasedRealm/myproduser

        Public Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.auth.WSCredentialImpl@16bdee5d

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.SingleSignonTokenImpl@e022bcb

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.AuthenticationTokenImpl@17329f4d

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.AuthorizationTokenImpl@64c05421

[3/25/20 19:28:06:384 EDT] 000001ba SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 19:28:06:384 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0c1] [CID-CRON-1618] Synchronizing VMM Users: VMM search results

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<sdo:datagraph xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

    xmlns:sdo="commonj.sdo" xmlns:wim="http://www.ibm.com/websphere/wim">

  <wim:Root>

    <wim:entities xsi:type="wim:PersonAccount">

      <wim:identifier externalName="CN=myproduser,OU=Admin,o=MYCORP.COM"

          repositoryId="MYAD" uniqueId="CN=myproduser,OU=ADMIN,O=MYCORP.COM"

          uniqueName="CN=myproduser,OU=Admin,o=MYCORP.COM"/>

    </wim:entities>

    <wim:controls xsi:type="wim:ChangeResponseControl">

      <wim:checkPoint>

        <wim:repositoryId>MYAD</wim:repositoryId>

        <wim:repositoryCheckPoint>10085177</wim:repositoryCheckPoint>

      </wim:checkPoint>

    </wim:controls>

  </wim:Root>

</sdo:datagraph>

 

[3/25/20 19:28:06:384 EDT] 000001ba SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 19:28:06:384 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0c1] [CID-CRON-1618] syncUser, syncData = <VMMSyncData has no values>

Notice the greenish highlighted text is the entry that should have been seen in the "VMMSyncData", but it says it has no values.

I then looked at the log of a working environment and saw that it was similar, but it actually worked:

[3/25/20 18:57:12:940 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:940 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] Synchronizing VMM Users: vmmSubject Subject:

        Principal: defaultWIMFileBasedRealm/myqauser

        Public Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.auth.WSCredentialImpl@ec82289

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.SingleSignonTokenImpl@5b17dd0b

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.AuthenticationTokenImpl@9348468a

        Private Credential: com.ibm.ws.security.token.AuthorizationTokenImpl@447810d4

 

[3/25/20 18:57:12:944 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:944 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] Synchronizing VMM Users: VMM search results

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<sdo:datagraph xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

    xmlns:sdo="commonj.sdo" xmlns:wim="http://www.ibm.com/websphere/wim">

  <wim:Root>

    <wim:entities xsi:type="wim:PersonAccount">

      <wim:identifier externalName="CN=myqauser,OU=Admin,o=MYCORP.COM" repositoryId="MYAD"

          uniqueId="CN=myqauser,OU=ADMIN,O=MYCORP.COM" uniqueName="CN=myqauser,OU=Admin,o=MYCORP.COM"/>

      <wim:changeType>modify</wim:changeType>

      <wim:uid>myqauser</wim:uid>

    </wim:entities>

    <wim:controls xsi:type="wim:ChangeResponseControl">

      <wim:checkPoint>

        <wim:repositoryId>MYAD</wim:repositoryId>

        <wim:repositoryCheckPoint>670244</wim:repositoryCheckPoint>

      </wim:checkPoint>

    </wim:controls>

  </wim:Root>

</sdo:datagraph>

[3/25/20 18:57:12:944 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:944 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] syncUser, syncData = uid=myqauser

[3/25/20 18:57:12:956 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:956 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] insertRecord, columnName = personid

[3/25/20 18:57:12:956 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:956 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] value, value = myqauser

[3/25/20 18:57:12:956 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:956 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] insertRecord, columnName = type

[3/25/20 18:57:12:957 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:957 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] value, value = WORK

[3/25/20 18:57:12:957 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:957 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] insertRecord, columnName = isprimary

[3/25/20 18:57:12:957 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:957 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] value, value = 1

[3/25/20 18:57:12:957 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:957 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] insertRecord, columnName = emailaddress

[3/25/20 18:57:12:958 EDT] 000001b3 SystemOut     O 25 Mar 2020 18:57:12:957 [DEBUG] [MAXIMO0] [CID-CRON-102377] value, value = null

Notice the greenish highlighted text again, where it shows that the bind user was modified, and then it pulls in all of the attributes and values for that entity.

I found this link online and tried what it suggested, but this is outdated (I'm on ICD 7.6.1.1):

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/change-polling-maximo-vmmsync

That "changeType" attribute is absolutely NOT required any more - it's built into the VMMSYNC code.

The Solution

It turns out that the bind DN (user ID) that we were using apparently didn't have some permission or configuration in place. We actually tried with three different users before we found one that had the appropriate access to actually pull the data. 

What's really strange is that we could successfully use any of the three users with Apache Directory Studio to connect to Active Directory to see any and all data. But for some reason, only one of the users actually worked through VMMSYNC.

I will update if I find out from the AD team what the specific setting is, but I wanted to document this here for posterity.

Integrating IBM Control Desk or Maximo with QRadar for monitoring logins

Background

You may need to monitor ICD/Maximo logins with QRadar, and that's what this post will detail, as there are a few steps and a lack of documentation around it. In this case, I'm using ICD 7.6.1.1 and QRadar Community Edition 7.3.3 (downloaded on 3/13/2020).

All of the steps here apply to both ICD and Maximo, since there is nothing ICD-specific about them, so I'm going to refer to the product as just ICD in the remainder of this post.

Introduction

ICD doesn't log logins by default, and even once you configure it to track logins, it logs them to a database table rather than SystemOut.log. 

Tracking logins

To enable login tracking, you need to go into the Security->Security Groups application in ICD. From there, choose the Security Controls action. In the dialog shown, select "Enable Login Tracking?" and you're done. That's it. To test it, log out and back in again, then use your favorite database tool to look at the contents of the MAXIMO.LOGINTRACKING table. You should see your login.

Configuring QRadar for a JDBC Log Source

This part is a little tricky, but that's why I'm writing this article. You need to create a new Log Source with the following important characteristics:

Type: Universal DSM

Protocol: JDBC

Database name: MAXDB76

Table name: MAXIMO.LOGINTRACKING

Compare field: ATTEMPTDATE

Those are all of the hard properties. The others should be fairly straightforward, such as hostname, port, etc. After that, deploy your changes. Once that's done, log out and back into ICD, and you should get an event that looks similar to this:

Now you can set up the normal parsing, extracting, etc. to have QRadar properly categorize your events.

Why you should use MXOSINCIDENT instead of OSLCINCIDENT for creating and querying ICD incidents

In re-reading the documentation and looking through the system, I finally recognized why the MXOSINCIDENT is a much better choice for integration than OSLCINCIDENT. The OSLCINCIDENT OSLC Resource only includes 11 attributes (fields) for an incident. Those are:

modifiedBy
modified
classStructureId
title
internalPrioirity
created
creator
priority
status
shortId
identifier


and that's it. So when you GET an incident via the OSLCINCIDENT URL (.../maximo/oslc/oslcincident/...), those are, essentially, all of the fields that you'll see for that incident. For example, here is the data I retrieved for incident number 1003 in my system:

dcterms:creator
rdf:resource "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/sccdoslcperson/_TUFYQURNSU4-"
oslc:shortId "1003"
dcterms:title "First incident"
dcterms:created "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
dcterms:modified "2020-02-11T11:10:06-05:00"
sccd:statusdate "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
rdf:about "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/oslcincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--"
dcterms:identifier "9"
prefixes
sccd "http://jazz.net/ns/ism/helpdesk/sccd#"
rdf "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
dcterms "http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
oslc "http://open-services.net/ns/core#"
_rowstamp "17235351"
oslc:modifiedBy
rdf:resource "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/sccdoslcperson/_TUFYQURNSU4-"
sccd:status_description "New"
sccd:status
rdf:resource "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/sccdoslcsyndomain/_SU5DSURFTlRTVEFUVVMvTkVXL35OVUxMfi9_TlVMTH4vfk5VTEx_L05FVw--"

However, here's the data retrieved for the SAME incident using the MXOSINCIDENT URL (.../maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/...):

spi:ticketid "1003"
spi:status "NEW"
spi:pluspporeq false
spi:virtualenv false
spi:hasactivity false
spi:relatedtoglobal false
spi:changeby "MAXADMIN"
spi:accumulatedholdtime 0
spi:selfservsolaccess false
_rowstamp "17235351"
spi:class_description "Incident"
spi:inheritstatus false
relatedrecord_collectionref "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--/incidentrelrec"
multiassetlocci_collectionref "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--/incidentmultiassetloci"
spi:isknownerror false
spi:oncallautoassign false
spi:createdby "MAXADMIN"
spi:cinum "RBA_PAYROLL"
spi:statusdate "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
spi:affectedperson "MAXADMIN"
spi:class "INCIDENT"
spi:createwomulti "MULTI"
spi:description "First incident"
ticketspec_collectionref "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--/ticketspecclass"
spi:creationdate "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
spi:actlabhrs 0
spi:historyflag false
spi:sitevisit false
rdf:about "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--"
spi:createwomulti_description "Create Multi Records"
prefixes
rdf "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
spi "http://jazz.net/ns/ism/asset/smarter_physical_infrastructure#"
oslc "http://open-services.net/ns/core#"
spi:outageduration 0
spi:isglobal false
spi:multiassetlocci
0
localref "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTAwMw--/incidentmultiassetloci/0-5"
spi:recordclass "INCIDENT"
spi:progress false
rdf:about "http://childkey#SU5DSURFTlQvTVVMVElBU1NFVExPQ0NJLzU-"
spi:langcode "EN"
spi:multiid 5
spi:isprimary true
spi:performmoveto false
prefixes
rdf "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
spi "http://jazz.net/ns/ism/asset/smarter_physical_infrastructure#"
oslc "http://open-services.net/ns/core#"
_rowstamp "17235352"
spi:hasld false
spi:pmchgassesment false
spi:recordkey "1003"
spi:cinum "RBA_PAYROLL"
spi:externalsystem_description "EVENT MANAGEMENT"
spi:pmscinvalid false
spi:reportdate "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
spi:hassolution false
spi:actlabcost 0
spi:changedate "2020-02-11T11:10:06-05:00"
spi:status_description "New"
spi:externalsystem "EVENTMANAGEMENT"
spi:affecteddate "2019-11-27T10:43:18-05:00"
spi:template false
spi:ticketuid 9
spi:reportedby "MAXADMIN"

To me, MXOSINCIDENT provides much better data.

Adding an Unauthenticated JSP to IBM Control Desk

Background

We have a customer that needed to allow unauthenticated users to open tickets within IBM Control Desk, and we only had access to IBM HTTP Server and our Maximo/ICD WebSphere server to make that happen.

Security Risks

Essentially, anyone with the link can get to the pages described in this article. They could even write a script to create a huge number of tickets, taking down your ICD installation. So in any pages you create using this article, you need to do *something* to guard against that behavior. Exactly what you do depends on your specific situation. 

Where to Create the Unprotected JSP

You just need to create the .jsp file under:

.../installedApps/<cell__name>/MAXIMO.ear/maximouiweb.war/webclient/login

For example, put the following in the file HelloWorld.jsp in the above directory:

<HTML>
 <HEAD>
  <TITLE>Hello World</TITLE>
 </HEAD>
 <BODY>
  <H1>Hello World</H1>
  Today is: <%= new java.util.Date().toString() %>
 </BODY>
</HTML>

Then access it with the url:

http://hostname/maximo/webclient/login/HelloWorld.jsp

And this is what you'll see, with no login required:

That's it. Now you just need to write the JSP code to do what you need.

Caveats

A JSP file added in this way would need to be re-deployed after each time you deploy the application. These instructions do NOT tell you how to add the JSP file to the EAR build process.

You need to manually copy the JSP file(s) to the appropriate location for each MAXIMO UI JVM.

Creating incident ticket in IBM Control Desk using the new REST API

Background

Maximo 7.6.0.2 introduced a new REST API that can be accessed via .../maximo/oslc . Here's a link to the documentation on it:

https://developer.ibm.com/static/site-id/155/maximodev/restguide/Maximo_Nextgen_REST_API.html

This is an all-JSON API that makes things a ton easier than it was with the older (and deprecated) XML-based REST API.

The Problem

However, that documentation is aimed at Maximo Enterprise Asset Management users and not IBM Control Desk users. That means there aren't any examples for creating incidents or service requests, for example.

Why You're Here

You want an example of creating an INCIDENT in ICD, and that's what I'll provide. I'm using ICD 7.6.1.1 on WebSphere, DB2 and IBM HTTP Server, along with the sample data. That's how I have a classification ID and hierarchy structure in the example below.

Basically, the best way I've found is to use the MXOSINCIDENT object structure because it already has a bunch of relationships (including one to TICKETSPEC, so you can add specifications when creating an incident). Here are the details:

POST: http://172.16.30.183:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident?_lid=mxintadm&_lpwd=passw0rd&lean=1

Additional header:

properties: *

BODY:

{

    "reportedby": "MXINTADM",

    "description": "second MXINCIDENT OS API",

    "externalsystem": "EVENTMANAGEMENT",

    "classstructureid": "21010405",

    "ticketspec": [{"assetattrid": "computersystem_serialnumber","alnvalue": "99999"}]

}

RESPONSE:

{

    "affecteddate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

    "template": false,

    "creationdate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

    "hierarchypath": "21 \\ 2101 \\ 210104 \\ 21010405",

    "historyflag": false,

    "actlabcost": 0.0,

    "createwomulti_description": "Create Multi Records",

    "selfservsolaccess": false,

    "outageduration": 0.0,

    "ticketuid": 46,

    "inheritstatus": false,

    "reportdate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

    "class_description": "Incident",

    "description": "second MXINCIDENT OS API",

    "reportedby": "MXINTADM",

    "classificationid": "21010405",

    "sitevisit": false,

    "_rowstamp": "10009026",

    "accumulatedholdtime": 0.0,

    "createdby": "MXINTADM",

    "relatedrecord_collectionref": "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTA0MA--/incidentrelrec",

    "isknownerror": false,

    "href": "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTA0MA--",

    "affectedperson": "MXINTADM",

    "multiassetlocci_collectionref": "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTA0MA--/incidentmultiassetloci",

    "class": "INCIDENT",

    "ticketid": "1040",

    "ticketspec": [

        {

            "localref": "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTA0MA--/ticketspecclass/0-7",

            "classstructureid": "21010405",

            "changeby": "MXINTADM",

            "changedate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

            "alnvalue": "99999",

            "mandatory": false,

            "refobjectname": "INCIDENT",

            "ticketspecid": 7,

            "assetattrid": "COMPUTERSYSTEM_SERIALNUMBER",

            "_rowstamp": "10009029",

            "refobjectid": 46,

            "displaysequence": 1,

            "href": "http://childkey#SU5DSURFTlQvVElDS0VUU1BFQy9DT01QVVRFUlNZU1RFTV9TRVJJQUxOVU1CRVIvSU5DSURFTlQvfk5VTEx_LzEwNDA-"

        }

    ],

    "status_description": "New",

    "externalsystem_description": "EVENT MANAGEMENT",

    "classstructureid": "21010405",

    "ticketspec_collectionref": "http://was.gulfsoft.rocks:80/maximo/oslc/os/mxosincident/_SU5DSURFTlQvMTA0MA--/ticketspecclass",

    "changeby": "MXINTADM",

    "changedate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

    "externalsystem": "EVENTMANAGEMENT",

    "actlabhrs": 0.0,

    "relatedtoglobal": false,

    "hasactivity": false,

    "statusdate": "2019-11-29T15:02:00-05:00",

    "createwomulti": "MULTI",

    "hassolution": false,

    "virtualenv": false,

    "pluspporeq": false,

    "isglobal": false,

    "oncallautoassign": false,

    "pmscinvalid": false,

    "status": "NEW"

}

Prerequisites

To successfully do the above, you do need to Configure Object Structure security: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/using-object-structure-security-limit-access-security-groups , and the user MUST have a Default Insert Site, which apparently my MXINTADM user does. MAXADMIN in my system DOES NOT, so it fails if I use that user.

I'm using Postman for testing, which I highly recommend: https://www.getpostman.com/downloads/

Of course you'll use some specific language (or curl) when you're doing this in production, but for testing, you want to use Postman.

A helpful link

In addition to the API documentation, this link was very helpful to me:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Anything%20about%20Tivoli/page/Create%20a%20record%20with%20Maximo%20JSON

Special characters in passwords initially configuring IBM Control Desk 7.6.1.1

Several of the screens displayed by ConfigUI tell you that some passwords don't allow special characters. The rule of thumb I found the REALLY hard way is:

ONLY use underscore as a special character in any password initially.

We ran into problems mainly with dollar sign, but other ones will certainly bite you, too. We even ran into the problem with the root user's password. Any password can be changed after the initial deployment, so save yourself some headache and make them initially very simple. And the painful part is that some of the errors will just be silent, such as "Unable to access host with these credentials", but no other error. So just take the advice above and you'll be much happier.

Maximo 7.6.1 includes entitlement for Cognos Analytics 11

Cognos Analytics 11 is the all-new Cognos product built for self-service business analytics, competing with the likes of Tableau and Microsoft BI. Pam Denny at IBM created a 13-part video series about this new entitlement here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOBy7UFdPupclhOayxt8jrebiSZqZiv3R

Some of our current projects

We work with a pretty wide array of products, so I wanted to highlight some of the projects we're working on right now

ServiceNow Architecture and Implementation

We're working with a communications company to implement their procurement, installation and change processes within ServiceNow, with asset feeds from multiple external systems.

ServiceNow Incident Response integration with QRadar

We're helping our client customize both products and the integration between them to best leverage their existing investment and people.

IBM Control Desk for Field Service Management

We're helping a different communications customer with their field service management through workflows and custom user interfaces defined in IBM Control Desk.

Netcool Operations Insight Implementation

We're actually working on several of these at the moment. The most work on these goes into identifying the different event sources, what (if any) automated actions need to be performed and who needs to be notified.

BigFix Steady State

A medical client of ours has been leveraging our BigFix Managed Services for several years to ensure that all IT equipment is both known and is running software at the appropriate patch level.

ICD and BigFix Implementation with Airgap

We're working with a defense contractor to ensure that their Asset Management and Change Management processes continue to work smoothly leveraging ICD and BigFix

Processing JSON in automation scripts in IBM Control Desk 7.6

Background

You may need to deal with JSON-formatted data in an automation script, and it can be a little tricky. I've written this post to provide the few little pointers to make it easier for you.

JavaScript

You can write automation scripts in Rhino JavaScript or Jython. While Jython is the most common language used for automation scripts, it turns out that JSON processing is MUCH easier in JavaScript. Specifically, in a JavaScript automation script, you have access to the popular object named JSON that will give you everything you need. Here's an example:

var jsonObject = JSON.parse(jsonString);

And that's it. You can now work with jsonObject as a JSON object as described in this reference material from w3schools:

https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_parse.asp

As far as I know, this will work in both WebSphere and WebLogic application servers. One possible caveat is that the JavaScript engine is changing from JDK 7 to JDK 8. Here's more information on that:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21992706

Jython in WebSphere

For Maximo/ICD automation scripts, Jython is by far the most popular language. It's also more thoroughly documented and, IMO, easier to work with in this context. However, JSON parsing has a couple of caveats. Specifically, the Jython interpreter in ICD 7.6 is version 2.5.2, which doesn't have a built-in JSON parser (one was added in Jython version 2.6). However, we're still in luck because WebSphere actually includes a JAR file that provides JSON processing. The specific class that you need to import is com.ibm.json.java.JSONObject :

from com.ibm.json.java import JSONObject

...

my_json = JSONObject.parse(my_filebody)

And from there, you can deal with my_json appropriately according to the JavaDoc here:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEUEX_3.0.0/com.ibm.javaeuc.doc/com/ibm/json/java/JSONObject.html

Jython in WebLogic

Admittedly, I haven't tested this one. I've tested the above two, and from my research, I believe this will work. Specifically, these two links give the necessary information:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/json-1973242.html

https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/wls/WLPRG/java-api-for-json-proc.htm#WLPRG1059

If you find that it doesn't work, please ping me and I'll help you get it to work then update this entry as necessary.

With that in mind, you just need to import the appropriate classes in your automation script:

from javax.json import Json

from javax.json import JsonObject

And there you go.

Reading and writing files in a Maximo automation script

Background

All of the product documentation tells you to use the product provided logging for debugging automation scripts (see here, for example: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSZRHJ/com.ibm.mbs.doc/autoscript/c_ctr_auto_script_debug.html ). For quick debugging, however, I thought that was cumbersome, so I decided to figure out how to access files directly from within an automation script. This post goes over exactly what's required to do that. Maximo supports Jython and Rhino-JavaScript for automation scripting, and I'll cover both of those here.

Jython

This one was straightforward, since the Python documentation can be followed exactly. Jython is simply an implementation of Python written completely in Java. All you need to open a file is:

my_file = open('c:/tmp/outfile.txt','a')

where 'a' specifies that we're appending to the file (and creating it if it doesn't exist). You then do need to flush and close the file, and this is my function to do that:

def logit(mytext):

  my_file = open('c:/tmp/jout.txt','a')

  my_file.write(mytext + '\n')

  my_file.flush()

  my_file.close()

So to log a string, just run:

logit("this is my string")

Reading from a file is just as easy:

my_read = open('c:/tmp/computers.json')

my_json = my_read.readline()

my_read.close()

In my case, the file contains one long line of JSON data, so readline() works great to store all of the text of the file into the string named my_json.

Rhino-JavaScript

This one is quite a bit more painful than Jython, which is really just one more reason that all of your automation scripts should be written in Jython. Specifically, the Rhino implementation in Maximo doesn't seem to completely adhere to the documentation you'll fine online. For example, there is no "ReadFile()" method available in Maximo. There are also other limitations, and the only way I found to get over them was to use Java classes. I thought that would make it easy, but then you have to deal with the fact that Java objects (specifically Array objects) are absolutely not the same as JavaScript objects. 

So, writing a file isn't too difficult once you realize that you need to use Java. Here's how you open and write a file:

var outFile = new java.io.FileWriter("c:/tmp/autoscriptout.txt");

outfile.write("my string");

outfile.close();

The hard part is actually reading data from the file. Using the same JSON file as above with one long line of JSON, the following is required to read that data into a JavaScript string that can then be parsed:

var 

  thefile = new java.io.File("c:/tmp/computers.json"),

  filelength = thefile.length(),

  thefilereader = new java.io.FileReader(thefile),

  jsonData = java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(java.lang.Character.TYPE,filelength),

  res = thefilereader.read(jsonData,0,filelength),

  jsonString = new java.lang.String(jsonData);

And now all of the JSON data is in the string named jsonString.

Enjoy.

ICD 7.6 Fresh install and config with LDAP authentication configured will fail

We found a problem when installing IBM Control Desk 7.6 on WebSphere and MSSQL where it fails every time if you enable LDAP/AD authentication during the configuration phase of the install. Specifically, you'll see this error in the ConfigTool window:

Apply Deployment Operations-CTGIN5013E: The reconfiguration action deployDatabaseConfiguration failed. Refer to messages in the console for more information.

And if you look in the CTGConfigurationTrace<datetime>.log file, you'll see this error:

SEVERE: NOTE ^^T^Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'null'.
com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'null'.
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException.makeFromDatabaseError(SQLServerException.java:216)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerStatement.getNextResult(SQLServerStatement.java:1515)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerPreparedStatement.doExecutePreparedStatement(SQLServerPreparedStatement.java:404)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerPreparedStatement$PrepStmtExecCmd.doExecute(SQLServerPreparedStatement.java:350)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSCommand.execute(IOBuffer.java:5696)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.executeCommand(SQLServerConnection.java:1715)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerStatement.executeCommand(SQLServerStatement.java:180)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerStatement.executeStatement(SQLServerStatement.java:155)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerPreparedStatement.executeQuery(SQLServerPreparedStatement.java:285)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.util.CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.init(CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.java:187)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.util.CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.<init>(CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.java:101)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.util.CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.getInstance(CmnEncryptPropertiesUtil.java:141)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.config.database.ACfgDatabase.createCronTask(ACfgDatabase.java:1391)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.config.database.CfgEnableVMMSyncTaskAction.performAction(CfgEnableVMMSyncTaskAction.java:140)
at com.ibm.tivoli.ccmdb.install.common.config.database.ACfgDatabase.runConfigurationStep(ACfgDatabase.java:1108)
at com.ibm.tivoli.madt.reconfig.database.DeployDBConfiguration.performAction(DeployDBConfiguration.java:493)
at com.ibm.tivoli.madt.configui.config.ConfigureSQLServer.performConfiguration(ConfigureSQLServer.java:75)
at com.ibm.tivoli.madt.configui.common.config.ConfigurationUtilities.runDatabaseConfiguration(ConfigurationUtilities.java:540)
at com.ibm.tivoli.madt.configui.bsi.panels.deployment.TpaeDeploymentPanel$RunOperations.run(TpaeDeploymentPanel.java:1550)
at org.eclipse.jface.operation.ModalContext$ModalContextThread.run(ModalContext.java:121)

This happens before the EAR files are built.

The way around this is to select "Use Maximo internal authentication" on the "Configure Application Security" screen of the ConfigTool". Once everything is installed, configured and running, you can then go in and enable J2EE application security for authentication.

IBM Maximo named a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Asset Management!

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/a9ba1efe-b731-4317-9724-a181d6155e3a/entry/IBM_Maximo_named_a_Leader_in_Gartner_Magic_Quadrant_for_Enterprise_Asset_Management?lang=en

Something very important to note is that the IBM Control Desk product is built entirely on Maximo. So almost all of the features and capabilities that put Maximo into Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Asset Management are also included in IBM Control Desk.

Free mobile app for monitoring the status of your Maximo and ICD environments

I just found the MxAdmin app in IBM Marketplace:

https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/mxadmin

It was written by A3J Group and appears to have some pretty nice functionality.

Force change of global system property in Maximo

UPDATE 6/3/2020

Another way to resolve this issue is to point to a local maximo.properties file as described here:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSANHD_7.6.1/com.ibm.mbs.doc/user/t_change_password_live_refresh.html

And put the mxe.report.birt.viewerurl property in that file.

Introduction

I recently encountered an issue in one of my ICD 7.6 installations where a global system property had an incorrect value set that I needed to change without rebuilding my MAXIMO.EAR file. This post is a description of the problem and my eventual "fix". It's just a test environment, and this is NOT a resolution that I would recommend for a production system. But I wanted to document the details to possibly help others in similar situations.

Problem

I installed ICD 7.6 and chose to use the maxdemo DB2 database script during configuration. This apparently set the mxe.report.birt.viewerurl global property to
http://myhostname.domain.name/maximo/reports/ , and that is an invalid value. This system property should either be unset or set to
http://myhostname.domain.name/maximo/report   (with no trailing "s"). The problem that this causes is that any attempt to click on the "Run reports" action gives an HTTP 404 error. 

It took a while to run this down, but finally looking in System Configuration->Platform Configuration->System Properties showed me the setting for this system property:

Notice that I'm unable to modify the value AND "File Override?" is checked. So this means the value is set somewhere in the filesystem. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the value anywhere in any file on the system, so the only normal way around this is to modify maximo.properties on the Admin workstation, rebuild MAXIMO.EAR, then redeploy the EAR file. But I didn't want to do that for various reasons. Also, since "Global Only?" is set to true, I couldn't create an instance-specific property with the same name and different value. 

My "solution"

I tried several different tactics, but the one that finally worked for me was to directly update the database to set "User Defined?" true for this property so I could then delete it and create an instance-specific property with the same name. The SQL command I used to make this change was:

update maxprop set userdefined=1 where propname = 'mxe.report.birt.viewerurl'

After running the above SQL command from a DB2 command prompt, I could then create an instance-specific property with the same name but with the correct value. Once I did that, I was able to successfully run all* BIRT reports.

All* reports?

Actually, the demo database script has at least one problem. Specifically, the CI named RBA_SERVER has a problem that causes the "CI List" report to fail. To get around this issue, you need to first find and delete the WORKORDER that references the RBA_SERVER CI, and then you can delete the RBA_SERVER CI. Once you delete that CI, you'll be able to successfully run the "CI List" report.

Debugging Remote Control in IBM Control Desk

Introduction

One of the many great features in IBM Control Desk is the ability to have a service desk agent remotely take control of a user's machine for troubleshooting (or repair) purposes. This function leverages the IBM BigFix for Remote Control agent on the target machine and a JNLP file on the server that launches a JAR file on the agent's machine.

Architecture

The architecture is fairly simple. The JAR file running on the agent's machine communicates DIRECTLY with the BigFix Remote Control agent on the user's machine, which listens by default on port 888. This means that any firewalls between the agent's machine and the user's machine must allow a connection to port 888 on the user's machine.

Installing the Agent on the User's Machine

If you manually install the agent, it prompts you for the server name and port, but these values are ignored if you don't have BigFix in your environment. So if you don't have BigFix in your environment, these two values can be anything you want - it doesn't matter. It also asks you for the port that the agent should listen on. This is 888 by default, but can be changed to anything you'd like.

Launching the Controller Interface in debug mode on the Agent's Machine

This can be done in several ways from the ICD GUI, but going that route doesn't actually allow you to put the Controller interface into debug mode. To do that, you need to copy the TRCConsole.jar file from any of your ICD application servers or from the Administrative Workstation. Search for the file by name and you'll find it. Copy this file to the agent's machine.

On the agent machine, you need to launch the JAR file with the --debug flag:

TRCConsole.jar --debug

This will create a file named trctrace_<date_timestamp>.log in your %HOMEPATH% folder. This file will contain detailed tracing information that can be used for debugging.

Automated testing for IBM Control Desk

Last year IBM made available the Selenium Automation Toolkit for Maximo, which includes IBM Control Desk. More information can be found here:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=4d90a532-31a3-41bd-a128-2186fdae50b8

More information about Selenium itself can be found here:

http://www.seleniumhq.org/

IBM uses Selenium in several tools, including IBM Performance Manager and IBM Application Performance Manager. Essentially, it's used for recording and playing back web browser interactions.

Maximo: How to view data from an arbitrary table

I recently had a need to view data in a Maximo table, but didn't have direct access to the database. So I wanted to find a way to use the Maximo Application Developer to get me this data. As I thought, it's very straightforward. Basically, you just need to create, configure, authorize and launch a dialog that specifies the table (MBO) as its source.

Mainly, follow the thorough instructions found here:

http://maximobase.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-to-create-custom-dialog-box-in.html

The parts of interest are:

In the dialog element, specify the appropriate mboname:

<dialog id="Testing" mboname="WARRANTYVIEW" label="Contract financial info" >

In this example, the MBO is "WARRANTYVIEW".

Also, you need to specify your MBO's attributes in with the "dataatribute" attribute of each appropriate control:

<textbox id="finaninfo_grid_s1_1"dataattribute="totalcost" />

In this case, "totalcost" is the name of the attribute that will be displayed. Yours will be different.

And that's it for my usecase. The MBO used by the dialog doesn't have to have any relationship to the main MBO attached to the application.

All of the applications included in IBM Control Desk for Service Providers 7.6 and 7.6.0.1

Just thought this would be useful information to publish. Screenshots of all of the Applications you can select from the "Go To" menu and submenus in ICD 7.6 and 7.6.0.1