Document: 8600 FAQ FOR TPM TPM. Version Authors Date Comments

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1 Document: 8600 FAQ FOR TPM TPM Version Authors Date Comments 0.6 Alistair Mills 24/08/2005 Added , and made minor corrections 0.5 Torsten Antoni 10/08/2005 Minor corrections 0.4 Flavia Donno 07/08/2005 Add other questions 0.3 Alistair Mills 20/06/2005 Minor correction 0.2 Alistair Mills 13/06/2005 Extensive revision 0.1 Alistair Mills 20/05/2005 First draft 8601 What is the purpose of TPM? 8602 How many tickets have to be dealt with by TPM each week? 8603 How does a ticket arrive for TPM? 8604 What does the ROC manager have to do? 8605 What does the GGUS manager have to do? 8606 What does the person dealing with TPM have to do? 8607 How does the handover from one TPM to the next TPM happen? 8608 Where is the schedule for TPM? 8609 How is the schedule determined? 8610 What documentation is available? 8611 What if I have questions which are not dealt with by this FAQ? 8612 Is there still a SoD? 8613 What should TPM do in case he/she does not know the procedure to follow? 8614 How does TPM add content to the Wiki pages or to the knowledge database? 8615 How should TPM notify the user about the status of a ticket? 8616 To whom should TPM assign tickets reporting site problems? 8617 Should TPM process tickets coming from site functional tests and CIC on Duty? 8618 How do I contact one of the support teams in a ROC? 8619 How can I determine which ROC is associated with a site? 8620 How can I determine which site is associated with a ROC? 8621 How can I determine the status of a site? 8622 How can I determine the status of a site which is down? 8623 How can I determine the status of a VO? C:\alistair\egee\ESC\documentation\doc\8600_FAQ_for_TPM_06.doc Page 1 of 5

2 Item Question Answer 8601 What is the purpose of TPM? TPM is the most important part of the support system for the grid. TPM is ticket process management. The purpose of TPM is: - to close simple trouble tickets; - to notify users about the status of their tickets; - to ensure that other tickets are sent to the correct place for processing; - to react to alarms that tickets have not been processed; - to ensure that the knowledge base and Wiki pages are enhanced by the responses associated with tickets; - to rotate its operation among the participating ROCs in a timely, co-operative and informative way How many tickets have to be dealt with by TPM each week? At the time of writing the first draft of this document (June 2005), the number of tickets arriving in GGUS is around 100 per week. However many of these tickets are already accurately directed to the CIC or to a VO support unit. The number which will require TPM to make a judgement is around 20. However in the course of a week, TPM has to deal with expired tickets. It is expected that there will be someone dealing with TPM continuously. It is likely that the number of tickets will grow. We shall have to review how we operate this in the light of experience How does a ticket arrive for TPM? The ticket flow in GGUS is described in other GGUS documents. Tickets can come from a number of sources. However TPM receives s which include links to the tickets which are to be dealt with. The most likely route is that a user has submitted an to helpdesk@ggus.org. If this is the case, the person dealing with TPM should read the ticket carefully before deciding to route it to someone else for processing. There are various tools to assist the person doing TPM with his task. These are described elsewhere. Another common route is that one of the responsible units has referred the ticket to TPM for management. It is important that the person read the history of the ticket before deciding what to do with it. Simply sending it back to where it came from is not usually helpful. Another common route is that a time alarm has gone off and TPM has received an alert What does the ROC manager have to do? The ROC manager has to ensure that someone with suitable skills, experience and time is available for the week when his ROC has responsibility for TPM What does the GGUS manager have to do? The GGUS manager is responsible for many things in GGUS including reliable operations of the system. However, in the context of this document, he is responsible for the following: - publishing the schedule in advance and ensuring that the ROC manager who will be responsible C:\alistair\egee\ESC\documentation\doc\8600_FAQ_for_TPM_06.doc Page 2 of 5

3 for TPM is aware of his responsibilities one week in advance; - monitoring that the handover of responsibility takes place on the first working day of each week, typically each Monday; - making the appropriate changes to the routing tables in GGUS; - updating the knowledge database or Wiki pages by using the responses associated with tickets, whenever this action is triggered by TPM or by other supporter units What does the person dealing with TPM have to do? The arrival of a ticket is described in question The person dealing with TPM is expected to do the following: - to close simple trouble tickets; - to notify users about the status of their tickets; - to ensure that other tickets are sent to the correct place for processing; - to react to alarms that tickets have not been processed; - to ensure that the knowledge base or Wiki pages ( ) are enhanced by the responses associated with tickets; - to rotate the operation of TPM among the participating ROCs in a timely, co-operative and informative way How does the handover from one TPM to the next TPM happen? The handover from one TPM to another takes place on Monday afternoon. TPM simply generates a ticket in GGUS with a title such as: Handover of TPM from ROC-IT 16-May 2005 If there is information about outstanding issues which has to be communicated from one week to the following, then TPM should put this information into the body of the ticket. For example tickets may appear over the weekend. If TPM has not dealt with these, TPM should tell the new TPM in the handover ticket. On receipt of the ticket, the GGUS manager changes the forwarding address of tickets assigned to ROC to the next name in the schedule and change the status in the schedule also. GGUS then assigns the ticket to TPM. This causes the ticket notification to be sent to the new TPM. The new TPM simply marks the ticket as solved. In this way, the new TPM acknowledges that they have taken over responsibility for being TPM for the next week. In addition, the responsibility for being TPM is discussed at the GDA meeting on Monday afternoons Where is the schedule for TPM? The schedule is on the web at the following address: How is the schedule determined? The schedule of TPM has been created and agreed by the ROC managers' group. ROC managers may trade weeks with one another provided that they inform the GGUS manager at least one week before they are due to be TPM. If they make a change to the schedule they should C:\alistair\egee\ESC\documentation\doc\8600_FAQ_for_TPM_06.doc Page 3 of 5

4 create a ticket in GGUS and assign it to the ROC to whom they have transferred responsibility. When the ROC taking on responsibility receives the ticket, they change the status to solved. In this way, they acknowledge they have accepted responsibility for being TPM for the week in question What documentation is available? The documentation is available at the following location: The documents have numbers from 1000 onwards in steps of 100. The documents of most relevance are the following: 1100 Tutorial on GGUS HelpDesk System 1200 GGUS Workflows 1300 Short guide for the support staff 8600 FAQ on the operation of TPM (this document) 9100 GGUS Support Model 8611 What if I have questions which are not dealt with by this FAQ? Until September 2005, as we are all learning to make these arrangements work, additional assistance will be provided to TPM by GGUS/FZK, the IT ROC and the CERN OMC. You can ask for help and we will do our best to assist. If you have questions of a general nature, then it is helpful if both the question and the answer are captured and added to this set of documents. You should ask these questions by sending an to GGUS at support@ggus.org. Our aim is to keep this FAQ short but comprehensive. We may use your question to enhance this document Is there still a SoD? The SoD (Support on Duty) was an unpopular idea. This idea has been abandoned. TPM has some of the characteristics of the SoD. However it is different. The major difference is that GGUS in KA is no longer for the front of the ticketing system; this is the work of TPM and VO support What should TPM do in case he/she does not know the procedure to follow? In case TPM does not know the details of a procedure to follow while handling a ticket, he/she can always send to support@ggus.org to receive assistance. A typical example of this can be a ticket reporting a malfunctioning site in US. Since there is no ROC_US, TPM would not know to whom to assign the ticket. In this case support@ggus.org can suggest a procedure to follow for the specific ticket or a person to contact How does TPM add content to the Wiki pages or to the knowledge database? TPM may request that the content of a ticket be reported in the Wiki pages or in the knowledge database because the solution is of general interest. To do this, TPM closes the ticket and then sends to support@ggus.org using Mail to anybody requesting GGUS to insert the content of the ticket in the GGUS knowledge base and/or to update the Wiki pages. Specific suggestions or notes should also be given in the How should TPM notify the user about the status of a ticket? When TPM receive a ticket and starts to work on it, he/she must notify the user that his/her problem is being looked at, since the ticketing system does not automatically notify the user about status changes. TPM can use the link Mail to submitter to send to the user. He can also notify other supporters or involve other parties using the fields in the forms. More than one address can be used in a field. Several addresses must be separated by ; 8616 To whom should TPM assign tickets reporting site problems? They should be assigned to the ROC in charge of the site. Site administrators, in fact, only deal C:\alistair\egee\ESC\documentation\doc\8600_FAQ_for_TPM_06.doc Page 4 of 5

5 with the local ticketing systems. They are usually not registered as supporters in the GGUS system. At the moment ROC-UK has problems since it is not interfaced with GGUS. Please, notify about the ROC-UK tickets Should a TPM process tickets coming from site functional tests and CIC-on-Duty? No. A TPM should ignore tickets with Type of problem: SITES FUNCTIONAL TESTS or tickets issued by the CIC-on-Duty. In fact the EGEE SA1 Operations group has defined procedures to solve these tickets. TPM receives these tickets for information only How do I contact one of the support teams in a ROC? If you click on the following link, then you will see a map. If you click on a region, then an is generated with the address completed for you. You then have to write the body of the How can I determine which ROC is associated with a site? If you click on the following link, then you will get a table showing the results of the Site Functional Tests (SFT): In addition to the current status of the SFT, there is static information in the tables which show the ROC to which each site belongs. [At the time of writing this FAQ, a replacement page is on test at the following URL: Ed] 8620 How can I determine which site is associated with a ROC? See How can I determine the status of a site? See How can I determine the status of a site which is down? Click on the following link: How can I determine the status of a VO? Click on the following link: Using "Configure View" you can select the view that it is appropriate - for instance ATLAS services you can click and it will generate the appropriate URL and display the information. C:\alistair\egee\ESC\documentation\doc\8600_FAQ_for_TPM_06.doc Page 5 of 5