Integration Guide Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360 1.800.424.9411 www.scriptlogic.com
Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Product Overview... 3 Benefits of Product Integration... 3 Advanced Help Desk Automation... 3 Easy Remediation... 4 Close Tickets and Reset Alerts... 4 Configuring Help Desk Authority and sl360 Integration... 4 From the Tools Menu... 5 From the Tool Bar... 5 From the Asset Window... 5 From the Issue Window... 7 Configuring Perspective and sl360 Integration... 9 Running a tool against a single device... 10 Running a tool against multiple devices... 11 Configuring Help Desk Authority and Perspective Integration... 13 Help Desk Authority Configuration... 13 Configure Perspective Server... 13 Define Priority Mappings... 14 Configure Device Synchronization... 16 Configure HDAutoEscalate Rules... 17 Perspective Configuration... 20 Configure Help Desk Authority web server... 21 Configure alerts to generate ticket in Help Desk Authority... 22 Help Desk Authority and Perspective Integrated Features... 23 Perspective alerts will create Help Desk Authority tickets if auto remediation steps fail... 23 Automatic ticket routing... 24 Automatic alert reset... 25 Centrally view and report on all incidents related to network or application failure events... 25 View detailed device information from within Help Desk Authority... 26 2 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Introduction This document walks through the steps required to enable integration between Help Desk Authority, the sl360 Tool Suite, and Perspective. It also highlights the integrated functionality offered when the products are installed together. Product Overview Help Desk Authority is an industry leading help desk software solution for tracking tickets and shortening the lifecycle of help desk issues. Perspective is a comprehensive and affordable network management and application monitoring solution. It solves the problems associated with bandwidth, network and application performance, and connectivity that are often constant, time consuming issues for IT departments. The sl360 Tool Suite is offered as a free solution, it consolidates dozens of network management and network monitoring tools into a single, integrated interface. The tool suite includes Cisco configuration management, server and application monitoring, open source and third party integration, a robust encrypted credential store, the ability to save and flow results between tools, deep network discovery (with network mapping) and syslog server capabilities. Benefits of Product Integration Integration between Help Desk Authority and Perspective has been designed to ease the burden on IT staff. Perspective can be configured to create an alert and begin remediation. If Perspective cannot resolve the issue, then a ticket can be automatically created in Help Desk Authority, populated with the actions already taken as well as the status of the actions. This allows technicians to save time and begin a deeper resolution of the issue. Now bundled with every license of Help Desk Authority, ScriptLogic s sl360 Tool Suite consolidates dozens of network management and network monitoring tools into a single, integrated interface. Technicians can now troubleshoot issues without ever leaving the Help Desk Authority console. Advanced Help Desk Automation Configure Perspective alerts to create tickets in Help Desk Authority Auto remediation actions and status included in the help desk ticket Route tickets to the correct technician or group based on the type of device or application 3 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Easy Remediation Perspective provides severity and priority of the issue, while displaying device details within the Help Desk Authority Console Launch sl360 troubleshooting tools directly from the help desk ticket, with the proper settings, from the perspective of the affected device Troubleshooting tools include device management, server and application monitoring, deep network discovery and more Application monitoring provides in depth visibility for running processes and performance counters Perspective provides support for Exchange, SQL and Active Directory monitoring and remediation Create device groups, save tool settings and favorite tools to reduce troubleshooting and resolution times Close Tickets and Reset Alerts Once tickets are resolved inside Help Desk Authority, the alerts are reset in Perspective Perspective automatically begins monitoring performance and can re open a ticket if abnormal behavior is detected again Configuring Help Desk Authority and sl360 Integration When the Help Desk Authority Windows client and the sl360 Tool Suite are installed on the same computer, the sl360 Tool Suite can be invoked directly from the HDA Tools Menu and Toolbar. Additionally, the following sl360 tools can be invoked to run directly against a device both from an HDA Asset record or directly from within an HDA Issue record. DNS Audit Enhanced Ping Graphical Ping Ping Scan Port Scan MAC Scan WMI Scan SNMP Scan SNMP Walk Switch Port Mapper TraceRoute Traffic Jam Wake On LAN Whois 4 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
From the Tools Menu From the Tools menu, select sl360 Troubleshooting Tools as shown in the following image From the Tool Bar From the Tool Bar, select the sl360 icon From the Asset Window Open the Asset Edit window for the asset (Assets Icon on tool bar > Search for Asset record) Select the 360 Troubleshoot button from the tool bar Select the appropriate tool from the drop down menu 5 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
sl360 Tool Suite launches and the tool begins to run directly against the selected asset 6 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
From the Issue Window Open the Issue Edit window (Open Issue Icon on tool bar > Enter Issue number) Select the Asset tab of the Issue Edit window Select the 360 Troubleshoot button from the Asset tab Select the appropriate tool from the drop down menu Note: An asset must be associated with the issue or the 360 Troubleshoot button will not be present 7 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
sl360 Tool Suite launches and the tool begins to run directly against the selected asset 8 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Note: The sl360 Tool Suite must be installed on the same machine as the Help Desk Authority Windows client in order to use the integrated features. The integrated functionality is not available via the Help Desk Authority web client. Configuring Perspective and sl360 Integration When the Perspective Studio and the sl360 Tool Suite are installed on the same computer, the following sl360 tools can be invoked to run directly against a device from within the Perspective Studio. Perspective supports running certain tools against multiple devices at the same time depending on the context of where the tool is invoked. DNS Audit Enhanced Ping Graphical Ping Ping Scan Port Scan MAC Scan 9 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Net Flow WMI Scan SNMP Scan SNMP Walk Syslow Switch Port Mapper TFTP Server TraceRoute Traffic Jam Wake On LAN Whois Running a tool against a single device Highlight a single device from the list, right click and open the Tools menu Select the appropriate tool from the drop down menu sl360 Tool Suite launches and the tool begins to run directly against the selected device 10 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Running a tool against multiple devices Highlight a more than one device from the list, right click and open the Tools menu Select the appropriate tool from the drop down menu 11 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
sl360 Tool Suite launches and the tool begins to run directly against the selected devices 12 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Configuring Help Desk Authority and Perspective Integration When Help Desk Authority and Perspective are installed together, both products must be configured in order to enable the integration. Help Desk Authority Configuration From the Help Desk Authority Windows or web client, the following items will be configured: Configure Perspective server Define the mapping of Perspective priority field values into Help Desk Authority issue priorities Set the schedule by which your Perspective and Help Desk Authority data will be synchronized Create the rules in HDAutoEscalate to route issue notifications to appropriate users based on asset type Configure Perspective Server 13 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Open the Perspective tab of the System Options window (Setup > System Options) and fill in the Perspective Server field (this will be the computer name where Perspective server is installed) Press the Test button to verify that HDA is able to successfully connect to the Perspective Server Define Priority Mappings Help Desk Authority and Perspective maintain separate lists of priority values that can be associated to issues and alerts. In order to ensure the proper priority value is associated with the HDA issue ticket when it is created from a Perspective alert, the Perspective priority values must be mapped to the corresponding HDA priority values. Perspective uses a static list of five priority values (P1 P5). Use the drop down menu next to each priority value to designate the corresponding HDA priority value that will be assigned to the help desk ticket 14 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
If a priority value is not configured for the alert in Perspective, this alert will be created with an "Unknown" priority value The Unknown priority mapping field is used to configure a priority value in the Help Desk Authority ticket for all alerts that are sent from Perspective with an Unknown value 15 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Configure Device Synchronization Devices that are managed through Perspective can be synchronized to create asset records in Help Desk Authority. These devices can be synchronized manually or via a scheduled service that runs on the Help Desk Authority computer. A device record is also added or updated each time Perspective creates an issue record in Help Desk Authority. To enable automatic synchronization of devices, check the box next to Synchronize devices automatically on a recurring schedule and press the Start Service button Synchronization can be scheduled to run daily, weekly, or monthly 16 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Configure HDAutoEscalate Rules The HDAutoEscalate module of Help Desk Authority supports creating rules to route issues to the correct technician or group based on the type of device that was included in the Perspective alert. From the HDAutoEscalate module, create a new rule and select the Type of Asset Assigned is tab from the Conditions tab Check the box next to Trigger action when the type of asset assigned is and select a value from the drop down list (note that this drop down list may be empty until devices are synchronized from Perspective) 17 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Select the Rule Actions tab and then select the Change Fields tab underneath Choose the option to Change the value of the following field(s) and set the Group or Assigned To value to the group or specific technician that would best handle issues based on the device type specified 18 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Select the Schedule tab and set the schedule on which this rule should be run Press the Start Service button to start the HDAutoEscalate service 19 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Perspective Configuration From the Perspective Studio, the following items will be configured: Configure Help Desk Authority web server Configure alerts to generate ticket in Help Desk Authority 20 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Configure Help Desk Authority web server From the Perspective Studio, select the Administration tab and select the Help Desk Authority Configuration icon Enter the URL for the HDA web server and press the Test button to test the connection Press the Save button to save the settings Note: If you have a problem establishing the connection to the HDA web server you may need to enable Anonymous Authentication on the PTWebService folder of the HDWeb site in IIS 21 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Configure alerts to generate ticket in Help Desk Authority From the Devices section of Perspective, edit the settings for the desired policy Select the Alerts tab from the Edit Policy window Create a new alert or edit an existing alert From the Alert window choose the option to Require manual reset and check the box next to Generate service ticket when an alert is triggered Set the Severity and Priority fields for the ticket 22 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Help Desk Authority and Perspective Integrated Features Once the two products are configured, the following features will be enabled: Perspective alerts will create Help Desk Authority tickets if auto remediation steps fail Automatic ticket routing Automatic alert reset Centrally view and report on all incidents related to network or application failure events View detailed device information from within Help Desk Authority Perspective alerts will create Help Desk Authority tickets if auto remediation steps fail Perspective alerts can be configured to take certain auto remediation steps before a help desk ticket is created including killing processes or rebooting the system. If these auto remediation steps fail, a help desk ticket can be created in Help Desk Authority. This help desk ticket will include all the pertinent information for the alert including: Device name (assigned as the associated Asset record on the HDA ticket) Device type 23 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Priority of issue Summary of alert information Detailed description of alert including the conditions that were met to trigger the alert as well as any auto remediation steps that were already taken to attempt to resolve the issue Automatic ticket routing The Help Desk Authority issue ticket can be routed to the proper group or technician based on the type of device that triggered the alert. For more information, see the Configure HDAutoEscalate Rules section above. 24 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
Automatic alert reset When a Help Desk Authority ticket that was initiated from a Perspective alert is closed, the corresponding alert is reset in Perspective. This prevents the need to manually reset the alert and ensures that the device will continue to be monitored. Centrally view and report on all incidents related to network or application failure events Create a query through the Help Desk Authority Query Manager tool that filters to show all issues that have an Issue Origin value of Perspective. Use this query when running issue detail reports and you will be able to quickly report on all incidents that occurred due to network or application failure events. 25 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
View detailed device information from within Help Desk Authority Technicians can view the device details that were captured by Perspective directly from within an issue or asset record in Help Desk Authority. Simply select the View Snapshot button from within the Asset tab of the Issue window, or from within the Asset window itself. 26 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
This will launch a window that displays the details of the device that were captured by Perspective. This information can be used to help identify the root cause of the issue. 27 Integration Guide: Help Desk Authority, Perspective and sl360
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